Perhaps you can explain something to me.
I am obviously an opinionated guy. I don’t mind writing manifestos about one issue or another.
I also don’t mind arguing with people I know, or people I don’t know but am for the moment having conversations with, about our principles and opinions.
What I don’t do is harass strangers who I can see disagree with me, for the sake of being rude, or pummeling them into submission.
I have mentioned before that a few months ago I was having some home connectivity problems and started going to the library to do what internet stuff I had to do during the day. The problem is now blessedly over. But while I was there total strangers, just people in the neighborhood, started interrupting my work sessions to demand to know what I thought of Donald Trump. I simply said that I didn’t think much of him, and indicated that I wanted to return to my work. On all occasions they didn’t take the hint; they wanted to win the argument with me, right then and there. Why? Did they envision an outcome where I clasped my forehead, shouted, “Jumping Jehosophat, you’re right!,” strapped on a sandwich board and devoted my days to standing in intersections exhorting people to decorate their homes with Trump wallpaper?
I contend that they didn’t. Whether they realized it or not, their desired outcome was to hector me into silence, to make me feel unsafe disagreeing with them.
A few years ago a bunch of liberal-oriented friends advertised an organizational picnic in a public park. I forget the precise cause they were supporting, but you will picture them accurately if you imagine a bunch of well-meaning folks in their forties and fifties who had spent as much time organizing who was going to bring the potato salad. There were no more than twenty of them. They were harmless. A local Tea Party group had also learned of the event and was there in equal force, with signs, standing around them in a semi-circle, shouting slogans and insults, ruining their day. By dint of being unpleasant and unrelenting they chased the graying liberals away from their picnic tables and indoors to the house of one who happened to live in the area, and then, then, they stood in the street outside continuing to wave their placards and hurl abuse.
I wish I could remember which major conservative media figure painted this on his show as a major victory for his ethos.
No, it was a major victory for a bunch of assholes who thought folks who disagreed with them should not be permitted to exist unmolested.
Online, it’s even worse. Sure, I will post a thousand words of political commentary at the drop of a hat, and I will argue with people who are on my Facebook page over one issue or another, but I also happen to know how to find people whose convictions are so different than mine that they set me to screaming inside. It’s not hard. There’s a page with the rather innocuous-sounding name of The Conservative Newsfeed, which is not so much conservatism as gibbering Obama-hate, conspiracy-theory nonsense, and manifestations of bigotry both coded and overt; I used to go there and read a bit, just to horrify myself. Not so much anymore. But even when somebody there said something that makes me want to burn modern civilization to the ground, I never dive-bombed threads with “Ha ha ha, Reagan was an asshole,” or “all conservatives are stupid,” or “you’re all a bunch of limpdicks,” or whatever.
Why would I do that? It doesn’t solve anything. I’m not going to win any arguments that way, or any way. Not there, not with those people. It would be a pointless activity.
And yet, guys, on any occasion where I post something political, and make it public to all as I am wont to do, inevitably some human hemorrhoid drops by to post something as enlightening as “All dems and libs suck,” or “put on your big boy panties,” or so on – entering a conversation among people they don’t know in order to drop an abuse turd.
In most of these cases the only way to get rid of them is to block them. A few have simply created new accounts and returned, to fling different abuse another day. I know they’re the same people in some cases because they even use the same names.
What do they get out of this except for the sheer illicit thrill of picking at scabs?
What do they want to accomplish?
In recent years we have learned that some trolls are actually paid. There are think tanks, mostly right-wing, who pay folks to come to work and spend their days doing abusive drive-by rants on liberal threads. This seems a waste of money to me as there are so many willing to do the work for me. But this is less about trying to win arguments than about making the expression of liberal opinions an unpleasant and risky proposition; disrupting the gathering in the park, driving everybody back indoors.
It’s about harassment. Making the area too noisy for a civilized argument.
I don’t think any of the guys who come into my threads are paid assholes. I think they’re very talented amateurs. But I believe that their goal is the same – not to win arguments, but to terrorize, to bother, to let it be known that the expression of certain beliefs, even in private spaces, will not be permitted without venomous cost. It’s throwing rocks at anybody who sticks his head up. It’s that, and that only.
What else would they get out of it?
And have you noticed: how many of them can’t spell or punctuate worth a damn, either?
Comment By: Dave O'Neill
November 28th, 2015 at 11:18 am
Years ago I used to read the blog of a space blogger who wrote, mostly, interesting stuff on space policy and technology. We didn’t always see eye to eye but we had been sparing online since the days of Usenet in the 90s.
As the 00s moved on he became more and more and more right wing and, frankly, nuts.
One by one the non right wing people left until it was one or two of us left who tried arguing that what he was saying was wrong.
I gave up in the end after being told that I was obviously part of a vast paid for left wing conspiracy to confuse conservatives.
