Why Trolls Win With Toxic Comments

Ah, trolling.:)

Back in the days of USENET, it was (once) an art form. It served the purpose of getting a good giggle at the expense of blind ideologues (of any subject), and to force the lurking observers to mentally dig deeper - to more thoroughly examine their beliefs and what they thought they knew. It was an excellent way to explore concepts outside of orthodoxy, and challenged the status quo. At its highest expression, a good troll will spark further research into a subject (if only to win an argument), and served the noble purpose of everyone learning something new in the end.

Now? Bah - in most cases, it's become pedestrian at best, and often shows the low intelligence of the troll.

Interestingly enough, it is nowadays employed by corporate and political entities via mechanical turk - like astroturfing, but in reverse. For instance, take politics: Lurker sees a bucket of misspelled repugnant garbage posted in opposition to a particular viewpoint, and thinks that it represents nearly everyone else who opposes said viewpoint. Suddenly, that 'team' is tainted, swaying the lurker towards the troll's real viewpoint. It's an effective way to create discord in the ranks of those whom you want to diminish, and is employed quite often. It also provides "proof" that The Other Side is a bunch of racists/pedophiles/whatever, thus their motives are evil, wrong, etc.

Dishonest as hell, but hard to see through from the casual lurker's eye. And, well, TFA proves that a lot of it works.

So what was once a sport that some of us did long ago for a bit of intellectual fun [baetzler.de], has now become either the epitome of lame-assed prose, or has become serious cash-money business to further (or retard) a cause.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/edJB5tuc7mc/story01.htm

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