CONTENT WARNING! There are threatening anti-semetic themes and violent language throughout this video. Proceed with caution. Okay, with that out of the way, a few things: 1. "Trolling" is a fishing term for dragging a line behind your boat. "Trawling" is a fishing term for dragging a net behind your boat. I'm from the midwest, I know what I said. Lol 2. Using the word "troll" should not downplay the severity of threats and harassment. (Thanks for pointing that out, Steeve!) If you experience trolling online and fear for your safety, please contact the authorities. We should not allow online threats to be seen as "less serious". 3. I didn't get into it, but griefing and swatting are two other forms of trolling in gaming that are becoming more common and are also terrible. They deserve further exploration. 4. Speaking from personal anecdote and experience, one thing that I didn’t discuss is how many trolls are men. There is not sufficient data to make conclusions about statistics or why that is. I think it has to do with men using it as an unhealthy outlet to feel powerful. Thoughts?
Neuro Transmissions Your 4th point I think is very relevant and it would have been good to discuss in the video. Regardless of the gender of the troll (though particularly men as you said), I think power is a huge factor. I guess in real life many of these trolls will feel powerless but online you essentially become a God. You have a wealth of knowledge a click away, you are literally omnipresent and with all the tools freely available, you are omnipotent. So yea i think it's undoubtedly a bit of a power fantasy. Great video btw!
Sometimes when I have enough time and am feeling in the mood, I do engage with trolls (which I get a LOT of)... I approach them with compassion. Once I got one to admit that he enjoyed bullying people, then told him I'd been bullied, that it felt crappy, and that it made me want to be less like that person. Asked him if he'd been bullied, and he said yes. Several tweets later, I got him to change his previously inflammatory Twitter handle to something benign, and feel like I made some real progress. A lot of these people aren't well, and they need help.
Now that's just an opinion but I feel like using the world "troll" here downplays the consequences of those acts. This is harassement. And it's hard enough to identify when we use the right words, let's not give harassers the option to avoid responsibility by playing word games.
It's not just harassment, I think jerks or people with extreme views in general shouldn't be called trolls as their actions can be extremely harmful and influential.
I finally had to pull up this video because it suddenly became obvious that trolls thrive on TH-cam. Everytime I leave a comment, there's some aggressive, angry person attacking me with extremely bad confrontation, which began to make me wonder where this all comes from and the psychology of the TH-cam troll.
@@neurotransmissions I think it's for that very reason that crime in denser areas, accounting for population differences, are higher because in a small, tightly knit community, people know each other and hold each other accountable. But that's not true in a big town. The internet is just an extreme version of this.
When the comments became clear threats, Leo should have contacted his local law enforcement and the FBI (assuming Leo is American) since death threats utilizing a computer network are Federal crimes, and let them track down his friend's son.
I agree with you. Leo was Irish, so not FBI, but certainly police. In the end, when he found out who it was, he decided to make it a "teaching moment", probably because of his age and because he knows his family, but it absolutely qualifies for criminal charges.
I think people don't really realize that the person they're talking to or commenting on their posts or even direct messaging them are REAL, sure, the medium is virtual but the person on the otherside is not. I don't think the statement: "people show their real self on the internet" is entirely true. I mean most of the people who give out "death threats" to others almost certainly won't kill someone in real life but they do message them anyway. Of course anonymity plays a very big role here, and there are so many people on the internet at this point of time that it's just impossible to keep track of everything or everyone. And I also believe most of us haven't really grasped the idea of what internet actually is and how it works and I'm not talking about the technicalities. PS: This video was really good, and I love Micah's editing. I'll think about it.
I agree! I don't think we're very real at all on the internet. I think we expose things about ourselves that, perhaps, don't get expressed in real life, but that doesn't necessarily make it more "real". Anonymity messes people up and I'm curious to see how tech companies and governments grapple with this in the future because it will only continue to cause harm to a lot of people. At the same time, I don't want the internet to change so much that it is no longer a "free" place, you know? Anyway, thanks for the nice compliment! I changed up the tone and style of the video and I'm glad you liked it!
Yes, these "real" people seem to be crawling everywhere on TH-cam, sick, angry minds that hide in the dark, feeling safe behind the computer screen. But sooner or later in one form or another their anger will destroy them in the real world eventually. There's no way around it..
Fantastic video! This channel deserves more subscribers and views! I realized after writing, that this comment was the complete opposite of what a troll would say ;)
A HUGE THANK YOU FROM ALL US REAL TROLLS for explaining the difference between a troll and what the public is for some odd reason labeling a "troll"! ITS A BULLY! WHAT YOU ARE REFFERRING IT TO, learn the difference, it has nothing to do with trolling what so EVER! If you wanna label it, label it E-Bully like E-mail, its "mail" only ELECTRONIC! Trolling is mutual agreed fun, that escalates when someone looses their temper, then how long can you keep this up till a mod has to close the thread that even a "flame section" of a forum was too hot too keep open! Thank you!
I just wanted to say thank you! for finally showing us some titles from the bookcase. I noticed a book or two from the library of America publisher but couldn't make out the name.
I didn't get time to watch this when the notification popped up but today's awful news from New Zealand made me think about it. I was chatting to my wife about how these meme-inspired, online-radicalised killers seem to have difficulty differentiating reality from fiction (ie "subscribe to Pewdiepie" before murdering people). I know this isn't the exact theme of the video but I feel you explored phenomena related to this. It's a sliding scale, from conventional trolling, to harassment, to violence. The online dissociation might extend to real life if these people believe they've become their avatar. Like Leo's troll, they think everything is a game.
Once my minecraft server got griefed, and my account from a former social network was broken into and trashed. Turns out it was a former friend of mine I had had a hiccup with. We were in the same class in school. I tried to punch him once in the heat of my anger. Ever since then he seemed a little intimidated with my presence. If you harass someone online you are far from the person. Perhaps he did it to retaliate, or feel power over me or something, in his way he was comfortable with. It was a little scary to me at the time. I don't know why or when it stopped exactly. that's my story of how I got relatively midly "trolled".
