Trolling
Trolling (as a verb) is a fairly recent term that has evolved alongside
the [1]Internet and whose meaning ranges from an activity of purposefully
causing [2]drama (mostly on the Internet) for entertainment (the original,
narrower meaning) to just shamelessly abusing rules of any system for self
interest on the detriment of others (wider meaning, e.g. [3]patent
trolling, pre-election media trolling etc.). Core value of the
narrow-sense trolling is simply [4]fun on the detriment of others --
usually making someone angry -- but not every fun making can be called
trolling -- bullying weaker, for example, isn't trolling, despite it
bringing some fun; trolling has to have a bit of cleverness in it, it
typically finds a way of legally do something nasty, i.e. [5]hacking the
rules of the game. Trolls are those who before the Internet would be
called something like jokers or pranksters, however [6]real life pranks
have limited potential -- on the Internet on the other hand trolling can
flourish (likely owing to the aspect of [7]anonymity, lack of nonverbal
communication, lack of consequences and responsibility and so on), so this
[8]art has evolved into something more, it is by now an inseparable part
of Internet [9]culture (and should probably become protected by Unesco).
Some forms of trolling provide so much fun they're even illegal. Trolling
is not about being [10]evil, it is about having fun, it is cherished by
cool people who don't take things too seriously and can make fun of
themselves and is therefore embraced by forums like [11]4chan; on the
other hand it is demonized by those without sense of humor, those who fear
the power of humor (e.g. dictators and fascists) and those who mostly get
butthurt by it ([12]reddit, [13]Wikipedia and other "safe space"
networks). [14]Evil is always afraid of fun.
In [15]modern times trolling is started to be demonized and even
criminalized, similarly to demonizing "conspiracy theories", politically
incorrect jokes and other forms of free thinking and art, that's why it's
important to support trolling more. Back in the day trolling may have been
seen as annoying at worst, nowadays people will try to push laws for
punishing "trolls" and promote the idea that it's a dangerous, possibly
life endangering mental illness, labeling someone a troll is quite close
to labeling him a psychopath or terrorist. Don't fall for this, let
trolling prosper, it's simply fun, people's culture, folklore, humanity
and art.
NOTE: That who performs trolling is called a troll, a word taken from
Nordic mythology where it stands for a fantastic, weird kind of creature
that lives in forests, caves or under bridges. Trolls are often a [16]race
in many fantasy universes (e.g. Warcraft, LOTR, Harry Potter, ...) --
there their appearance isn't very unified, some make them big, stupid
giants, others paint them as tall but human sized creatures with tusks and
so on. Further on we'll just be discussing trolls as related to trolling.
Trolling is highly associated with the troll face [17]meme -- the face has
become a universal trolling symbol.
A typical example of troll occurred e.g. circa 2006 when in the game
[18]World of Warcraft some guys pulled the world boss Lord Kazzak into
Stormwind, one of the game's main cities, where of course this beast
towering above all buildings proceeded to assrape the whole city and
anything that stood in his way -- the boss couldn't even be killed because
he healed every time he killed someone and with so many low level noobs
and NPCs in reach he was just healing constantly. This was an ingenious
move but of course, Blizzard like a huge unfunny pussy just stepped in,
restarted the server and stopped all the fun because constantly dying
several hours in a row was making some of their customers potentially
unhappy. Blizzard is full of imbeciles who only listen to money of course.
Trolling in chat rooms and forums typically start with so called [19]bait,
a deliberately provocative post that's meant to plant a seed of a heated
discussion (see also [20]flame war). Such bait will intentionally say
something controversial, stupid, logically faulty etc., exactly to provoke
a response, it wants to attract some smartass like a fishing bait wants to
attract a fish. However the art is in striking the correct balance between
stupidity and seriousness, the bait mustn't be too obvious otherwise it
will of course be spotted and fail (4chan calls this a "low quality bait",
a famous image of highly JPEGed fishing bait is typically attached).
