Inside the Minds of Internet Trolls

Posted by Alex in Blog & Internet on August 1, 2008 at 1:30 pm


The New York Times has a very interesting article by Mattathias Schwartz about Internet trolls: what they’ve done and what made ‘em tick:

“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.

Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: “You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had.”

In life, there’s always been mean people and the Web is no exception: Link – via Metafilter | Weev’s response in LiveJournal

Photo: Jason Fortuny (of the Lori Drew "Megan Had It Coming" hoax fame), by Robbie Cooper for The New York Times


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COMMENT

37 comments to "Inside the Minds of Internet Trolls"

  1. Public Relations
    August 1st, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    We are just dealing with mentally ill people with no empathy.....

    The world has been full of them since the beginning of mankind....

    There will always be evil Humans in society. But they do not reflect the normal people. You just try to avoid them if you can and do not give them any attention

  2. Public Relations
    August 1st, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    .
    We are just dealing with mentally ill people with no empathy.....

    The world has been full of them since the beginning of mankind....

    There will always be evil Humans in society. But they do not reflect the normal people. You just try to avoid them if you can and do not give them any attention

  3. SenorMysterioso
    August 1st, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    Good article and nice way to invite the troll to neatorama, dont be surprised when they pop in here

  4. SenorMysterioso
    August 1st, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    *trolls

  5. Britt
    August 1st, 2008 at 2:12 pm

    Dude, this was the NYT being trolled.

    http://jameth.livejournal.com/4712887.html

  6. Brian Lutz
    August 1st, 2008 at 2:12 pm

    Of course, there's a much simpler explanation for the whole thing:

    http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ (Warning: bad language)

  7. valerie
    August 1st, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    This is a weird take on ''trolls''. As someone who has had a blog and dealt with trolls, it is not about them deliberately trying to gave a blogger a breakdown. It's about being vulgar, intolerant, threatening even, because the troll cannot abide with the blogger's pt of view.

    What makes a troll a troll is their total incapacity to justify their opinions with anything else but emotionally-charged generalizations and to engage in grown-up debate about much of anything.

    THAT is what trolldom is about. Not some hyped-up faux-anarchist troublemaker.

    Trolls are a symptom of what makes discourse difficult in our world. They are all about how they feel. And what they feel precludes any analysis. Bloggers are not always right but honest bloggers accept viable arguments. Trolls are about insults, not ideas.

  8. dogrun81
    August 1st, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    Of course, some people think that anyone who disagrees with them is a "troll".

    It is sometimes an easy out to avoid actually debating facts or logic.

  9. Neatoramawontsendmeapassword
    August 1st, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    Trolls are annoying, for sure. And there may be a touch of mental problems there (what kind of person enjoys hurting other people?). But it seems to be a newer phenomenon. The Internet gives us some anonymity (or perceived anonymity), and people say things they wouldn't say to a person's face. Can you imagine what it would be like if trolls actually trolled in real life? Nasty.

  10. CheeseDuck
    August 1st, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Lulz = trolling points?
    I have never heard anything like that before.

  11. Goober
    August 1st, 2008 at 5:51 pm

    These people are seeing ghosts that aren't there. There's no organized conspiracy of trolls who target those they wish to silence, or whatever crap they're peddling. Trolls are people who want to provoke a response. Any respone. Literally *any* response.

    You can't win. The only way to not lose is to not play. Ignore them. If they disrupt your comments, and you have administrative control, ban them. Do not - ever - respond to them publicly, or they win.

  12. SenorMysterioso
    August 1st, 2008 at 5:52 pm

    because they made it up for that interview

  13. a_whale
    August 1st, 2008 at 6:18 pm

    Technically, a troll is somebody who is trying to elicit an emotional response, not just anybody who acts like an asshole on the internet -- hence the term trolling. The word lulz was not made up for the article, which meshed pretty well with my understanding of troll society as a bunch of adolescents trying to justify being assholes by using armchair philosophy or poorly-thought-out political rhetoric. There are definitely many organized groups of trolls, and have been for years. Anyway, I think the author did a good job researching it.