Yikes, yeah, I didn't even touch on griefing, but that sounds awful and I'm sorry that happened! I imagine that finding out who it was made it somewhat easier to understand and process? It's interesting how people with little control in their personal lives often exert power through dominance with trolling online.
Yeah, griefing made me angry and sad, but thankfully the emotional damage was only temporary. I don't remember exactly, but figuring out who it was gave me some closure because I knew what was going on and it made me less scared, but it also introduced some anger and frustration, but that went away after some time. Indeed interesting, I agree. Great video by the way, have a great day!
I tend not to engage with trolls at all when there's no public view of it (e.g. private/direct messages). However, on more public spaces - potentially even TH-cam comments - I do tend to engage more. The main reason is that most trolls will try to begin an argument either with an insult or a strawman of a position you've stated. In either case, I will question the troll on their (supposed) stance. They'll invariably move away from it and simply raise new points, often in "rapid fire", but my tactic is to pointedly refuse to engage any other topic until the initial one is clarified. At some point, they eventually give up. Why do I do this? 1. I think it frustrates the trolls to the point that they may actually reconsider the "fun" of trolling. I simply don't give them the satisfaction of me getting annoyed, scared, or worried, nor the satisfaction of them feeling they've won a point. They are continuously asked to defend an indefensible position (the initial insult or strawman) and either must concede or simply quit. Neither is something that would give positive reinforcement to them. 2. I feel that this line of argumentation is useful for others to see both so that they themselves are better at arguing (noticing logical fallacies and non-sequitur arguments in badly drawn syllogisms for example) as well as giving them a useful tool to frustrate trolls. 3. It's good practice for myself at honing my skills in argument. Most trolls aren't really all that great at it, but from time to time, I do encounter those that are clearly trolling but actually have some experience at putting arguments together. I actually quite enjoy these ones because of the opportunity for self-improvement. I'd really appreciate any thoughts on this from others. Do you think I'm actually likely to achieve any of these goals from this behaviour? Or am I missing something that is ultimately making it worse for myself or others, or at the very least wasting my time with it? For my third point, I'd like to especially point out though that I do always evaluate my own comments before submitting and again later to ensure that I'm arguing honestly. That is to say: I am potentially able to be swayed and have my opinion changed by an argument that is valid and sound from the other person. Doing so also helps ensure that it's a fair argument and not just an old-school flame war, or even worse: that I begin engaging in "counter-trolling" against the original troll. As a final note: It's also worth pointing out that I've yet to deal with a truly vicious troll. I've never had someone threaten physical harm against me in a believable way (plenty of bluster, but nothing beyond words on a screen). I'd almost certainly deal with them quite differently (somewhere between "simply disengage entirely" and "call the police" depending on the level of concern for my family's security).
Dale, thank you for your explanation! - I find it helpful if members of a thread point out that a certain name is considered a 'troll with a history'. I find it sometimes hard to differentiate between a very sophisticated troll and a very elaborated counterargument. - On some threads there'll be very quickly menacing trolls. It's annoying, confusing and sometimes outright frightening how many threatening comments are put back by TH-cam after reporting. I don't get why 'rape&kill'- comments are such a precious addition to free speech ... Or why they're put back at all.
Dale, that style of troll (maybe the harassment-style which the video focused on, too) is generally seeking attention and you're providing it. Even if they eventually get frustrated (or just bored) they still got the satisfaction of getting you to pay attention to them and spend your time responding to them. Generally they never wanted or expected to actually *win* the argument. For them, winning is getting a response. Or, to put it another way, I think you're probably encouraging they're bad behavior more than you're discouraging it. Also, for other people trying to use the forum involved, the whole thread is just noise since neither of you is really trying to achieve anything except to consume the time of the other. Not engaging with attention trolls is better for the forum and the other users. It's hopefully better for you, too. And, while getting attention for misbehavior is cheap on the internet, the more the trolls find that their provocations fall flat, the better the chance that more of them will turn to more pro-social ways of getting attention. So, it might even be better for them, too.
You guys do realize the US has paid trolls too? Used to muddy the waters and to create doubt. It’s not easy to find the information but if you search you’ll see what I said is true. I found them on a 9-11 video and called one out. So he copied my account and posted nonsense pretending to be me. Why would he do that, because if you can’t beat someone in a debate you go to discredit them. Please don’t fall for everything in a video or comment section, do your own research.
This is an inflammatory troll comment, made to establish irony within context and derive humor and a quiet sense of schadenfreude from the ensuing inflamed responses.
This is an angry response to the comment that is intended to negate the initial comment, but really isn't as clever and really just exposes more weaknesses.
This is another comment telling the second commenter not to engage in the discussion with the OP, pointing out the (suspected) intentions of the latter.
This is a provacative reply, purposely constructed to sound just incoherent and "wrong" enough to fan the flames and keep the thread going. I also make sure to question the beliefs and convictions of one or more responders in the thread, and maybe a disparaging, dehumanizing, or marginalizing insult or slur is used.
I really appreciated this video. But I think the word 'troll' is really giving them undue credit. Some of them are more like Sarumans orks, the 'Uruk-hai'. Able to work by daylight with evil intent ...
No joke...I had a comment on my most recent video that said "you looked depressed." My first interpretation of it was that it was a troll. But then again, without context, I have no evidence that it was. It's a bit sad that I assumed that it was, but that assumption is telling of how effective trolls are.