Here are some potentially entertaining ways of trolling (they'll be
written from the point of view of a fictional character so as to avoid
legal responsibility for potential crimes they may inspire lol):
* [21]Link troll: on my website I randomly put dangerous links that look
like normal links, for example "back to homepage" leads to a Google
search of "free CP" or "how to get a bomb on the plane". This way
anyone who clicks it automatically gets on the NSA watch list :D
* Crime troll:
* Evidence troll: before committing crime I go to a barber shop and
collect hair on the floor. Later I scatter all this hair all
around the crime scene so that investigators get overwhelmed with
DNA evidence of dozens of unrelated people :D This is also know
as DNA [22]DDOS (or just DOS?).
* Crime without motive: criminal investigators always look for a
motive in a crime, if there is none they get greatly confused, so
for example as an extremely rich man owning 10 Lamborghinis I
like to just steal some shitty car from time to time -- even if
clues point to me they are always like "why would this rich man
steal such a shitty car, it doesn't make sense". I just laugh :D
* Irrational crime: similarly investigators usually suspect some
basic rationality even of the most stupid criminal -- you want to
behave even stupider than that. For example I break into two
stores and then just relocate goods from one to the other, then
leave :D
* Seizure troll: when in some kind of lecture where the students are
allowed laptops (typically in a compsci uni) I take a seat somewhere
in the front row, near the lecturer, open my laptop and start a
program that just rapidly flashes wild colors in fullscreen -- I leave
it like that for the whole lecture so that everyone sitting behind me
is forced to watch the flashing and can get an epileptic seizure. For
educational purposes code for such a program can be written in a few
lines of browser [23]JavaScript (it may coincidentally possibly even
be found in that JavaScript article).
* [24]Eco whoring troll: I take a bag of plastic trash, go to the
forest, find some nice, clean place, take a thumbs up selfie photo
with it, dump the trash in there, take another photo, then post the
photos in reverse order to Twitter with something like "today I worked
tirelessly to clean this garbage dump, for our children!", get a
million eco likes for literally dumping plastic trash in a forest.
* Stack overtroll: I love to perform this troll on sites like
programming advice subreddits where wannabe [25]soydevs try to
roleplay as authorities on programming -- these deserve to be trolled
the most :D This gets me banned every time but it's totally worth it,
I use this to leave social network sites with style once I get bored
with them. I make a piece of code that looks like some noob attempt at
making a game, but it's secretly an [26]obfuscated code that when run
does something nasty like delete all files on the computer, create one
trillion subdirectories or set goatse as a wallpaper (bloat languages
like [27]Python are actually great for this as they can do nasty stuff
like execute a dynamically constructed string and they can also
download stuff from the Internet and basically do anything they like).
Then I post it with a question "hello fellow programmers, I am trying
to make my first game but my code doesn't work, can u help me plz?" If
the code is well made, i.e. not trivial and quite hard to understand
just by looking at it, chances are the first thing people are gonna do
is simply copy paste the code and run it -- that's why I prefer to
make the code completely destroy the computer so that the guy has to
take at least a few hours to reinstall the system to be able to warn
others it's a troll. Whenever some comment pops up saying it's a trap,
I immediately downvote it and report it for hate speech (I also use
puppet accounts here to spam the downvotes because I'll get banned
anyway). The good things about this is that I actually teach people
about muh [28]security, those who step on this mine will never run a
random code from the Internet again.
* The raycyst gayming streamtroll: As a famous [29]vidya streamer I love
to do this to cause lulz, if done right I just cause drama and won't
even get banned. I pick some convenient game, for example GTA or
Obvlivion or something, then I just play the game, audience is
watching, the catch is that I'll be making slightly racist or sexist
choices in the gameplay, for example when driving between mission if I
run over pedestrians, I'll only be killing black ones :D I will never
buy anything from a black NPC or woman, I will never steal a black car
and will prefer taking only white cars I can and so on. BUT... I won't
be open about it of course! And I'll be denying it if someone starts
to notice, in turn blaming him for being racist for making such
observations. I can make this very subtle, for example I'll sometimes
run over a white pedestrian too, but I'll keep the ratio biased
towards black in such a way that it's noticeable but that it leaves
them scratching their heads if it's intentional or not :'D Now if the
chat starts to make drama out of it, I'll just say they're paranoid,
I'll even do whatever they want me to to make them believe it's not
intentional... and then I start slowly doing it again :'D Now this is
funny because they can prove you nothing, and it's hilarious if you
get reports and some mod literally has to go watch your streams and
count the ratio of blacks versus whites you run over LMAO. Nice thing
is also that if someone accuses you of racism, mod reviews it and says
unconclusive, you can just ban the accuser for trolling, further
scaring people from stepping in, at which point you can start being
slightly more racist in the gameplay and so on, see how long you can
balance on this fine line :D Another idea: play some MMORPG and be
racist/sexist towards the races in the game, for example refuse to
trade with female characters or speak to gnomes or whatever.
