TROLL: A danger of that label... Mute or Not To Mute that is the question...
I've been known to feed trolls on other sites, and only once here on steemit. There is a reason this happens with me. I was around and active on BBS/FORUMS before the term Troll existed. We tended to call them FLAMERS. We'd call the big uproars caused by them FLAME WARS. I even met and became friends with one, though it is NOT a practice I can recall ever doing.
It was beneficial that I met a guy that went by the handle Flash on a BBS back in around 1990. His real name was Robert Morris and I can share this as there are a lot of people by this name. I will always remember his name because at the time I was aware that the guy from Cornell named Robert Tappan Morris wrote the first known internet worm that actually brought the internet down for a bit.
Source: snowplow.org
Flash ended up not at all looking like the stereotypical computer geek of the time. When I met him the first time he was a blonde, very muscular guy, that liked to walk around in shorts and muscle shirts (even when it was snowing). He was very friendly and had a very child like tittering laugh. He was not an ass in person...
I happened to have built the BBS on the mainframe on campus that everyone was using. We all used handles, and one of the games we liked to play was eventually putting names and faces to the handles. You actually tended to need to go to one of three computer labs to post on these BBSes so odds were the people you were talking to were sitting among you.
Flash was a TROLL or as we called him a FLAMER. There was absolutely no doubt in this distinction. He described himself as such too. He got a kick out of getting people riled up. He didn't believe most of what he said. That is not why he said it. He would intentionally say things that he knew would get people emotional and worked up. He thought it was funny, and it was entertaining.
Source: otterlover58.files.wordpress.com
Now I tell you the guy is nice in person. I had others confirm this, as I always wondered if he was nice to me simply because I kind of had ultimate power over that system. Yet, he'd troll me too. It wasn't that big a deal once I knew who he actually is and I could actually give him shit about it in person. That is a luxury most of us don't have today. Perhaps the fact he could not forever remain anonymous reigned him in to some degree.
Trolls emerge
In the modern internet there are some serious trolls. There are also people that have committed suicide with a potential factor in their suicide being trolling. It can be very harsh. It is also very distasteful even to me. I will mute a troll and I will stop feeding them as soon as I am sure they are simply trolling... Finding this out FIRST is where I believe I am different from a lot of people, it is also why I tend to feed trolls.
Source: giphy.com
Why am I feeding the trolls?
I've been called a troll. Why? Because, I disagreed with the person and was being serious. I was having a serious discussion. I was not trying to intentionally piss them off. I simply did not agree. That is not TROLLING. That is normal human discussion. Finding common ground is not always EASY. If we can stick it out through the STRUGGLE I've found that all participants usually benefit from new information, learning, etc. I learn the most from those that disagree with me that can actually have civil discussions with people they disagree with.
Source: photobucket.com
I therefore think it is very important to be absolutely certain a person is intentionally trolling me before treating them as such. This means I end up feeding trolls for a bit before I am certain that is what they are. There have also been times where I have discovered a person was not a troll after many people had labeled him/her as such and muted, down voted, etc.
It is okay to disagree. It is healthy to disagree.
Mute
I've muted one person on steemit since I started using it in July. This means I've encountered ONE person I legitimately considered a troll. That is quite impressive. If I post a few comments on reddit, I am almost certain to encounter a troll at some point. I've met people here on steemit who claim to be trolls on other sites and like doing it, but find that it is not something they do here.
Source: VentureBeat
I believe the monetary potential for comments, posts, etc helps a great deal with that. Trolling on steemit will make that account likely to not earn anything, and likely the account itself will become virtually useless for anything but trolling due to the reputation system.
The mute though is interesting. Several people I respect say they use the MUTE button often. This is totally their right. I don't do this simply because people that I disagree with most of the time can still occasionally post GEMS or interesting things that I would have missed if they were muted. I guess I don't want to shut the door on possibilities. Yes, it is highly probable in a lot of cases I won't like anything that person has to post, yet people buy lottery tickets when it is highly probable you will not win. I gamble that there is a possible potential ANYONE could say something intriguing and interesting. It is actually predominantly from people who disagree with me that I learn the most new information. It is difficult to learn new things if I only discourse with people who already agree with me and know similar information.
That is my long thought for the day...
Steem On!
Yep. Basically... intentionally being a dick and enjoying the reactions. ;)
i feed trolls until they are no benefit to me. when i encounter people that i simply disagree with, i try to thrash out the point of disagreement to make sure i understand it, and correct my thinking if i am the one in error. this thrashing of a subject, has led some to think i am a troll. i only troll people who abandon argument and resort to name calling.
interaction with trolls is sometimes useful. it allows me to learn other things like, how to better control my emotions, and how to refine my arguments to be better understood. i think the point that i abandon the feeding is when it becomes repetitive, and it is evident that i will learn no more.