During the AOL days I'd go into chatrooms or have private chats with people and just . . . act insane. Not bigoted or hurtful, just take on the cartoon caricature of some kind of crazy person. But I'd say my worst moments of trolling are actually in real life. One of my worst moments of IRL trolling I was walking down the street thinking to myself about profanity and how it was odd to mark certain words as uniquely bad when it can be so easy to hurt others without a single swear word. And then, to prove my point, I saw a man in a wheelchair and I pointed and fake-laughed at them. I find the term "disassociative imagination" relatable. It was like I was treating him, and any other person I fucked with for my amusement, as an abstraction that I was interacting with, almost like a scientist might treat an animal they want to experiment on. I wasn't part of the group. To this day, I have trouble having communal feelings toward others. I'll walk in and out of a room without saying hi to anyone if I can help it, just observing others for a moment and than moving on like I didn't belong in the first place. I feel like that's a big part of trolling. The feeling of not belonging. The feeling that other people are like frozen lakes and the only way to have some significance is to smash the ice and make waves. You can't just go up to people and connect to them. You don't BELONG. Your not ONE of them. They must be penetrated. Violently. On the other side, empathizing with the person you talked about who got cyber-bullied, I had a fantasy of letting out anger at the 17 year old troll/bully. Locking them in a room and screaming at them, grabbing their shirt and pressing them into a wall, jabbing my hand into their chest. But as tempting as that level of backlash is, that kind of thing doesn't reach me. It makes me go numb, and focus on getting out of the situation. It doesn't create empathy. It doesn't make me listen and take in what someone is saying. Granted, there's a difference between yelling abuse/condemnation at someone and yelling about how you were made to feel hurt. It does make me wonder about what the best way to break that disconnect is, if it can be broken at all.
Trawling or trolling. I always thought it was in relation to the poor behaviour attributed to the mythological beast under the bridge not the people dragging nets behind a fishing boat. Interest clip on a topic that matters.
"Trawling" involves dragging a net behind your boat, "trolling" involves dragging a line behind your boat. It's strange, but they're very similar, yet distinct terms! I do like the idea of a troll under a bridge catching people with a net, though. Lol
@@neurotransmissions I think that trolling (dreading a fishing line behind the boat) was the genesis of the term, but I also think that the image of an ugly monster hiding out of sight under a bridge and stacking anyone who came by helped cement the term in the popular parlance. Both interpretations are evocative.
@@neurotransmissions In Sweden the word for ogur is troll, hence I associate the term with mythical monsters instead of fishing terms. My thought is that the anonymity of Internet makes people lower the social boundries determening how to talk to strangers. I'm a bit insecure and therefore I tend to avoid interacting in social media. It makes me missing out on a lot of nice contacts I really could benefit from...
I was accused of trolling back in the day. It was just a silencing tactic methinks. I do troll sometimes but I'm rarely anonymous. It's benign stuff. Do I fit the tetrad? I don't know. Probably not. I really don't think we should call seriously harmful people trolls. Death and rape threats should always be taken seriously. No point calling the cops, though.
What kind of trolling do you do? Benign trolling can be funny I think, as long as no one's getting hurt. I doubt you fit in the tetrad. I think that, culturally, we're in this weird in-between place right now. In this specific situation, Leo did call the police when he received these things on his door, but nothing happened. Then, when he found out who it was, he decided to not call the police, probably because of his age and because he was the son of his friend. However, this was a criminal act. At the same time, in most cases of trolling, there is very little the police will do even though it is a threat to safety. It's just perceived as "people just writing bad stuff online".
@@neurotransmissions Yeah, that's why there isn't much point in calling the cops. I never do anything that would be illegal or something, just try to get the occasional person to waste their time on me. Guess it makes me feel powerful? Or maybe I'm just bad at social interaction and will take any interaction I can get because I have no friends. Fine, I have a couple, but I spend nearly 24/7 alone IRL.
It does sound to me that the ‘troll’ phenomenon has a lot in common with deindividuation. We could commonly find it hard to understand why people differ in the engagement of trolling and try to distance them from ourselves. But perhaps dehumanizing isn’t helpful in this case. Perhaps they need help, a little kindness or a conversation over the effects and harms their language could cause in the people receiving.
Yeah, there have been some arguments made for an "empathy-building" campaign online. Essentially, how can we combat deindividuation and dehumanization to reduce the amount of trolling online. I think it's interesting, though I don't have answers for how that would look. Thoughts?
Actually first time knowing trolling is a thing. Instinctively, a receiver could treat the commenter in a way that doesn’t distance them, assuming we are with the commenter face to face, seeing a person getting frustrated in the room, what we would do as a friend thinking perhaps they are suffering in other ways.
I feel for this vid, great information. I never understood why others do it. But even so I was always able to appreciate the more-so harmless trolling, mainly because I happen to see the general negativities and learn what to be aware of regarding the fairness and decent treatment of people who can be alike or different. It taught me what not to do I guess. Lol only reason I could ever troll is to help people understand the bigger picture. You know, to grow. But I'm not really a trolling type.
well, I followed an youtuber a long time ago, and in a video, out of nowhere he complains about people saying that he was imitating some other youtuber, and I though it was ridiculous....as a provocation/fun I made a comment about that video being a imitation of that youtuber (like, in the same video that he says about this, for me it was pretty obvious it was a joke) then I got blocked and cant follow him anymore...I was pretty shocked with this, and I tried to contact him, saying that it was a joke, but got no response...then I understand that I can't pass irony through out the text, without being soo obvious, and start to use #joke #thisIsNotTheTruth #ImJoking at the end (making fun also in the # )...and after sometime I stop commenting making jokes and just about the videos/discussion.
Oh, how interesting. That's a bummer! Yeah, it's interesting to see internet language evolve over time. It sounds like you posted a funny comment, it wasn't taken that way because it was read literally, so you developed an addition to your online language and started putting those hashtags at the end. That's so interesting! I think others have done similar things. WrItiNg iT liKe tHiS mIgHt WoRk In SoMe cAsEs. Or putting "/s" at the end. Or using a certain emoji like 😂 might help. Idk, I'm just thinking about online language now. So fascinating.
