Troll (internet)

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For the Wikipedia essay, see "What is a troll?".
For other uses see Troll (disambiguation)
An example of trolling on Wikipedia. Someone had vandalized an article on Wikipedia by replacing content with an insult.

A troll is someone who tries to make people angry by saying things on the Internet.[1] The purpose is to excite strong emotion in an online community.[2] This is to get a reaction from other online users,[2] or to cause problems.[3] In social networks platforms, a troll is a user who make inflammatory or inappropriate comments for the sole purpose of upsetting other users and provoking a response.[4] If someone acts like a troll, this is called trolling.

The solution to avoid more trolling often is to ignore what they say and do. This picture means "Do not feed the trolls"

Sometimes trolling can get a user banned from a website or platform as it can be disruptive. Some users do it to be humorous when they know others will be angry. The best solution is to ignore trolls and to not give them the attention they want. This has become known as "don't feed the trolls".

In October 2012, the internet news site Gawker, publicly revealed the name of an internet troll who had called himself "Violentacrez".[5] Michael Brutcsh had collected photos of young girls from Facebook, often in bikinis or short skirts, and them posted them on the site Reddit.[5] He also posted photos of women, taken without their permission, which focused on their breasts or bottoms. His actions made many people very angry. Brutsch said he was an internet troll because "...I just like riling people up in my spare time."[6]

There are a lot of efforts to detect and ban trolls on social network platforms such as "TrollSpot"[4] in which Li a user of the website and other members of the team whom are also users of the social media website use machine learning techniques or what is known as a computer robot to propose a wide approach to detect trolls.

The "Trollface" is an image that is occasionally used to indicate trolling in Internet culture.[7][8][9]

What is a troll?[change | change source]

The term troll is subjective, meaning that it depends on interpretation. Trolling usually involves joking around to mess up other people or communities.

Sometimes, people may think a certain post is considered trolling, while others claim it is constructive, no matter how controversial this post is.[10] Some strong acts of trolling involve harassment,[11] but some acts of trolling are considered funny off-topic jokes.[11]

The term Internet troll has also been applied to information warfare (competition for winning fame by taking advantage of the internet), hate speech, and even political activism.[12][13]

The Impact of Trolling[change | change source]

According to Dr. Ashley Anderson from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Trolling, or "Uncivil commentary" has the ability to strengthen the opinions of those who either are skeptical or supportive of a topic. The research also found that supportive commentary had no effect.[14]

Notes[change | change source]

  1. "Trolling: The Today Show Explores the Dark Side of the Internet", 31 March 2010. Retrieved on 20 July 2010.
  2. 2.0 2.1 "Definition of: trolling". PCMAG.COM. Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. 2009. Archived from the original on 2013-03-15. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
  3. Indiana University: University Information Technology Services (2008-05-05). "What is a troll?". Indiana University Knowledge Base. The Trustees of Indiana University. Retrieved 2009-03-24.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Li, Tai Ching; Gharibshah, Joobin; Papalexakis, Evangelos E.; Faloutsos, Michalis (2017-07-31). TrollSpot: Detecting misbehavior in commenting platforms. ACM. pp. 171–175. doi:10.1145/3110025.3110057. ISBN 9781450349932. S2CID 2904487.
  5. 5.0 5.1 Chen, Adrian (October 12, 2012). "Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web". gawker.com. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
  6. "Michael Brutsch: Internet troll behind Reddit 'Creepshot' forum unmasked as grandfather from Texas". dailymail.co.uk. 2012. Retrieved November 9, 2012.
  7. Prahl, Kyle (9 May 2013). "Trollface hack strikes PlayStation 3? PSU community member reports XMB weirdness". PlayStation Universe. Archived from the original on 15 May 2021. Retrieved 3 November 2017.
  8. Valle, Mario. ""Pasta" y "MasterDog" ya son parte de la jerga universitaria". Publimetro. Archived from the original on 19 July 2013. Retrieved 3 November 2017.
  9. ""Forever Alone" y "Ay sí, ay sí", entre los más populares – el Diario…". Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 17 May 2013.
  10. Leone, M. (n.d.). The Art of Trolling. University of Turin. https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/2997807/mod_resource/content/1/2017_-_The_Art_of_Trolling_-_Draft.pdf
  11. 11.0 11.1 Baldwin, Z. (2022, February 15). The distinction between 'trolling' and online harassment, and the law surrounding it. Griffin Law. Retrieved February 17, 2022, from https://www.griffin.law/distinction-trolling-online-harassment-law-surrounding
  12. Birkbak, Andreas (2018-04-30). "Into the wild online: Learning from Internet trolls". First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v22i5.8297. ISSN 1396-0466.
  13. Birkbak, A. (2018, May). View of into The wild online: Learning from internet trolls: First Monday. Retrieved February 17, 2022, from https://www.firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8297/7203
  14. "No Comment: 3 Rules for Dealing With Internet Trolls | Psychology Today". www.psychologytoday.com. Retrieved 2023-12-11.