Obviously I wasn’t.
The problem with Facebook is things keep appearing on my wall from friends of friends that feel like they’re invading my space with stuff I disagree with. It takes an act of will I don’t always have to ignore them.
Of course, in my defense, when I argue on some body’s wall, I’m right 🙂
Comment By: Evelyn Stice
November 28th, 2015 at 11:18 am
I try to refrain from arguing. From getting into a pointless back-and-forth. I succeed … most of the time. And I also try to remember that I am literally never going to convince the person who posted indefensible things to begin with.
Focus, I tell myself, on leaving one piece of sanity, an island of reason, that anyone reading the thread who isn’t certain one way or the other can climb onto. Focus on leaving a mark that says to all who view the post, “Not everyone agrees with this position.” And then just walk away.
I’m working on my mic drop, is what I’m saying.
Comment By: Bruce Baugh
November 28th, 2015 at 11:18 am
I know I’m intermittently on the edge of turning into a monomaniac about the subject, but I think that at least some of this flows pretty directly from worldviews that say there’s no real equality. All relationships are unequal: God and man, man and woman, boss and employee, parent and child, creator and audience, and so on. The superior may graciously set aside his superiority for, say, social time, but it’s still always there.
People who believe that may loudly say “all men are created equal”, but what they have in mind is a social order that lets the innately truly superior rise to their proper positions of power and prestige. When people like me talk about actual equality, metaphysically and in practice, they see two things: 1) dupes who are unwitting pawns of their superiors and 2) liars who are exploiting others’ ignorance and good will. They don’t – can’t, really – see anyone who actually believes in relationships where power is balanced.
So you get two sorts of trolls coming out of this: some exercising their superiority just because they can and because it’s all funny and stuff, and some who fear that corruptible underlings will stop being properly submissive if they get these sorts of ideas in their heads.
Comment By: Trinlay Khadro
November 28th, 2015 at 11:18 am
This is mainly why my account is “friends only”…
because women ALSO get actual direct threats from total strangers for (OMFG) having an opinion, on ANYTHING.
Even “i think this Casserole is better with the frozen peas even though the original calls for canned peas.” gets disproportionately threatening replies from strangers, in some forums.
On Usenet, when I switched from an “obviously feminine name” to one that was seen as “gender obscure” the threats and porn spam in my email vanished. Even the insults for having the “wrong” opinion vanished. There were a few forums where I’d been treated what I thought was well and fairly prior to the online name change (in the 90s), where the way I was treated and addressed STILL MANAGED to improve, even despite a huge announcement about “I’m still me, I’ve just changed the configuration of my name.”
As a woman, in the same situation you describe, I’d have been told either “Don’t work at the Library” or “Don’t answer their inquiry, just say that you are working and ignore them after that….”
Comment By: Bob Brown
November 28th, 2015 at 11:18 am
I don’t get trolls any more, they get lectures on etiquett and then I see them no more
Comment By: T-Roy Lent
November 28th, 2015 at 12:17 pm
I do choose to argue with trolls sometimes. I have three reasons.
First, I gain clarity when I put my thoughts down in words. Taking the time to at least attempt to write full sentences with good grammar and correct punctuation is part of that process.
Second, if I am addressing the troll my target audience is actually any middle of the road readers. The troll’s mind is never going to chance but I might give others food for thought. Insults are counterproductive to this effort.
Finally, while we don’t all have to respond to trolls neither should no one respond. I don’t want trolls to think everyone agrees with them.
Comment By: Morgan Smith
November 28th, 2015 at 12:17 pm
Quite a few of them want to be full-time writers, too.
It’s true: I’ve been contacted by several. After giving me grief for my political views, they all want to know how I got into self-publishing my work, how I got the job at the paper I write for, and how much money I made last year.
At least, I think that’s what they asked. Between the “using words that don’t mean what they think they mean” and not understanding what periods and capitalization are for, that’s what I’m left with, anyway.
Comment By: David R. Palmer
November 28th, 2015 at 12:17 pm
Mostly I just tease them â usually their reasoning awesomely flawed â and, of course, correct their spelling and punctuation. An exception is a desperately right-wing yoot whom one of my dearest friends, a teacher, has taken under her wing and helped work out the difference between unsupported opinion and fact: mostly I do the same sort of thing she does for him….
Comment By: Mike Brotherton
November 28th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
The trolls want a reaction. It’s the bullies who want to silence and censor. They look similar but they’re not the same.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
November 28th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
The earlier essay about the hectorers in the library.
https://www.adamtroycastro.com/2015/09/donald-trump-and-the-practical-limitations-of-the-panic-response/
Comment By: Joyce Reynolds-Ward
November 28th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Yeah. It’s one reason I keep my Facebook locked down and question whether I really want an author page. I’ve served my days in the political field, and arguing with idiots is…tiring.