Passive aggression seems to be a method of trying to deal with the frustrations and resentments that occur when one suffers from some form of violence or abuse to which one cannot feel safe, should one counter it directly. Redirecting that rage is an easy outlet. The heuristics and biases we so easily turn to when unrelievedly exposed to social densities & numbers exceeding our limits (See Robin Dunbar's body of work on this), coalesce around overgeneralization and stereotyping. Whether young or older - and the internet as social interaction, just as texting and other dissociated interaction, was really largely the province of the younger users, while grasped as a tool for efficiency by adults. The more available the communications tech became, the more the most highly arousing interaction developed. See how gaming ended up driving internt time use increase, and how such odd sites as facebook became the most used sites. So easy in fact is the internet, with its illusion of easy access,easy-seeming escape (in all senses - from real and frustrating event occurring to adolescents, who like every other subadult individual of any species, prepares to disperse, with pressures toward dispersal causing thefrustration and rage; to escape from one's own and others' toxic emissions. You can just turn it off, you tell yourself. You can safely braag about your release through violence, understood the ISIL and the angry gun hunters showing their trophies), that it formed a "place", ad of course, any open habitat is bound to become populated. The social cultures formed there are persistent enough that one can now experience lifelong positive feedback and support, causing perseveration to occur and become ever-more attractive. To be trolled means that one is probably only at the periphery of this population dispersal event. The Troll-ees are just regarded as targets, the trolling being the hunting, the trolls being analogous to visiting or hobbyist hunters, seeking social success in their imagined, and in some cases now, real, enclaves. The communications- receiving tech is now where invasions, social takeovers are possible, and accomplished, even by nations. China and some other nations deal fiercely with controlling their populations, who they identified as dangerous to the established norms. They nip it in the bud. Nations with freer or unregulated social terrain such as this, suffered the consequences of insufficient regulation. Discrimination occurs - In one nation, a single inciter of violence and discord is allowed to continue on a quite demented platform, so misused due to its simplistic intent - merely to spread in a viral manner. Those having less power than this individual can be banned, while the incitements and unalloyed lies of the powerful roll, or euphemistically, "tweet", on. No stable ecosystem has yet formed - it is, no matter assessments to the contrary, a "place" exploited through violence, from which continual real violence will emerge in reality. Very much like human minds, the present presentations by the ill may well diminish, with the really dangerous slowly becoming as deceptive and as self-deceptive as can occur. Bob Trivers gave us insight into this problem over 45 years; here we see it exposed. But only understanding the ecology or a system open to released alien species, along with understanding of the attraction of the pathological to "frontiers" can give insight for therapeutic response - I merely watch guardedly like some wild canid watches novel dangerous creatures coming into the formerly coherent world, not capable of knowing their capacities, but surer, after witnessing a little, of the possible danger,even at a distance.
And when I hear about white people hating people makes me feel threatened. Cause it get’s me worrying that I would be arrested as a hateful person. Or am I gaslighted
America's Psychopathic a trolling or .. Normal people troll? Sounds like criminal syndicates are legal on the internet because the USA government IS NOT cares ANYTIME
People who try to explain trolls keep saying its hard to keep in the head a human os on the other side. Who else it would be.i believe one intentionally ignores it it need no training
Ever since Brian ate my leftover pizza without asking, he's always been a jerk. Trawling = dragging a net behind your boat. Trolling = dragging a line behind your boat. Weird, right?
Dude, as a troll myself; I can say most of us just like to joke around and mess with hotheads. What you just described was a Cyber Bully, the two are completely different. Stop spreading misinformation.
Trolls can definitely be stalkers, but they can also be random harassers or a mob of hate or online bullies or a kid who expresses his anger in really unhealthy ways. I think trolls come in many shapes and sizes. I used the term troll, not to rewrite it or to downplay it, but to categorize a group of people who engage in purposefully harmful acts online.
Internet trolls give mythological trolls a bad name (and Internet trolling does not come from fish trawling, though it's an interesting analogy). That said, while I do appreciate you making this video, I profoundly disagree with associating the term, "troll," with those in the Dark Tetrad. I think this completely downplays the severity of what they are and what they do. When people of the Internet call both them and the "lulz trolls" (as you called them) a troll, it dirties the significance of the much more dangerous "trolls." So just call them what they are: sadists; narcissists; psychopaths; and machiavellianists (or whatever the term is for the last one). Also, I think you should also define what these four terms mean because while I know what they mean, most people might have heard of most or all of them but they may not really know what they mean. Look, I get that these sadists and psychopaths, et cetera, do what they do for reasons. I get that there might be an anger or insecurity within them that may have been caused by emotional trauma they experienced in the past, and I get that they need help. But that doesn't excuse their behavior, and referring to them as trolls does more to help them than it does help the people being trolled. All parties need help, but even though they need help, too, it's the people with the loudest voices who often end up doing the most harm, and trolls tend to have the loudest voices because they are narcissists who need validation.
CONTENT WARNING! There are threatening anti-semetic themes and violent language throughout this video. Proceed with caution.
Okay, with that out of the way, a few things:
1. "Trolling" is a fishing term for dragging a line behind your boat. "Trawling" is a fishing term for dragging a net behind your boat. I'm from the midwest, I know what I said. Lol
2. Using the word "troll" should not downplay the severity of threats and harassment. (Thanks for pointing that out, Steeve!) If you experience trolling online and fear for your safety, please contact the authorities. We should not allow online threats to be seen as "less serious".
3. I didn't get into it, but griefing and swatting are two other forms of trolling in gaming that are becoming more common and are also terrible. They deserve further exploration.
4. Speaking from personal anecdote and experience, one thing that I didn’t discuss is how many trolls are men. There is not sufficient data to make conclusions about statistics or why that is. I think it has to do with men using it as an unhealthy outlet to feel powerful. Thoughts?
Neuro Transmissions
Your 4th point I think is very relevant and it would have been good to discuss in the video. Regardless of the gender of the troll (though particularly men as you said), I think power is a huge factor. I guess in real life many of these trolls will feel powerless but online you essentially become a God. You have a wealth of knowledge a click away, you are literally omnipresent and with all the tools freely available, you are omnipotent. So yea i think it's undoubtedly a bit of a power fantasy.