  14. a_whale
    August 1st, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    (I should say that the majority of people probably just do it casually because it's funny though)

  15. ted
    August 1st, 2008 at 7:07 pm

    Sounds like the "trolls" are trying to knock some pompous people down a peg - they're heroes!

    Being a troll is about stirring up stuff because they're insecure or immature.

  16. anon
    August 1st, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    wat

  17. Johnny Cat
    August 1st, 2008 at 8:24 pm

    This makes it seem very America-centric, like only dumbass kids from the states are in on it. Is that correct? I also missed the trolling of the interview; does that mean they were making up facts to make the interviewer (a brave soul) look like an ass? Kinda like reverse Daily Show interviews?

  18. anon
    August 1st, 2008 at 9:00 pm

    Hi. I am from the internet hate machine. You can ask me questions.

    >This makes it seem very America-centric, like only dumbass kids from the states are in on it. Is that correct?

    No, we're pretty spread out over the world, unless a lot of people are lying about their nations of origin. Actually I'm sure a lot of us are lying about their nations of origin, but in a spread out way where everyone lies equally and you get a good statistical representation anyway.

    >I also missed the trolling of the interview; does that mean they were making up facts to make the interviewer (a brave soul) look like an ass? Kinda like reverse Daily Show interviews?

    A little bit, though not as much as some cases. Here's the thing: traditional media is retarded when it comes to covering the internet. This is widely known. When someone from traditional media comes to someone from the internet and asks "hurf durf are you terrorists lol" it's really really really hard to not make fun of them by feeding them obvious lies to see what they believe. However, this article is less stupid than most, so I'm guessing they went light on the mockery. The guy they interviewed seems pretty lame though.

    >This is a weird take on ”trolls”. As someone who has had a blog and dealt with trolls, it is not about them deliberately trying to gave a blogger a breakdown. It’s about being vulgar, intolerant, threatening even, because the troll cannot abide with the blogger’s pt of view.

    Internet internet internet blarg blurf

    >Good article and nice way to invite the troll to neatorama, dont be surprised when they pop in here

    sup lol

    Anything else I can clear up?

  19. Johnny Cat
    August 1st, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    "in a spread out way where everyone lies equally and you get a good statistical representation anyway."

    I don't remember that from Statistics class.

  20. anon
    August 1st, 2008 at 9:41 pm

    You should have paid more attention.

  21. SenorMysterioso
    August 1st, 2008 at 10:06 pm

    well let me just personally thank you for all the senior citizen gay orgy porn, scatalogical photographs and flayed genitals that I have seen in the last ten years

  22. Johnny Cat
    August 1st, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    I gotta admit, I get a kick out of your murf blurf-speak. Very muppet.

  23. Queen Rosebud
    August 2nd, 2008 at 1:42 am

    thanks for the interesting read, Neato! didn't know much about this before and i know i'm just skimming the surface, but i'll explore deeper.

  24. Doctor Slack
    August 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 am

    That NYT article is embarrassing. Wow, they just discovered this new "thing" called the "net" and there are "trolls" on it? Wow!

  25. Googly-Moogly
    August 2nd, 2008 at 8:43 am

    I think that when we all need to stop and consider the reality of the lives these people live, especially when NYT glorifies their position by painting them as an anarchistic symbol.
    Trolls are a group of completely null and void parasites. These vehement wastes of air cannot entertain themselves without inflicting, at the least, discomfort, at the worst, serious pain, upon individuals and society. But unlike psychopaths, these "people" are utterly spineless, reveling in anonymity as to enlarge their dillusions of grandeur. Lacking psychological development which empowers the self, they thrive on societal tolerance as a means of empowerment - the lowliest of parasitic beings.
    Anarchists? More like fools. They'd survive for about thirty minutes before becoming prey, begging for someone to save them when they realized that delivery pizza was no longer an option. As a last note, if I were out having coffee with one of these guys and he copied down my debit card number, I'd bludgeon him unconcious and leave him in the alleys of deep New York city as to teach him a short-lived lesson about real chaos, anarchy, and pain.

  26. 5teve
    August 2nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    Trolling is the very first subcultural phenomenon in internet. it changed the way we laugh and the way we get offended, both in a better way. people like maddox or patriotic nigras are liberating us while teasing us.

