Are all that most trolls need is a bit of netiquette?
This is the last entry you can comment on for the scond half of April.Does the anonymity or brevity of comments on computer forums tend to encourage incivility? Do you agree with the author that most trolls are well-meaning? What can be done about those that aren’t? How should you confront someone who you feel is being insulting or agressive?
First of all I want to say that I think a majority of the people that post offensive or otherwise provocative texts online for other people to read, are usually not doing it by accident. They are perfectly aware of what kind of reaction their text will cause on the side of the reader and that is exactly what they want to accomplish. The probability of a person doing this by accident is small. A person should re-think everything he or she is posting online, because of two main reasons.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, not everybody might understand what you are posting. There is a difference between the public and closer friends who might understand certain remarks because they are associated with some other thing. Other people do not see any hidden meaning and if it is only the hidden meaning that keeps your statement in the zone of 'acceptable', to all the other people, it will be in the zone of 'unacceptable'. You might think that this cannot really happen to anybody, that everybody would notice such a mistake, but it is not true. When a person is writing something as a response to something else, he or she subconsciously connects his writing with that person. This can even result in him writing something that basically NOBODY else but the person he is writing this response to could understand and he might not even notice it. It all happens at a psychological level and can happen to anybody.
Another problem is enunciation. In normal speech a person can add an accent to a particular word to make it sound important. In written text, this vanishes and is lost. It is of course possible for a person to simulate accent in text by, for example, writing in bold of in capital letters as I have done one paragraph up. The problem occurs when a person does not add it into the text or, even worse, a person accidentally puts it at a place where it should not be. I have read a nice example of this. A sentence: “I never said she stole my money”. Seven different words, creating seven different meanings depending on which word you stress.
The thing is, a person that is being a 'troll' by accident, should look out for it and cannot blame anybody for taking action against him. Personally (as a website programmer and administrator), I can tell you, that having a person that deliberately posts offensive content onto the page is very annoying and I would take action against such a person immediately. Yes, I might try to see if the person is doing what he is doing deliberately or only by accident, but I think it is rather too complicated a rout. Every website I design is equipped with an IP address tracker and a ban option for each of them. I am sure each (more professional) web page on the internet has such features and it is the simplest way to go in the case of having a troll as your regular visitor. After all, if I was being rude to somebody online on a web page without knowing it (a web page I was very fond of in reality) and I was banned from it, I would definitely contact the administrator to see why that was and I would eventually realize what had been going on. The fact that I was not a genuine troll would come out eventually.
Unfortunately, I believe that most trolls out there are genuine trolls and that people like Clifford are unique.
I wouldn’t necessarily consider Clifford49 a troll at first glance based solely on the fact that he’s an individual who posts feedback comments with a predominantly negative constructive criticism on a website. By the looks of it, the author of the article clearly hasn’t been particularly well informed as to what the definition of a troll is. It is not enough for one to post negative feedback in order to be labeled as a troll. The true purpose of a troll is to incite people to get mad at unimportant and irrelevant things. What Clifford was doing appears to be nothing more than a display of his unrestricted nature, made possible by the anonymity the internet has given him. Clifford might as well be a jerk, yes, but definitely not a troll. The other example provided, the one regarding the football player, would fit the troll description better. No relevant information was conveyed in the biology student’s message and the purpose of this message was mainly to provoke a reaction, where as Clifford’s post are more geared towards providing feedback, albeit, in a rather aggressive way.
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t stop frowning upon the author’s remarks and seemingly twisted views of the situation on the internet. Her pathetic vision of “making the internet a better place” alone made shake my head in disbelief. The internet is no man’s land – a place where nothing should be taken at face value, where not much authority is present and where anonymity is king. How that internet dream concept of hers is to be achieved, I cannot possible see. If the people at the Birmingham Post are seeking to get rid of such people, they should probably opt to abandon their hopes of changing the internet for good, and start moderating their blogs more heavily instead. Only by ignoring a troll’s remarks will one be able to stop him dead in his tracks, and the best way of doing is to enforce censorship on such remarks. Some might argue this conflicts with the concept of freedom of speech, however, at times it is the only reasonable thing left to do.
I have to say that after reading this article I was partly confused, but after reading Lachezar’s comment everything cleared up. The author’s definition of an internet troll is indeed untrue and as Lachezar pointed out, an internet troll does not necessarily have to be a person who often shows his criticism far more negatively than other people, instead a troll is anyone whose goal is to anger/confuse other readers. This is often done by several ways or “techniques” if you will: the most common way to troll is when the “troller” states something that is obviously false and decides to defend his/her idea by supporting his idea with further obvious false statements, a person then replies stating that the “troller’s” idea is incorrect, the troll defends his statements furthermore by fake stubbornness which often promotes the angering of the person who attempted to explain the incorrectness and got caught in the “net” of the troll.
DeleteThis “clifford49” guy does seem like really annoying person, but like Lachezar said; he definitely isn’t a troll. The alleged “troller” person just seems to be in a rather negative mood which is the reason why his comments are so negative. From the comments which were posted on the article I’d have to say that mr.clifford49 had a bad day or week, which would be the reason for his negative bias. It’s not like his comments are provoking any hostility against other readers or something, he’s just expressing his opinion in a unique way, a way that is solely based on rough criticism.