Comment By: Bob Brown
November 28th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Sometimes trolls can be enter5aining. Admit it
Comment By: Janeen O'Kerry
November 28th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
People are now horrified to discover that the world is a much larger place than they thought it was. Until FB and etc., the world was whatever place you lived and whatever people you met face to face there. Sure, we’d see stuff in newspapers and maybe TV, but that was all Out There. It was distant. It wasn’t Personal. It wasn’t the world we lived in – until now. Now it’s right there in your own computer/phone And These People Are Addressing You By Name. That makes it Personal. And if something is Personal, by the gods you’re going to react to it where before you might have just ignored it. Not any longer.
Comment By: Janeen O'Kerry
November 28th, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Many say it’s the anonymity of the Internet that leads to all the abuse, but I’m not sure that’s the case. I think it’s the fact that strangers are addressing you Personally By Name that leads to the insanity and the abuse and the stalking IRL and the otherwise fighting to the death. Maybe if the comments truly were anonymous, and you could not respond to a specific one but could only post your thoughts singly, a lot of it would go away.
Comment By: Linda Hill
November 28th, 2015 at 2:18 pm
Ego-boo. That is what it is all about. These are the people who, all their childhood, were told how very special they were. Then, when they ventured into the real world, they found that there really wasn’t anything special about them. So, they picked a “CAUSE” in which to invest themselves. They take the importance of that cause and drape it around themselves, investing that importance into their view of self. Now they are educating the ignorant. Now they are on a mission to convert the heathen. Now they are better than anyone else. Now they are important again.
Comment By: Aj Mcculley
November 28th, 2015 at 3:19 pm
Here’s the truth: we are the trolls….I’ll say it again: we are the trolls. Every time anyone says anything, we as a culture react by pretending all of our individual and collective ideas and quips are sacred cows and beyond criticism. I hear folks dissecting every word of public speaking looking for fake offenses. ” that guy disagreed with an article or blog about race/politics/lgt / gender/ etc….he is a racist/fascist/communist/gay/homophobe/misogynist/traitor…etc!!!!”…trolling is the logical end of a philosophical/social arc of communication where NOBODY allows anybody else to have any sort of differing opinion without being accused of being dumb or hateful. I wish I was generalizing or over simplifying, but I’m not. How many times have you said or heard the word ” ignorant” in an online discussion, as if anyone who disagrees only does so because they aren’t as smart as you? Very convenient and self-serving, that. Trolls don’t want to silence you…why would they? Talking online is not some brave act…EVERYONE is giving their opinions online. Trolls are just crappy people, sharks attracted to the never ending bloodbath we call online discourse.
Comment By: Ole Andreas Imsen
November 28th, 2015 at 3:19 pm
Tried to put this on the blog, but didn’t work for some reason:
Right-wingers have a long history of trying to silence those that oppose them, or even those that want to inject facts into their echo-chambers.
Online they are clearly trying to silence any opposing viewpoint, suggesting to me that they are not actually the clueless idiots many on the left paint them as, but full fledged Fascists who wants to end any democracy based on facts if it keeps them out of power.
Comment By: Matt McIrvin
November 28th, 2015 at 4:17 pm
What’s actually driving me around the bend right now is the pros. I use Google Now, which tries to give me information and stories on subjects I’m interested in, but I don’t know how to tell it that I do NOT want stories on any subject from Fox News or Breitbart. I mean, I can understand the motivation to not keep me in a political echo chamber, but those sources are simply not worth checking on any subject, and even seeing their stupid headlines on my phone just depresses me.
Comment By: Greg M.
November 28th, 2015 at 4:17 pm
Adam:
My sympathies. I’ve encountered this before, a little: once an older guy randomly came up to me and my friend in a diner while we were talking about California, and started ranting at us–no introduction, no nothing. We’d never met the guy, and we hadn’t been loud or anything.
Part of it is that the right has a longstanding authoritarian streak: Robert Altmeyer wrote about this in 2006 in his book “The Authoritarians.” They literally cannot process people who have views that are different from theirs. The other is that Fox News has mainstreamed demonizing the opposition and made hating one’s fellow Americans socially acceptable. (There’s a great honest conservative, Rod Dreher, who wrote about this in the American Conservative: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/fox-geezer-syndrome/
Roger Ailes sells hate and fear. He did it when he was working for Nixon, and now he has his own news network to do it.
For those who’ll preach false equivalency, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone having screaming matches with relatives who watch MSNBC all day.
Comment By: Tim Gray
November 28th, 2015 at 6:17 pm
Much of internet comment is people rehearsing their worldview. The snake gnawing its tail.
Comment By: David Vineyard
November 28th, 2015 at 11:20 pm
I will answer a personal attack if I feel one was made but most of these Troll raids aren’t worth an thing but a block and satisfied silence.