Great video btw!
Shouldn't this be pinned or something? (It's not showing on top for me.)
Sometimes when I have enough time and am feeling in the mood, I do engage with trolls (which I get a LOT of)... I approach them with compassion. Once I got one to admit that he enjoyed bullying people, then told him I'd been bullied, that it felt crappy, and that it made me want to be less like that person. Asked him if he'd been bullied, and he said yes. Several tweets later, I got him to change his previously inflammatory Twitter handle to something benign, and feel like I made some real progress. A lot of these people aren't well, and they need help.
Now that's just an opinion but I feel like using the world "troll" here downplays the consequences of those acts. This is harassement. And it's hard enough to identify when we use the right words, let's not give harassers the option to avoid responsibility by playing word games.
I agree.
It's not just harassment, I think jerks or people with extreme views in general shouldn't be called trolls as their actions can be extremely harmful and influential.
I finally had to pull up this video because it suddenly became obvious that trolls thrive on TH-cam. Everytime I leave a comment, there's some aggressive, angry person attacking me with extremely bad confrontation, which began to make me wonder where this all comes from and the psychology of the TH-cam troll.
It's just depressing to see what humans are capable to do once societal "checks and balances" are gone through anonymity (like shaming).
So true. Anonymity messes people up! Accountability disappears, so why not be a total jerk to everyone? /s
@@neurotransmissions I think it's for that very reason that crime in denser areas, accounting for population differences, are higher because in a small, tightly knit community, people know each other and hold each other accountable. But that's not true in a big town. The internet is just an extreme version of this.
At school, the teachers gave a rant about attitude at school
And someone gave bad attitude to that speech
When the comments became clear threats, Leo should have contacted his local law enforcement and the FBI (assuming Leo is American) since death threats utilizing a computer network are Federal crimes, and let them track down his friend's son.
yes that isnt trolling, that is stalking.
I agree with you. Leo was Irish, so not FBI, but certainly police. In the end, when he found out who it was, he decided to make it a "teaching moment", probably because of his age and because he knows his family, but it absolutely qualifies for criminal charges.
@@neurotransmissions And he didn't know for a while that it was someone he knew; could have been anyone...
@@bob_._. True. I didn't say it in the video, but he did report to authorities when he got the package with ashes, but nothing happened.
Once they have your house address, it's no longer a troll.
I think people don't really realize that the person they're talking to or commenting on their posts or even direct messaging them are REAL, sure, the medium is virtual but the person on the otherside is not.
I don't think the statement: "people show their real self on the internet" is entirely true. I mean most of the people who give out "death threats" to others almost certainly won't kill someone in real life but they do message them anyway. Of course anonymity plays a very big role here, and there are so many people on the internet at this point of time that it's just impossible to keep track of everything or everyone.
And I also believe most of us haven't really grasped the idea of what internet actually is and how it works and I'm not talking about the technicalities.
PS: This video was really good, and I love Micah's editing.
I'll think about it.
I agree! I don't think we're very real at all on the internet. I think we expose things about ourselves that, perhaps, don't get expressed in real life, but that doesn't necessarily make it more "real". Anonymity messes people up and I'm curious to see how tech companies and governments grapple with this in the future because it will only continue to cause harm to a lot of people. At the same time, I don't want the internet to change so much that it is no longer a "free" place, you know? Anyway, thanks for the nice compliment! I changed up the tone and style of the video and I'm glad you liked it!
Yes, these "real" people seem to be crawling everywhere on TH-cam, sick, angry minds that hide in the dark, feeling safe behind the computer screen. But sooner or later in one form or another their anger will destroy them in the real world eventually. There's no way around it..
Fantastic video! This channel deserves more subscribers and views!
I realized after writing, that this comment was the complete opposite of what a troll would say ;)
That's what a troll would say! 🤔😂
@@neurotransmissions busted! I was a troll all along! Now, seriously, congrats for the videos! ;)
A HUGE THANK YOU FROM ALL US REAL TROLLS for explaining the difference between a troll and what the public is for some odd reason labeling a "troll"!
ITS A BULLY! WHAT YOU ARE REFFERRING IT TO, learn the difference, it has nothing to do with trolling what so EVER!
If you wanna label it, label it E-Bully like E-mail, its "mail" only ELECTRONIC!
Trolling is mutual agreed fun, that escalates when someone looses their temper, then how long can you keep this up till a mod has to close the thread that even a "flame section" of a forum was too hot too keep open!
Thank you!
I just wanted to say thank you! for finally showing us some titles from the bookcase. I noticed a book or two from the library of America publisher but couldn't make out the name.
I didn't get time to watch this when the notification popped up but today's awful news from New Zealand made me think about it. I was chatting to my wife about how these meme-inspired, online-radicalised killers seem to have difficulty differentiating reality from fiction (ie "subscribe to Pewdiepie" before murdering people). I know this isn't the exact theme of the video but I feel you explored phenomena related to this. It's a sliding scale, from conventional trolling, to harassment, to violence. The online dissociation might extend to real life if these people believe they've become their avatar. Like Leo's troll, they think everything is a game.
Once my minecraft server got griefed, and my account from a former social network was broken into and trashed. Turns out it was a former friend of mine I had had a hiccup with. We were in the same class in school. I tried to punch him once in the heat of my anger. Ever since then he seemed a little intimidated with my presence. If you harass someone online you are far from the person. Perhaps he did it to retaliate, or feel power over me or something, in his way he was comfortable with. It was a little scary to me at the time. I don't know why or when it stopped exactly. that's my story of how I got relatively midly "trolled".
Yikes, yeah, I didn't even touch on griefing, but that sounds awful and I'm sorry that happened! I imagine that finding out who it was made it somewhat easier to understand and process? It's interesting how people with little control in their personal lives often exert power through dominance with trolling online.