I've been called a troll for doing what you were describing. That is partially why I wrote this article to make it clear that people apply the label TROLL too liberally and it is often applied to people who are not trolls.
If people resort to name calling and belittling I tend to not respond anymore. I have too much other stuff to be doing than to deal with people who think that by calling me a name and putting me down it will suddenly make me believe they are right. If I was bored and had time to burn I might dig in and go with it more, but I pretty much am never bored and very rarely have time to burn.
if i get name calling, i will usually only continue if it is someone in whom i see potential. on a very rare occasion, if i'm in a mood, and i get name calling, i will dig in and show them how it is done. i used to enjoy playing The Dozens in grade school.
I did that on Reddit the other day. Strangely my name after being called one twice in a row silenced them. :)
it is strange how thin skinned some trolls can be.
Guy kept calling me Elizabeth Warren and offering no other thing of substance. Was clear by the structure of things they were trolling. It was kind of ironic to be called Elizabeth Warren. My friends would laugh their ass off at that. So it wasn't a brutal name. :)
I eventually settled for calling him Hellen Keller which if he actually looked it up, she was an amazing person despite the fact she was blind, and deaf.
Trolls and bullies suck, I am totally against either of that behavior, and have made two posts about it while on Steemit hehe. Don't feed the troll is hat I live by. I learned a long time ago. Life is short. Stop wasting it on people who don't deserve your time or attention. Choose wisely. I ask questions and find answers, don't need a troll to stress me out in life so I can go "prove" them wrong lol. I do learn from people who disagree and can handle honest critical evaluation of something wrong. But not trolls.
Sometimes I make fun of trolls by answering their trollpost with a one line question so that they have to answer a minimum 10-liner again and again. As long as they write they can't troll others and I have the laugh.
Hehe... that is an interesting tactic.
LOL thats true. That's a nice service you offer: "trolls come bother me and leave other people alone" I LIKE IT!
Yeah the main thing... make sure they are REALLY a troll and not someone who simply disagrees with you. It is an important distinction. Finding agreement is not always an easy path. Yet that doesn't make the person that disagrees with you a troll.
Proper, valid and honest, tension, friction, interference, controversy and conflict, is part of the road, path and way to learning. I don't stand for irrational judgments, but all valid judgments are to be taken seriously and looked into indeed.
Yeah reason and rationality are important to me too. I find that hypocrisy really pisses me off. :) It is one of my big pet peeves lately.
yes, two faced contradictory illogical >_< me too
I used to post counter arguments on subjects that would interest me even when I didn't believe in this counter argument. I did it so that others would help me understand why I didn't like it, to find real arguments against it and to help others with the same. Basically any subject discussed I'd touch from every single angle, as disgusting as some would find it, to create discussion and basically settle the subject, at least in my head.
Because of this practice a lot of people started believing that I was just speaking to win an argument by bringing up a new point each time, that I just wanted the last word. These people started seeing me as a troll and there are many who have chosen to stay away from me as a result.
I wouldn't stop though I have many times experimented with different approaches, different ways to word things so that I don't shock people enough so that all I get in return are insults. I don't learn much from insults, even though one can also learn from insults about the things that upset others.
I haven't had to use the mute button on Steemit yet and hope I never have to, even if I find a shill I wouldn't mute them because I'd still want to know the lies they are spreading. Though I do like that I have the option to mute and would like to see it expanded to tags, I would like to be able to follow tags and well as mute them.
This is acceptable and is a practice that has existed long before FLAMERS or TROLLS. It is sometimes called the Devil's Advocate and it can be important.
You'll know a troll if they flip flop on sides and the things they say have no consistency other than the consistent desire to rile you up.
It doesn't sound like that was you. That is partially why I wrote this article. It was my hope people would consider that often the people they are calling a troll is NOT a troll. Disagreeing is not Trolling.
There are several professional disinformation artists on this site, but they are everywhere.
I agree that there is very little actual trolling her on steemit.
I don't care about disinformation artists, because I don't trust any source implicitly. I take information from all sources I can and try to find the puzzle pieces that fit together. If I can't find it, or sometimes even if I can I'll go research it.
I have no doubt there are disinformation artists. I don't think they are always professional. Sometimes it is them simply giving into their cognitive dissonance and doing everything they can to protect their own paradigm.
I very very very seldom mute someone. I think I have done it twice in my life.
I can always decide to not get angry on something if I someone is trolling. Or stop reading her.
Yep, the only person I muted was following me from blog post to blog post and intentionally replying to and trolling most of my comments. So they were going out of there way to keep me from simply being able to ignore them and go on.
Don't mute. It just makes them feel like they have won.
ColdMonkey mines Gridcoins through BOINC computations for science…
The one person I muted since JULY (yes only one) was intentionally following me from blog post to blog post and trolling any comment I made. I did engage them for awhile. So I am very hesitant to use the MUTE and it takes a hell of a lot of effort to make me do it.
