How can you spot, destroy, and delete an internet troll?
Reddit CEO says trolls are winning and taking over debate forums and social platforms.
No. That's not true.
Trolls can be defined, identified, monitored, and dealt with via blogocombat, banning, and blocking.
What are the characteristics and behaviors that brand someone an internet troll, a griefer, a trouble-maker?
I compiled the following facts to guide your understanding of trollish activity.
Troll Check List
* rarely links to substantiating resources
* copies and pastes lengthy chunks of articles he found online, scholarly text you're pretty certain he didn't write himself (since it's free of hysteria and cuss words)
* anonymous or near-anonymous, has obviously fake name, no photo of face for avatar, or no updates on his own profile, so he clearly joined a social platform just to annoy and disrupt conversations
* gets angry quickly and betrays his paranoia when he misinterprets even your smiley faces as "condescending" and treating him "like a child."
* launches into personal attacks like that's what they were leading up to
* is quick to start calling anybody who disagrees with him an "idiot" or "moron" or "watch too much Faux News" or "read too much Huffington Post"
* uses filthy language
* quick to put you into some ideological group, then attack that group, e.g., "you church people are all the same" or "you atheists never make sense" or "I bet you voted for Bush" or "here comes another libtard."
* often sexist or racist
* has a teenage immaturity, very sensitive, extremely brutal in unreasonable retaliations, a delicate ego based on pampering, resulting in severely limited logic skills and self-absorbed grandiosity
* will argue as hatefully against a woman or child as against a male or a peer, thus: has no personal standards of what is socially appropriate
* thinks he's the only one with all the right answers, similar to a garden variety cult leader or brainwashed group member
* may even tell you his IQ number or list his college degrees, or jobs supposedly held, or make similar insecure, pompously funny assertions of being smarter than everybody else, especially you
* rushes to conclusions that he can then get angry about
* won't chill out because he's putting on a show for his Red Bulled buddies
* likes to twist what you say, as though you have bad intentions, or puts words in your mouth, making absurd allegations of what you imply or what you "must also believe"
* frequently blames everything on the Jews or Muslims or Republicans or Democrats or capitalism or socialism
* makes wild accusations like they've had too much lucid dreaming, bath salts, and fake pot
* relentlessly keeps hammering away at an argument, even after you've stopped responding and have moved on
* will, if you annoy the troll enough, turning the tables on him, eventually get exasperated, and instead of saying something like "well, let's just agree to disagree" says "you're all a bunch of retards. I'm done with this conversation." -- thus you de-fanged the troll and caused him to kick himself out of the online discussion, when his whole point was to be sadistic and hurt people's feelings and mock their opinions.
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