Comment By: Jonas Planck
November 29th, 2015 at 2:54 am
I think it’s TOO dignifying to call such creatures “trolls.” …a true Scotsm- er, I mean a true “troll” is motivated by mischief, a desire to sow chaos and discord so they can sit back and laugh at the ensuing confusion, to attack people’s sacred cows in order to throw them into entertaining fits of hysteria… there is no such sense of malicious mirth among the “haters” we call trolls these days. A more appropriate term would be “Orcs.”
Driven only by a need to dominate, Orcs are brutish and insanely hostile, they seem to exist in a perpetual state of what old-school trolls call “buttrage,” A condition that is only supposed to be the temporary result of excessive trolling, not the motivation for it, nor a permanent state of being. The classic term for the condition is “Bully,” for that is both what they are and what they do. Much to my shame, and pride, I fight against them compulsively, because I enjoy gazing into abysses, I suppose. I have a reason for it, if not an excuse.
Bullies reproduce through bullying. The terror and fear they inflict is severely damaging, it infects the victim with huge doses of hatred, fear, and anger, it cripples their mental health… I was bullied for years as a young man, and it left me cynical, acerbic, skeptical, and agoraphobic. Now, I find myself bullying the bullies, because I can’t bear to stand idly by and say nothing when I see that kind of pain being inflicted on another human being, even vicariously… I have delusions of heroism, yes, but they are only delusions. To be honest, I’m motivated by the same hatred and anger that motivates them- the same urge to control and dominate – The reason I confess this without rationalization is that I’ve found that those who convince themselves that they are the “good guys” are usually capable of much more evil then those who doubt their own moral credentials. There’s probably a Zen kohn that expresses that idea more succinctly, but eh, screw it. I don’t want to be evil, is what I’m saying, but it happens anyway from time to time.
Besides, confirmation bias, false validation, tenuous rationales, and dismissive excuses seem to be the mainstay of the orc’s intellectual diet. Once you’ve seen enough of it in action, you get sickened whenever you catch yourself doing it. They seek out proof of their prejudices like flies seek out rotting things. Or like bees seek out flowers, depending on your point of view. It’s all a matter of personal perspective.
Harlan Ellison, with his legendary temper, is an interesting example of this bullying perpetuation effect. He suffered a hundred times worse in HIS youth than I did, and he also discovered how to use words as weapons (a hundred times better than me, I should add). But he is not exactly what you would call a “nice, agreeable, happy” person should you display foolishness in his presence. His verbal fury has been said to topple mountains. And yet, when I was going through some very dark times as a young man, I discovered in his essays and rants a kindred spirit, someone who could express the frustration and terror I felt as the world around me was trying its damndest to sublimate my sense of self, my imagination, my creativity, my very BEING, into a banal unit within a pointless and cruel social hierarchy, and he also understood all too well the constant punishment that results when you refuse to comply with that destructive process. His was the only voice in any mass media telling me that I wasn’t crazy, that I wasn’t defective or in need of repair. My teenage angst was a bit more existential than most people’s… Rush lyrics had no charms to soothe the restless dreams of MY youth. The terror of being bullied, especially when authority silently condones it or even participates, is not easy for a child’s mind to process, and it leaves you broken and scarred even after you overcome it… lesser men shatter completely, they become the same as the savage orcs who broke them, cruel sadistic brutes who only think in terms of dominance and submission. When there is no retreat to emotional safety available, the victim’s only concept of potency or empowerment comes from the example set by the abusers. This is where Nazis and terrorists come from… they weren’t always like that, they had to be MADE.
The Daleks are also a symbolic metaphor for the transformation, the vulnerable, squishy mass of emotional honesty and trust becomes gradually encased in an impenetrable armor, bristling with weapons to protect that wounded core from the despair-inducing onslaught of its abusers. Perhaps that subliminal metaphor is the reason for their popular staying power…but I’m starting to digress. Orcs, like the aforementioned terrorists and Nazis, were all once innocent children, and they ARE deserving of pity, if not mercy. The only real, lasting victory in this aeons-old struggle against savagery will be through their redemption and enlightenment… you can’t kill the act of killing, You can’t bully away bullying, and you can’t out-hate hatred… that approach only fulfills Nietzsche’s dire warning about what happens to those who fight monsters carelessly.
Comment By: Tony
November 29th, 2015 at 7:26 pm
Interesting thoughts. I’ve often wondered the same thing. I tend to only visit progressive online spaces, but I’m no stranger to the types of people you’re talking about. It seems bewildering to me as well. Do they get some sort of thrill out of attempting to demean progressives and liberals? Do they think they’re making substantial points (when they even attempt to do so)? Do they think they’re engaging with people on more than a superficial level? Are they attempting to add to the discourse? I ask these questions bc I’m curious what goes through their minds, bc the answers-so far as I can determine-are yes, no, no, and no.