  27. jesus is for pussies
    August 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    "As a last note, if I were out having coffee with one of these guys and he copied down my debit card number, I’d bludgeon him unconcious and leave him in the alleys of deep New York city as to teach him a short-lived lesson about real chaos, anarchy, and pain."

    U rawk!!!

  28. Tom
    August 2nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    lol Googly-Moogly is trolling trolls.

    Those guys who post angry pathos riddles comments on blogs generally aren't trolls, they are just internet tough guys. There is a big difference. Trolls do it for the lulz, where internet tough guys do it to stroke their own egos.

    If you could accept a batman reference, Joker would be a real troll (he just wants to watch the world burn--why so serious?), where Harvey Dent aka Two Face is more analogous to an internet tough guy, where he was a good person, but he is pissed off for whatever reason, and resorts to INTERNET VIOLENCE aka CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL, pathos, etc. Trolls make internet tough guys pretty effectively.

  29. Barnabas Haule
    August 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    "Hi. I am from the internet hate machine. You can ask me questions."

    TITS OR GTFO

  30. Googly-Moogly
    August 2nd, 2008 at 3:52 pm

    On the contrary, I am not an "internet tough guy". In fact, I am a mild-mannered and polite gardener who you would pass on the street and say "Hey! What a jolly guy!". I could care less if someone is out there wasting their day putting pictures of breasts and scrawling L33T acrossed people's blogs. It's a pain to deal with, but doesn't cause that much serious disturbance.

    But have you read the article? Did you go to "Weev's" blog? He espouses a philosophy of extreme malevolence toward his fellow man, believes that suffering and mass death are a critical element of positive societal propulsion, and in many instances talks about making people "fear for their lives". He's a power hungry individual who believes it is a positive thing (even heroic) to take advantage of system flaws to create panic, disorder, and cause pain to individuals he feels are lesser in value than himself.

    Perhaps I made my point with a little too much fervor. Please allow me to rephrase it - It is easy to wish pain or death upon others and spout anarchist doctrine while posting photos of the recent Pho meal that some other person worked to make for you. If it is chaos, pain, and anarchy that these childish minds want, I say we put them into a position where they really have to suffer the consequences of their ideologies.

    That said... yes. If I were interviewing some punk-ass, frail pasty twerp who casually noted that he had stolen my banking information, deleting it in front of me to show how much "power" he had over tiny little me (as in the NYT article), I would be apt to beat him into oblivion and dump him in an alley for someone to victimize. And that's not tough talking, that's just what he's got coming for being a priggish little candy-ass.

  31. Orjan Morjan
    August 2nd, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    "So did Neatorama just notice Orly meme that ended like 3 years ago?
    Next up on Neatorama: “Lulz”, a funny new corruption of lol."
    - That was me 2 weeks ago. I am a prophet.

  32. expeditus
    August 2nd, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    lol at Googly-Moogly's longwinded BAWing.

    On the contrary, I am not an “internet tough guy”.
    lol at dubious disclaimer, similar to "Actually, I'm not a racist, but-"

    Generally trolling is done for great justice, against those who deserve it. Anyone who cries or composes a 3-page baw-fest because of what someone they'll never know or see says on their myspace or worthless internet-disease-blog has just LOST THE GAME.

  33. Britt
    August 2nd, 2008 at 11:10 pm

    This entire thread is full of fail at this point.

  34. RM
    August 3rd, 2008 at 2:11 am

    Me neither Cheese...

  35. Thomas
    August 3rd, 2008 at 11:10 am

    Anyone who doesn't believe there are organized trolls has obviously never hung out on /b/.

    For those in the know, /b/ is the internet's cesspool of humor and porn. Everything that makes the internet bad is there. Its a magical place.

  36. Britt
    August 3rd, 2008 at 11:42 am

    I pretty much will never admit to being a /b/tard.

  37. Chuichupachichi
    August 4th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    If you put a Mudsucker on your hook for bait, put your rod in one of the holders on the back of the boat. Then cruise around the ocean at a slow speed. It almost assured that you'll catch a Troll.

    If a Mudsucker doesmn't work, a bag of peanuts will.


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