Yeah, griefing made me angry and sad, but thankfully the emotional damage was only temporary. I don't remember exactly, but figuring out who it was gave me some closure because I knew what was going on and it made me less scared, but it also introduced some anger and frustration, but that went away after some time. Indeed interesting, I agree. Great video by the way, have a great day!
I tend not to engage with trolls at all when there's no public view of it (e.g. private/direct messages). However, on more public spaces - potentially even TH-cam comments - I do tend to engage more. The main reason is that most trolls will try to begin an argument either with an insult or a strawman of a position you've stated. In either case, I will question the troll on their (supposed) stance. They'll invariably move away from it and simply raise new points, often in "rapid fire", but my tactic is to pointedly refuse to engage any other topic until the initial one is clarified. At some point, they eventually give up.
Why do I do this?
1. I think it frustrates the trolls to the point that they may actually reconsider the "fun" of trolling. I simply don't give them the satisfaction of me getting annoyed, scared, or worried, nor the satisfaction of them feeling they've won a point. They are continuously asked to defend an indefensible position (the initial insult or strawman) and either must concede or simply quit. Neither is something that would give positive reinforcement to them.
2. I feel that this line of argumentation is useful for others to see both so that they themselves are better at arguing (noticing logical fallacies and non-sequitur arguments in badly drawn syllogisms for example) as well as giving them a useful tool to frustrate trolls.
3. It's good practice for myself at honing my skills in argument. Most trolls aren't really all that great at it, but from time to time, I do encounter those that are clearly trolling but actually have some experience at putting arguments together. I actually quite enjoy these ones because of the opportunity for self-improvement.
I'd really appreciate any thoughts on this from others. Do you think I'm actually likely to achieve any of these goals from this behaviour? Or am I missing something that is ultimately making it worse for myself or others, or at the very least wasting my time with it?
For my third point, I'd like to especially point out though that I do always evaluate my own comments before submitting and again later to ensure that I'm arguing honestly. That is to say: I am potentially able to be swayed and have my opinion changed by an argument that is valid and sound from the other person. Doing so also helps ensure that it's a fair argument and not just an old-school flame war, or even worse: that I begin engaging in "counter-trolling" against the original troll.
As a final note: It's also worth pointing out that I've yet to deal with a truly vicious troll. I've never had someone threaten physical harm against me in a believable way (plenty of bluster, but nothing beyond words on a screen). I'd almost certainly deal with them quite differently (somewhere between "simply disengage entirely" and "call the police" depending on the level of concern for my family's security).
Your tactic is specifically how i troll (trolls and stupid people)
Dale, thank you for your explanation!
- I find it helpful if members of a thread point out that a certain name is considered a 'troll with a history'. I find it sometimes hard to differentiate between a very sophisticated troll and a very elaborated counterargument.
- On some threads there'll be very quickly menacing trolls. It's annoying, confusing and sometimes outright frightening how many threatening comments are put back by TH-cam after reporting. I don't get why 'rape&kill'- comments are such a precious addition to free speech ... Or why they're put back at all.
Dale, that style of troll (maybe the harassment-style which the video focused on, too) is generally seeking attention and you're providing it. Even if they eventually get frustrated (or just bored) they still got the satisfaction of getting you to pay attention to them and spend your time responding to them. Generally they never wanted or expected to actually *win* the argument. For them, winning is getting a response.
Or, to put it another way, I think you're probably encouraging they're bad behavior more than you're discouraging it. Also, for other people trying to use the forum involved, the whole thread is just noise since neither of you is really trying to achieve anything except to consume the time of the other.
Not engaging with attention trolls is better for the forum and the other users. It's hopefully better for you, too. And, while getting attention for misbehavior is cheap on the internet, the more the trolls find that their provocations fall flat, the better the chance that more of them will turn to more pro-social ways of getting attention. So, it might even be better for them, too.
You guys do realize the US has paid trolls too?
Used to muddy the waters and to create doubt. It’s not easy to find the information but if you search you’ll see what I said is true. I found them on a 9-11 video and called one out. So he copied my account and posted nonsense pretending to be me.
Why would he do that, because if you can’t beat someone in a debate you go to discredit them. Please don’t fall for everything in a video or comment section, do your own research.
I enjoy trolling trolls.
See, I'll never be able to not consider people on the internet to be actual people.
Thanks for the discussion of trolls. Very interesting ! Thx!
Thanks for watching!
This is an inflammatory troll comment, made to establish irony within context and derive humor and a quiet sense of schadenfreude from the ensuing inflamed responses.
This is an angry response to the comment that is intended to negate the initial comment, but really isn't as clever and really just exposes more weaknesses.
This is another comment telling the second commenter not to engage in the discussion with the OP, pointing out the (suspected) intentions of the latter.
This is a provacative reply, purposely constructed to sound just incoherent and "wrong" enough to fan the flames and keep the thread going. I also make sure to question the beliefs and convictions of one or more responders in the thread, and maybe a disparaging, dehumanizing, or marginalizing insult or slur is used.
I’m getting serious Captain Raymond Holt (from Brooklyn 99) vibes here... and I LIKE IT.
I really appreciated this video. But I think the word 'troll' is really giving them undue credit. Some of them are more like Sarumans orks, the 'Uruk-hai'. Able to work by daylight with evil intent ...
No joke...I had a comment on my most recent video that said "you looked depressed." My first interpretation of it was that it was a troll. But then again, without context, I have no evidence that it was. It's a bit sad that I assumed that it was, but that assumption is telling of how effective trolls are.
Yikes, that's awful! It really makes you question what's real and what's just someone getting inside your head.
I am a lulz troll, I often post fake troll posts for fun, but I would never go as far as to be racist or threaten someone
During the AOL days I'd go into chatrooms or have private chats with people and just . . . act insane. Not bigoted or hurtful, just take on the cartoon caricature of some kind of crazy person.
But I'd say my worst moments of trolling are actually in real life. One of my worst moments of IRL trolling I was walking down the street thinking to myself about profanity and how it was odd to mark certain words as uniquely bad when it can be so easy to hurt others without a single swear word. And then, to prove my point, I saw a man in a wheelchair and I pointed and fake-laughed at them.