Have you checked back on them to see how they're doing? Honestly people who do that have serious life issues.
Remember if someone is trying to pull you down, it's only because they feel like you're above them.
That was a very long time ago. That was in the 1990-1994 time frame. In fact, I think he graduated before 1994 and went on somewhere. He was in sports training, and health type stuff.
So I have not heard from him or about him since way back then.
There was another guy that went by Torch that was a Psychology major and also liked to Troll. He wasn't always NICE like Flash. He could be a dick in person too, and other times he was okay.
He reached out to me online and his wife at some point years after that, but really those are the only two TROLLS I actually knew in real life and physically have met.
Oh you were talking about the person here. They trolled a lot of people. Though have strong evidence they are still around and own multiple accounts. They simply do not troll in that particular fashion anymore. You can find them under other NAMES on steemit.chat if you don't mind braving the GENERAL channel which still has quite a bit of trolling activity. They let some things drop intentionally while talking to me that I am pretty sure the guy I muted is still around, and using a different name (or two, or three) and he and I have an understanding I believe. So I do believe this person is still around and healthy.
EDIT: And someone you yourself have interacted with. :)
He's pretty much rehabilitated. Him an @beanz have buried the hatchet and are friends now. I think that helped both of them feel better. This isn't he must not be named like voldermort. But i know who you're talking about. I've caught them each time, I just choose to say nothing because they appear to be trying sincerely to rehabilitate themselves under a new persona.
2 different people actually.
@beanz replying over here due to comment depth limits...
Well ok, you aren't flagging eachother anymore and I've seen you two compliment one another. Frankly I've always assumed the dude had a bit of a crush on you. Never seen anything to change my opinion on that. Then you made that song for him and it melted everyone's heart even mine.
You did good there, literally benefited everyone on steemit when you did that.
So yes friends is the word I would use.
Yep. @beanz and I have talked. I had some good conversations with him in his current persona and he did keep his trolling limited to GENERAL. When I encountered him in other channels he refrained from that and is actually an intelligent guy with a lot of thoughtful ideas. So I have no problems with him either. I am not approaching this as Voldemort as you indicated. It is more that I do not WANT to name the person. I believe they are a valuable asset to the steemit environment now and they don't need any baggage from me pointing out past activities.
LOL "friends" yeah...
Damn I miss icq, dummy terminals and muds.
Heh... I once had a very low numbered ICQ account... that was long ago. Dummy Terminals and MUDs were a thing in the environment where I encountered the Troll/Flamer I talked about. The BBS ran over Dummy terminals connected to a VAX. We also frequently played MUDs via the internet pre-WWW days over those same terminals. We also argued with mudheads tying up the only 14,400 baud modem.... :P
One of my friends got a 14.4 modem and it was like a lambo, everyone was so jelous.
When I think of the internet even pre AOL it was pure freedom. I do not think we will ever see anything like that again.
I even miss the hacking wars with people taking over chats, flooding people with packets, pings, ddossing their ip and hoping your firewall holds up to whatever new trick they learned.
Or shit like the jolly rodger and the anacharsts cookbook. I still got a floppy around somewhere with he 3rd revision of it (with text pictures). if people tired to make stuff like that now days they would be in jail.
The trolls will never be the same either, like your ost says trolling//flaming is saying something you don't agree with just because u know it will get a emoitional response. now you say anything to disagree with someone and they call you a troll. real trolling is an art in itself.
I would love to see people now days try to deal with what old school boards and chats were. It was brutal compared to the sugar coated internet we have now days.
Fuck I just remembered the jokes, the most horrible jokes ever. dead baby jokes and stuff. Ahhh the good old days.
LOL
The only thing I don't miss is pages upon pages of phone numbers, and other information. I prolly used a tree with ip addresses alone.
Hehhe,.... yeah my first modem was 300 baud... I could type faster than it, and it was definitely slow to read...
Then the 2400 baud, eventually a 9600 baud, then 14.4... then the 28.8 and 56K days came a long. I was older then and WWW was active. I ran a consulting business and a lot of 56K modem owners couldn't get better than 28.8 due to how the phone company did tricks to get more lines out of their copper runs,
Then I became certified satellite internet installer in that region. Fastest we could get at the time... though the latency was huge 1500+ ms ping times. :)
Play unreal tournament... see some guy... pull the trigger... a second or two later your screen updates and you're lying there dead and the guy already ran by.
They finally got DSL in that area right before I moved back to the Denver area.
when 28.8bps and 256 color monitors became the norm the whole game changed. I never had a computer that was good enough to run unreal tourney when it was relevant.
After 56k I stopped paying attention to my online speed, its my computer that cant keep up anymore.
:D
Did go to a couple lan partys playing Half-Life, again my puter couldn't run it but my friends could. capture the flag was my fave but that was about the time I strated dropping out of the gaming scean.