* Troll the troll: Advanced mastery of trolling allows one to troll
other less experienced trolls -- an encounter of two trolls can be
quite fun and educational. Imagine for example troll A setting up the
above mentioned stack overtroll bait -- troll B, an experienced player
of the game, notices the bait, but of course he doesn't bring this up
-- no, he pretends to take the bait and responds with something like
"wait a minute, let me run the code". Troll A is happy because he
thinks he won, but then troll B responds: "yeah, here on line X you
got this wrong, here is the correct code...". Troll A is now confused,
he's unsure if he's been spotted or if troll B simply skipped running
the code, troll B is now in advantage of controlling the game -- a
best result here is if troll B actually somehow gets troll A to run
the "fixed" code which however breaks his computer; here troll B
succeeded in deflecting the troll back and catching OP into his own
trap -- this kind of outcome is the best you can wish for and a
showcase of true trolling mastery.
* The richfag: As a rich faggot I can do literally what I want so for
example I bought a forest and started a company that employs people
who's job it is to just run around a tree for 8 hours every day -- my
goal is to have every tree have one man running around it eventually.
The company is not profitable, in fact it loses money but I don't care
about that, I already have infinite money. The fun thing is the people
are actually grateful because I created jobs basically for all nearby
villages :D
* Creative [30]Wikipedia vandalism aka [31]Creative TrollLolz: for
example funny redirects or categorizations (put [32]Bill Gates to
"famous homosexuals" category or something), also consider vandalizing
other wikis that usually don't have as much protection.
* a:hover { display: none; }
* Stream/game raids became very popular with the onset of streaming and
child abusing MMOs, maybe the most iconic was the Habbo Hotel "Pool's
closed" raid. [33]4chan is one of such raid enjoyers, however very
specialized groups such as soyjak.party emerged who live off almost
exclusively of organizing such raids. A stream raid mostly goes like
this: some toxic tranny prostitute is making children masturbate on
Twitch and figures out it will steal more attention (money) by forcing
audience interaction in form of some gayme in which the audience can
participate -- this is where the fun begins. There are shitty games
that for example let people write rap songs that are then read by text
to speech synthesizer or choose titles for albums or the marble racing
game where users can set their avatar pictures etc. Of course here
comes the party that just storms this with images of goatse or some
[34]nigger quotes, the streamer starts to rage because he is now
showing an image of protruding hairy asshole to 10000 toddlers who
just wanted to watch overwatch or roblox, while in a robotic voice in
the background is quoting Hitler and calling for the final solution,
which of course is not very good for the streamer's career :D In best
scenarios the streamer gets banned. { See for example these video clip
gems at https://soyjakwiki.net/Jackbox_Raiding#Clips :D ~drummyfish }
* Classic trollz revolve around creating [35]drama on forums -- this is
kind of an [36]art as you have to keep the right balance of
seriousness and stupidity; too much of the former and you're not
trolling anyone, too much of the latter and you're just spotted as
obvious troll. It's definitely not about logging on a starting to drop
the [37]N-words and insulting everyone, that's just an instant ban
that ends the fun; you rather want to start slow, get many people
seriously involved in the discussion, be polite and then slightly
steer the talk towards something controversial (nice if you pretend to
be part of some "oppressed minority"). Then you just make it look like
you're just an uneducated simple minded individual who kind of happens
to lean towards an opinion the others truly hate, but you have to keep
their hope that they can convince you to change your opinion, so still
try to be polite, just so you keep arguing with them and wasting more
and more of their time until they start losing their shit and the
thread explodes into [38]hitler arguments etc., then just watch and
enjoy.
