Sunlight on the Waters

[jarandhel]

I'm learning a lot about trolls... been taking a look not just at the compiled information on them but at quite a few examples of the wild troll in its native habitats. I haven't fully processed all of the information I've gathered yet, but I have come to at least one conclusion so far:

Trolls are banal. They are trite, commonplace, and predictable. What's more, they are absolute conformists... every troll is a typical troll. If they weren't, they wouldn't have enough in common with other trolls to still fit the definition.

I've seen it said by some that the best trolls, the truly inspired trolls, post things that are so far above most people's heads that they would cause more trouble if they were outed as trolls than they do if left alone. Frankly, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, though... it's like going fishing with a brick for bait, and then claiming you're a great fisherman because so few things bit. Maybe if that brick lets you land a shark instead of a tunafish I'd agree with you, but if you're not getting any strikes at all and are just doing it for the amusement of the other people fishing and yourself then you're not actually fishing... you're being a clown for the amusement of an audience of fishers and other clowns.

I do have one other thought on the subject, but this one is addressed to the trolls themselves. It is the following:

You use the metaphor of the ocean to represent the internet. It is an apt metaphor, as this place can ebb and flow like the tides and change as swiftly as the waves on the waters. It is both deep and shallow, well-travelled and yet hardly explored. And, to borrow a quote from older maps: Here there be Monsters.

Think well before lowering that bait into the waters here, be they calm or turbulent... you never know quite what might strike.

Happy Fishing.

Comments

Irony

[kinjouten.livejournal.com]

I actually recently had an extensive debate with family members this week over the various definitions, flavors, and overall usefulness of the 'trolling' concept.

At its best I believe it should be listed as a skill or technique and not a identification badge, and, like Rialian's concept of the Identification masks, 'children' should not be allowed to play, lol. Like a powerful ingredient it should only used out of neccessity and restraint, and most self identified 'trolls' lack both.

We live in a day and age in which the level of stress that people are commonly subjected to just in day to day life shaves years off our lifespans and severely reduces the quality of life in general--random stresses and the raging of leaky ids should not be permitted to make it worse.

There's a reason that many people regard the vast majority, if not all, of the internet as a steaming pile of electronic refuse, and I can't say that I blame them much. 'trolls', 'flamebaiters', and 'flamers' do a really good job of giving the 'net a justifiably bad name, regardless of what the original intention--that of pointed deconstructionism--may have been.

The overwhelming majority of those who engage in the activity, regardless of the lip service they may or may not pay to having high-minded reasons, seem to be extremely clumsy at it, to the point of it being only theoretically, and therefore rarely, useful, even if it can be and has been used as a sort of 'safety valve' for outing and culling the obnoxious and fraudulent.

I likened the average mass of self-proclaimed 'trolls' to a device amounting to a mass of whirling, irregular buzzsaw blades that randomly plows into innocent crowds maiming, dismembering, and beheading scores of people in a flailing attempt to occasionally nail the likes of John Wayne Gacey and that preacher in Kansas who wants to build a concrete monument damning a young gay man killed in a hate crime.

An apparatus such as this Guilliotine On Crack,thus sloppily and haphazardly applied, and with such generally poor results, is in definite need of tuning, if not complete recall.

If I own a hammer that for some reason has as much chance of flying apart on a backswing and burying the claw in my forehead as it does of driving a nail into the wall properly, I buy a non-defective hammer. :)

In the same vein, people randomly swinging hammers and bashing in your walls, car, and general belongings, regardless of their alleged desire to do repairs, tend to engender one of several basic reactions;

1. "Gimme That, Dipshit!" *snatch*

2. Burying the claw end in their forehead with extreme prejudice

OR 3. Guiding their hands on how to actually use the tool correctly and constructively.

Mostly people want to bury that claw end, and by and large I can't say I blame them very much, though the guiding and tuning approach would probably work a lot better in the long run. :/

Re: Irony

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

You might be somewhat correct, but I disagree with your closing point... since by definition those who troll WANT to cause disruption in or gain control of other's forums or lives, teaching them how to use the tool correctly (assuming that there is a correct useage for trolling and it isn't like trying to find a beneficial use for an atomic bomb) would be extremely difficult at best and trying to do so would be far more likely to result in them slamming the claw-end of the hammer into YOUR forehead, to borrow your metaphor. I think at best it would tend to simply make them more effective at disrupting/controlling their chosen targets.

Re: Irony

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Correction: "those who troll" should perhaps more accurately read "those who behave like mythical trolls, and still call it trolling".

Re: Irony

[kinjouten.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm reasonably sure you are right, actually, I'm just trying to give that famous benifit of the doubt. LOL. I know what *I* want to do with them when they start ruining communities, and it has nothing to do with 'guiding' them.