What Is Trolling?

Just as it's common for people to call any kind of malware a computer virus, it's not unusual for people to call any kind of disruptive person online a troll. Here are a few of the broad categories online trolls might fit in:

Trolls are troublesome and distracting — that's their very goal. But it might surprise you to find out there are communities that allow and even welcome trolls to participate.

In Star Wars: A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi described the spaceport of Mos Eisley as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy." Many people might say the same thing about troll communities and forums. Within these communities, anything goes. It's very difficult to hold a discussion on any subject that actually has merit. Any attempt to do so will likely be sidetracked as the thread fills up with crude jokes, insults and pornographic images.

Normal online communities usually have a team of administrators or moderators who try to keep the peace and make sure the community runs smoothly. These officials sometimes ban trolls if they prove to be disruptive. Troll communities rarely ban members — in fact, several of them explicitly welcome people who have been banned by other communities. Often, community leaders claim that they value free speech too much to censor members or ban people.

What goes on in these communities? In general, many of them have forums filled with jokes, pornography and discussions about trolling activities. Trolls will brag about their exploits, linking to message board discussions that dissolved into flame wars. Sometimes trolls will cause such a fuss that the entire community shuts down as a result. Some trolls compete with one another to see how long it takes before an administrator bans the troll from a specific community. The winner might be the troll who remained part of a community the longest or it might be the person who went from registration to banned in the least amount of time.

Trolls also use these communities to discuss the sites from which they were banned. Usually, the discussion is little more than a series of accusations and insults directed at the community that banned the troll in the first place. They may also use the community to organize concentrated trollish attacks on another site.

While there are online communities built and run by trolls, there are a few message boards and forums that tolerate trolls but aren't designed as a troll community. One of these is 4chan. The 4chan site is an image-based online bulletin board. Today, the main focus of 4chan is on Japanese culture and animation, though there are other sections as well. When 4chan began, it started as a general message board on which members could post anything (other than child pornography). That policy still holds true for 4chan's most popular channel, the Random (or /b/) channel.

Activity on the Random channel is unpredictable. Many posts contain vulgar language or images of pornography or violence. Contributors are anonymous, which means there is no sense of accountability within the forum. There's no need to create a login handle or register — you can visit the channel and post whatever you like. As a result, trollish behavior runs rampant on the channel.

Trollish activities sometimes extend beyond the realm of the internet. We'll look at some real-world controversies caused by trolls next.

The 4chan /b/ channel has spawned a growing activist group called Anonymous. The self-proclaimed purpose of Anonymous is to bring to light certain alleged practices of the Church of Scientology. Anonymous claims that Scientology uses manipulative and harmful tactics to recruit new members and suppress information about the organization. Anonymous' activities have gone beyond the online world — they have held several protests in cities around the globe. Whenever it's legal to do so, many of the protestors wear masks or bandanas to keep their identities secret.

Some people within Anonymous use trollish tactics to bait Scientologists. But in general, the members of Anonymous say they don't want to engage in that type of behavior to achieve their goals. From the perspective of the Church of Scientology, Anonymous is a network of religious bigots that uses the same tactics as terrorists.

Anonymous itself has been t­he victim of trolls. Because it has no centralized leadership, there's no official voice for the organization. Trolls have uploaded videos and blog posts in the name of Anonymous that don't represent the group's philosophy. Some in Anonymous claim that Scientologists are behind some of the messages. Accusations from one group follow accusations from the other and it becomes impossible to sort out who did what to whom.

Some trolls have used Craigslist, an online classified service, to pull pranks that cross well into criminal activity. In one case in Washington and another in Oregon, people posted fake ads on Craigslist about someone else's home and property. In both cases, the ad said that the owner of the house was getting rid of everything and that people were welcome to take whatever they liked. The result was grim — the owners returned to their homes to discover their belongings gone and their property damaged.

Investigators caught the responsible parties in both cases. The Washington incident appears to have been the result of a family feud — the niece of the homeowner admitted to posting the ad. In Oregon, police arrested Amber and Brandon Herbert, suspecting them of posting the ad. Later, Amber admitted to posting the fake ad to cover up an earlier theft of three saddles from the man's property.

In another Craigslist incident, Jason Fortuny posted a fake personal ad that caused a big stir online. He posed as a woman seeking a male companion. He received more than 100 responses and posted them on a blog, complete with photos, e-mail addresses and other information.