I find the term "disassociative imagination" relatable. It was like I was treating him, and any other person I fucked with for my amusement, as an abstraction that I was interacting with, almost like a scientist might treat an animal they want to experiment on. I wasn't part of the group. To this day, I have trouble having communal feelings toward others. I'll walk in and out of a room without saying hi to anyone if I can help it, just observing others for a moment and than moving on like I didn't belong in the first place.
I feel like that's a big part of trolling. The feeling of not belonging. The feeling that other people are like frozen lakes and the only way to have some significance is to smash the ice and make waves. You can't just go up to people and connect to them. You don't BELONG. Your not ONE of them. They must be penetrated. Violently.
On the other side, empathizing with the person you talked about who got cyber-bullied, I had a fantasy of letting out anger at the 17 year old troll/bully. Locking them in a room and screaming at them, grabbing their shirt and pressing them into a wall, jabbing my hand into their chest.
But as tempting as that level of backlash is, that kind of thing doesn't reach me. It makes me go numb, and focus on getting out of the situation. It doesn't create empathy. It doesn't make me listen and take in what someone is saying.
Granted, there's a difference between yelling abuse/condemnation at someone and yelling about how you were made to feel hurt.
It does make me wonder about what the best way to break that disconnect is, if it can be broken at all.
Trawling or trolling. I always thought it was in relation to the poor behaviour attributed to the mythological beast under the bridge not the people dragging nets behind a fishing boat. Interest clip on a topic that matters.
"Trawling" involves dragging a net behind your boat, "trolling" involves dragging a line behind your boat. It's strange, but they're very similar, yet distinct terms! I do like the idea of a troll under a bridge catching people with a net, though. Lol
@@neurotransmissions I think that trolling (dreading a fishing line behind the boat) was the genesis of the term, but I also think that the image of an ugly monster hiding out of sight under a bridge and stacking anyone who came by helped cement the term in the popular parlance. Both interpretations are evocative.
@@neurotransmissions In Sweden the word for ogur is troll, hence I associate the term with mythical monsters instead of fishing terms. My thought is that the anonymity of Internet makes people lower the social boundries determening how to talk to strangers. I'm a bit insecure and therefore I tend to avoid interacting in social media. It makes me missing out on a lot of nice contacts I really could benefit from...
Trolls try to bait people into reacting for their own amusement. The people you're talking about are cyber-bullies.
I was accused of trolling back in the day. It was just a silencing tactic methinks. I do troll sometimes but I'm rarely anonymous. It's benign stuff. Do I fit the tetrad? I don't know. Probably not. I really don't think we should call seriously harmful people trolls. Death and rape threats should always be taken seriously. No point calling the cops, though.
What kind of trolling do you do? Benign trolling can be funny I think, as long as no one's getting hurt. I doubt you fit in the tetrad.
I think that, culturally, we're in this weird in-between place right now. In this specific situation, Leo did call the police when he received these things on his door, but nothing happened. Then, when he found out who it was, he decided to not call the police, probably because of his age and because he was the son of his friend. However, this was a criminal act. At the same time, in most cases of trolling, there is very little the police will do even though it is a threat to safety. It's just perceived as "people just writing bad stuff online".
@@neurotransmissions Yeah, that's why there isn't much point in calling the cops. I never do anything that would be illegal or something, just try to get the occasional person to waste their time on me. Guess it makes me feel powerful? Or maybe I'm just bad at social interaction and will take any interaction I can get because I have no friends. Fine, I have a couple, but I spend nearly 24/7 alone IRL.
Love your shirt and mario lamp. Where did you get them?
But I’m definitely not saying talking could solve or prevent the harms if real threat emerges.
It does sound to me that the ‘troll’ phenomenon has a lot in common with deindividuation. We could commonly find it hard to understand why people differ in the engagement of trolling and try to distance them from ourselves. But perhaps dehumanizing isn’t helpful in this case. Perhaps they need help, a little kindness or a conversation over the effects and harms their language could cause in the people receiving.
Yeah, there have been some arguments made for an "empathy-building" campaign online. Essentially, how can we combat deindividuation and dehumanization to reduce the amount of trolling online. I think it's interesting, though I don't have answers for how that would look. Thoughts?
Actually first time knowing trolling is a thing. Instinctively, a receiver could treat the commenter in a way that doesn’t distance them, assuming we are with the commenter face to face, seeing a person getting frustrated in the room, what we would do as a friend thinking perhaps they are suffering in other ways.
I feel for this vid, great information. I never understood why others do it. But even so I was always able to appreciate the more-so harmless trolling, mainly because I happen to see the general negativities and learn what to be aware of regarding the fairness and decent treatment of people who can be alike or different. It taught me what not to do I guess. Lol only reason I could ever troll is to help people understand the bigger picture. You know, to grow. But I'm not really a trolling type.
well, I followed an youtuber a long time ago, and in a video, out of nowhere he complains about people saying that he was imitating some other youtuber, and I though it was ridiculous....as a provocation/fun I made a comment about that video being a imitation of that youtuber (like, in the same video that he says about this, for me it was pretty obvious it was a joke) then I got blocked and cant follow him anymore...I was pretty shocked with this, and I tried to contact him, saying that it was a joke, but got no response...then I understand that I can't pass irony through out the text, without being soo obvious, and start to use #joke #thisIsNotTheTruth #ImJoking at the end (making fun also in the # )...and after sometime I stop commenting making jokes and just about the videos/discussion.
Oh, how interesting. That's a bummer! Yeah, it's interesting to see internet language evolve over time. It sounds like you posted a funny comment, it wasn't taken that way because it was read literally, so you developed an addition to your online language and started putting those hashtags at the end. That's so interesting! I think others have done similar things. WrItiNg iT liKe tHiS mIgHt WoRk In SoMe cAsEs. Or putting "/s" at the end. Or using a certain emoji like 😂 might help. Idk, I'm just thinking about online language now. So fascinating.
