I know
“The motivation must be in self affirmation”
. . . or it could just be a symptom of an antisocial personality disorder. :)but anyone can be a troll if someone decides they don’t like someone else
And any thread could become a troll, I imagine, if it takes a particular turn and not another. But once things become ABOUT one person or group not liking another person or group, and exists simply for the purpose of provoking an ongoing series of emotional responses and is no longer related to the purpose of this site, then it ought to be shut down.
Matt, that would be 25 percent of the threads
No it wouldn’t. Just because the line between troll/not troll isn’t 100% clear doesn’t mean it’s 100% unclear.
Matt said, And any thread could become a troll, I imagine, if it takes a particular turn and not another. But once things become ABOUT one person or group not liking another person or group, and exists simply for the purpose of provoking an ongoing series of emotional responses and is no longer related to the purpose of this site, then it ought to be shut down.
I basically agree with that. The person starting such a thread may not be troll, per se, and the thread may not have began as a blatant troll thread, as Matt points out, but when it takes the bad turn Matt mentions, I’d say it become trollish and probably should be shut down.
We can also just take the contentious word “troll” out of the equation and say:
Once things become ABOUT one person or group not liking another person or group, and exists simply for the purpose of provoking an ongoing series of emotional responses and is no longer related to the purpose of this site, then it ought to be shut down.
I like that.
“. . . or it could just be a symptom of an antisocial personality disorder. :) "
I’ve never thought about how a malignant narcissist might behave online.
They are scary enough in life.
“In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”
I’ve seen behavior on this site that I would definitely call trollish and say deserved to be shut down. I do not believe that the OP of the thread under discussion was deliberately trollish, but as others predicted, the thread was probably doomed. However, as posted, it was not personally (though maybe socially) insulting but just plain disagreeable. It was probably therefore left more to others to simply disagree. I know I did, but I also thought that there had been the possibility of some decent discussion of the social roots of crappy mass cultural production.
Was “God Save the Queen” a troll song?
I had just removed some thoughts on the term “emotional response”, because I had felt that it should read “angry response”, and then thought more about “disrupting…conversation” and removed it. I realized that I could use maudlin thoughts about my childhood to draw melodrama out of a situation in which my formative years have no business, or just keep posting elephant jokes for hours on a discussion of Ozu, and each could be deliberately provocative behavior.
Which strikes me as another reason to take “Troll” out of the equation.
It seems to me that I’ve seen a lot of flexibility on this site regarding OT drift, at least on threads not tied directly to an author or work, which I like. A conversation should be allowed to breathe. So if a thread drifts into discussion of why Tarzan couldn’t recognize the incognito elephants, I am fine if everyone else is. However, if it drifts into personalities in the wrong way, it becomes painful.
Yeah, I like the occasional digression, ramble, tangent, and anecdote of questionable relevance—that stuff’s part of the the normal flow of conversation, and even the full-on OT topic, provided it’s filed under the OT tab.
i feel that Parks is trolling
We’ve all had our moments I’m sure.
I’m sure we all have, but not everyone has had a thread closed as a “troll thread” by Kasman. I should sue for defamation of character — and he still hasn’t responded to my message. tsk tsk.
going over all the threads I’ve started, only one could actually be considered a troll thread, and it was even closed down, WTH?
C’mon, Uli. That thread was a fight waiting to happen.
But whatever, let’s let it go. I’ve been moderated a bunch of times—99% by myself, but still…
blah
Matt Parks
“the thread in question was not a troll thread”
I haven’t read through that particular thread, so I was speaking in general terms.