Sometimes trolls are also hackers. Not all hackers are cut from the same cloth. Some use their programming knowledge to probe code and programs to see how they work. They might create their own applications based on the work of others or modify code so that a program does something new. Others look at code and search for vulnerabilities and opportunities. These are the hackers who infiltrate networks and snoop around. Then there are the crackers, the people who not only infiltrate systems but actively try to steal information or sabotage the code.

There's also a wide range of skills among hackers. Some hackers are accomplished programmers who can whip up an application in a few days. Others aren't really programmers at all — they prefer to use established programs to cause mischief. In hacker culture, these people are known as script kiddies. It doesn't take much skill to use a program that infects computers with a virus. But it can affect a lot of people. That kind of return on investment appeals to some trolls.

Next, we'll take a look at the secret to dealing with trolls.

The first step to dealing with trolls is learning how to recognize them. The following traits are clues:

If the answer to these questions is yes, there's a good chance you're dealing with a troll. Whether the member is consciously trying to troll the community or not is another matter. There are times when even respected members of an online community might behave like trolls. But if it's a new member who is very active and displays these qualities, you've probably got a real troll on your hands.

What do you do? If you're simply a member of the community, the best a­dvice is to ignore the troll. The troll's goal is to disrupt the community and rile up its members. By ignoring the troll, you deny them a victory. There's a common phrase that dates back to the early days of Usenet: Don't feed the trolls. Trolls love attention — depriving them of it usually means they'll lose interest and move on to a different community.

If you're the administrator of an online community, you have a few other options. One option is to ban the user from the community. Sometimes this is the goal of the troll all along. But that shouldn't concern you — you need to focus on your community and its legitimate members.

If you think the troll isn't necessarily trying to cause strife within your community on purpose, you can try a different tactic. Pay the troll a compliment, thanking him or her for participating in your community. Ask the troll to participate in discussions and present their points. If the troll really is trying to cause a problem, this is the opposite reaction they want. On the other hand, if the person isn't trying to be a troll at all, they may become a valuable member of the community.

The important thing to remember is to remain calm and civil. If you lose your temper, the troll wins. You become the butt of the troll's joke. Some trolls won't let it rest there — they'll go to other communities and spread the word of how they managed to push your buttons and make you blow your top. Don't give them the satisfaction.

So why would anyone behave like this in the first place? We'll look into that in the next section.

Some people troll others as part of a personal vendetta. This is also known as cyberbullying. The troll might taunt the victim in various online communities, use the victim's e-mail address to sign up for spam e-mails or even impersonate the victim in order to discredit them. In extreme cases like the family feud in Washington, the troll might post information online that leads to direct physical consequences.

Other trolls want to promote their own agendas by undermining an online community. The clearest example of this is on a political forum. A troll might use manipulative tricks to sabotage a legitimate discussion or to discourage community members from supporting a specific political figure.

But the trolls that seem to be the most puzzling are those who have no personal agenda or vendetta against anyone. For them, trolling is an end unto itself. The goal is just to frustrate people and to build the troll's reputation as a troublemaker. Or could there be more?

Mattathias Schwartz of The New York Times interviewed several trolls, including the infamous Jason Fortuny. The trolls offered various reasons for trolling beyond just a desire to victimize people online. Some claimed they wanted to teach people a lesson about how harsh the online world can be. In other words, they felt it was for the victims' own good. Others tried to justify their actions by pointing out how rough their own lives had been in the past.

The very nature of the internet might contribute to trollish behavior. The internet gives people the opportunity to remain anonymous. That means the average user has very little sense of accountability while online. It's easy to forget (or ignore) the fact that on the other end of the connection is a real human being with real feelings.

Trolls sometimes make fun of their own motives. In the Encyclopedia Dramatica, a very popular wiki in troll culture, there's an entry that claims that the American Psychiatric Association will include "internet troll personality disorder" in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The entry then goes on to list the "diagnostic criteria" for the disorder — many of which paint trolls in a positive light.

Elsewhere on the web is what appears to be a scholarly paper written by "Amy Dhala" about a supposed focus group study of trolls. While much of the paper contains language that on the surface appears legitimate, there are entire sections­ that drop the scholarly voice completely. It becomes clear by the end of the paper that the entire work is a piece of fiction — written by a troll.

The very nature of trolls makes them difficult to peg down. When are they being deceptive? Do they believe they are online vigilantes and guardian angels or are they selfishly exploiting others for their own enjoyment? How many are teenagers or younger? It's impossible to know for sure, though that doesn't stop people from making guesses and generalizations.

In the end, it's probably just best to avoid engaging with trolls altogether. It'll save you a lot of frustration and wasted time. And it annoys the heck out of the trolls.