Of course, I started looking for Dark Tetrad online personality tests, but I could only find Dark Triad tests. I wasn't surprised at the results...
Let me guess...you don't fall into the dark triad?
@@neurotransmissions I see you wouldn't be surprised, either
Minor nitpick, but I would've greyed out the usernames behind some of those comments so as not to invite counter-trolls.
Passive aggression seems to be a method of trying to deal with the frustrations and resentments that occur when one suffers from some form of violence or abuse to which one cannot feel safe, should one counter it directly.
Redirecting that rage is an easy outlet. The heuristics and biases we so easily turn to when unrelievedly exposed to social densities & numbers exceeding our limits (See Robin Dunbar's body of work on this), coalesce around overgeneralization and stereotyping.
Whether young or older - and the internet as social interaction, just as texting and other dissociated interaction, was really largely the province of the younger users, while grasped as a tool for efficiency by adults.
The more available the communications tech became, the more the most highly arousing interaction developed. See how gaming ended up driving internt time use increase, and how such odd sites as facebook became the most used sites.
So easy in fact is the internet, with its illusion of easy access,easy-seeming escape (in all senses - from real and frustrating event occurring to adolescents, who like every other subadult individual of any species, prepares to disperse, with pressures toward dispersal causing thefrustration and rage; to escape from one's own and others' toxic emissions. You can just turn it off, you tell yourself. You can safely braag about your release through violence, understood the ISIL and the angry gun hunters showing their trophies), that it formed a "place", ad of course, any open habitat is bound to become populated.
The social cultures formed there are persistent enough that one can now experience lifelong positive feedback and support, causing perseveration to occur and become ever-more attractive.
To be trolled means that one is probably only at the periphery of this population dispersal event. The Troll-ees are just regarded as targets, the trolling being the hunting, the trolls being analogous to visiting or hobbyist hunters, seeking social success in their imagined, and in some cases now, real, enclaves.
The communications- receiving tech is now where invasions, social takeovers are possible, and accomplished, even by nations.
China and some other nations deal fiercely with controlling their populations, who they identified as dangerous to the established norms. They nip it in the bud.
Nations with freer or unregulated social terrain such as this, suffered the consequences of insufficient regulation.
Discrimination occurs - In one nation, a single inciter of violence and discord is allowed to continue on a quite demented platform, so misused due to its simplistic intent - merely to spread in a viral manner. Those having less power than this individual can be banned, while the incitements and unalloyed lies of the powerful roll, or euphemistically, "tweet", on.
No stable ecosystem has yet formed - it is, no matter assessments to the contrary, a "place" exploited through violence, from which continual real violence will emerge in reality.
Very much like human minds, the present presentations by the ill may well diminish, with the really dangerous slowly becoming as deceptive and as self-deceptive as can occur. Bob Trivers gave us insight into this problem over 45 years; here we see it exposed.
But only understanding the ecology or a system open to released alien species, along with understanding of the attraction of the pathological to "frontiers" can give insight for therapeutic response - I merely watch guardedly like some wild canid watches novel dangerous creatures coming into the formerly coherent world, not capable of knowing their capacities, but surer, after witnessing a little, of the possible danger,even at a distance.
Are you a robot?
And when I hear about white people hating people makes me feel threatened. Cause it get’s me worrying that I would be arrested as a hateful person. Or am I gaslighted
America's Psychopathic a trolling or .. Normal people troll?
Sounds like criminal syndicates are legal
on the internet because the USA government IS NOT cares ANYTIME
People who try to explain trolls keep saying its hard to keep in the head a human os on the other side. Who else it would be.i believe one intentionally ignores it it need no training
don't bother the trolls please, thanks xd
4:35 - That's _trawling_ . ¬_¬
8:08 - To be fair, Bryan _is_ a jerk.
Ever since Brian ate my leftover pizza without asking, he's always been a jerk.
Trawling = dragging a net behind your boat. Trolling = dragging a line behind your boat. Weird, right?
Dude, as a troll myself; I can say most of us just like to joke around and mess with hotheads. What you just described was a Cyber Bully, the two are completely different. Stop spreading misinformation.
That's not trolling
Oh my God.....
so what
Its not problem of knife if human uses it in wrong ways. Those people have mental issues and internet gave them platform it did not create them
FEED ME!
I-
stop trying to rewrite terms, trolls are not the same as psychotic stalkers
Trolls can definitely be stalkers, but they can also be random harassers or a mob of hate or online bullies or a kid who expresses his anger in really unhealthy ways. I think trolls come in many shapes and sizes. I used the term troll, not to rewrite it or to downplay it, but to categorize a group of people who engage in purposefully harmful acts online.
You’re right though, trolls, stalkers and shills are all very different (even if they incorporate some of the same tactics).
Internet trolls give mythological trolls a bad name (and Internet trolling does not come from fish trawling, though it's an interesting analogy). That said, while I do appreciate you making this video, I profoundly disagree with associating the term, "troll," with those in the Dark Tetrad. I think this completely downplays the severity of what they are and what they do. When people of the Internet call both them and the "lulz trolls" (as you called them) a troll, it dirties the significance of the much more dangerous "trolls." So just call them what they are: sadists; narcissists; psychopaths; and machiavellianists (or whatever the term is for the last one). Also, I think you should also define what these four terms mean because while I know what they mean, most people might have heard of most or all of them but they may not really know what they mean.
Look, I get that these sadists and psychopaths, et cetera, do what they do for reasons. I get that there might be an anger or insecurity within them that may have been caused by emotional trauma they experienced in the past, and I get that they need help. But that doesn't excuse their behavior, and referring to them as trolls does more to help them than it does help the people being trolled. All parties need help, but even though they need help, too, it's the people with the loudest voices who often end up doing the most harm, and trolls tend to have the loudest voices because they are narcissists who need validation.
And that was just his ugly ex gf. Wahmen do these kind of things