* Weird life goal troll: This one requires extreme dedication and is a
bit risky, but it might be one of the highest trolling peaks if
performed successfully and well. So what's the troll here? We know
that life goal cannot be objectively set, you can make your life goal
whatever you want and no one can ever objectively refute it. So you
can for example set your life goal to just walk forward -- you will
dedicate everything to only walking forward as much as you can. You
will stop going to work, you will only eat and drink if absolutely
necessary, you'll just get up from the bed one day and start walking
over the country in your pajamas -- if people ask you if you're
alright you just say "yes, thank you". If you are starving, you just
grab nearest food and eat it, if you need to sleep, you just lie down
somewhere and sleep and then just walk again. Soon you'll probably be
taken to mental asylum -- there you have to just prove you're
completely normal, convince them you know what you're doing, that
you're not feeling any anxiety or depression, that you hear no voices,
you have only set walking as your life goal -- there is no objective
way to refute this life goal. You will probably end up in asylum or
jail anyway sooner or later, then just try to maximize walking, be
nice and lie if you have to. If they lead you to the court, just turn
around and start walking out of the building. If they put you in
chains, just behave nicely and say you won't try to run away -- if
they take the chains down, just start walking away. Whenever you get
out of jail, just start walking again and so on. Now there is a risk
that you may just waste your life without attracting any attention,
but you may also become famous and then highlight the fact that
current society is extremely retarded and is not ready for people who
aren't conforming and just set their life goal arbitrarily.
* Prank calls to businesses can be cool, a traditional troll is for
example calling two restaurants and letting them talk to each other :D
This can fuck up two businesses at the same time, so it's even good
for society, and the women behind the phone will be happy because it
brings a little fun to their otherwise boring and repetitive slavery.
* ...
{ I got asked a very good question: is trolling in fact [39]fascism and
how can I, a LRS supporter, like it then? I want to leave at least a short
answer here: Yes, seeking fun (a kind of self benefit) on the detriment of
others is, at least by our definition, a form of fascism. I enjoy the acts
of trolling, and though it may be partly an imperfection of me as a human
being, I try to keep it compatible with LRS in the following ways. Firstly
I never support actually very harmful trolling (such as "cutting for
Bieber") to be DONE, though I do enjoy reviewing the cases that already
happened and I may find them both funny and sad at the same time -- this
is similar to how one can be a pacifist and completely reject violence
while still finding some value in watching gore videos. Secondly trolling
may be done to entities that aren't living beings, for example companies
or states. Thirdly I may support acts of trolling that I don't think are
significantly harmful, for example lighthearted pranks (the kind of joke
you play on someone and it eventually entertains both of you, but it
mustn't be taken too far, harm must be negligible), or Internet trolling.
It's similar to sports or video games -- it is completely acceptable (and
desirable) to create environments -- which must always be entered
VOLUNTARILY -- that simulate amoral behavior and relieve some of our
amoral animal needs, for example those for competition or fight, despite
such behavior not being acceptable in other contexts. I.e. it is for
example acceptable to kill each other in video games. Internet, or at
least a great part of it, is such an environment -- it is a kind of
playground anyone can enter voluntarily, that's known to have the kind of
trolling game going on. On the Internet we only interact by speech and
speech alone can never hurt anyone -- if one cannot bear reading something
on the Internet, he can avoid using it (at least that's how it should be).
~drummyfish }
See Also
* [40]troll personality disorder
* [41]drama
* [42]fun
* [43]shitposting
* [44]lulz
* [45]Encyclopedia Dramatica
Links:
1. internet.md
2. drama.md
3. patent.md
4. fun.md
5. hacking.md
6. irl.md
7. anonymity.md
8. art.md
9. culture.md
10. evil.md
11. 4chan.md
12. reddit.md
13. wikipedia.md
14. evil.md
15. 21st_century.md
16. race.md
17. meme.md
18. wow.md
19. bait.md
20. flame_war.md
21. suck_coq.md
22. ddos.md
23. javascript.md
24. eco.md
25. soydev.md
26. obfuscation.md
27. python.md
28. security.md
29. game.md
30. wikipedia.md
31. creative_commons.md
32. bill_gates.md
33. 4chan.md
34. nigger.md
35. drama.md
36. art.md
37. nigger.md
38. hitler.md
39. fascism.md
40. troll_personality_disorder.md
41. drama.md
42. fun.md
43. shitpost.md
44. lulz.md
45. dramatica.md