Maki illustrated two great truths about trolls:
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They’re all about making sure only people like them get to be part of a community.
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They’re so busy policing purity, they don’t bother to contribute productively.
His commentary is also spot on.
In a field where people work day and night to make sure every kid has a chance to become excited about science, the thought that there are old white dudes publicly sneering at a teenager because he wasn’t ingenious enough is sickening. Seeing people who identify as skeptics entertain wild conspiracy theories about a sinister muslim boy and his plot to get arrested for attention would be hilarious if it weren’t so toxic.
It’s a good thing to keep in mind: trolls aren’t necessarily simply frivolous haters who are out to destroy everyone’s fun for laughs. Sometimes they’re so very committed to the goals of a group that they dedicate themselves to non-stop hatred of the perceived enemies of that group, internal and external.
The post at the link is a must read. The author rightly expresses shock that Dawkins is bullying a teen and engaging in conspiratorial gossip while holding himself out as a skeptic (and a leading one at that). The way some “gatekeepers” have behaved towards Ahmed is disgraceful and they deserve to be shamed.
Not only do the trolls contribute the least to whatever group they’re “protecting”, but sometimes they’re failed members of said group.
For example, you might remember the Douchebag Ben Spurr, the loser who make the “Beat Anita Sarkeesian” thing. Turns out that prior to the overwhelming success of Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter, he tried to make a crowd-funded game and failed miserably.
Okay, let me quibble/opine for a moment:
It is not that trolls/internet asshole communities are actually concerned with “purity” in the sense implied by the comic. Unless we talking in the lines of “racial purity” (shudder). The “purity” tests involved are not genuine. They are not something legitimate that you need to pass in order to be included. To my eye, they have two purposes:
1. They are post hoc excuses for excluding the people they already wanted to exclude. Think literacy tests for voting rights. They are not designed to be a truly blind indicator of true worth: they are tests that are selectively applied to people and were designed for most people to fail. They are excuses to remove the people on the fringes, often women and minorities.
2. To add further plausible deniability for using it as a method of exclusion, they often will use similar “tests” as an attempt to assert superiority over one another. Mostly this is for show. It is entertainment, because people enjoy seeing a good fight and trollish individuals, more than the average Joe, love asserting dominance. But again the “tests” do not actually do anything. In a gaming community, the top of the hierarchy is rarely ever actually the most knowledgeable and/or skilled gamer among them. However, the top dog may be the best at arguing and flinging shit. Or the best at manipulating others to do that for them. The battles over trivia rarely mean much, except to embarrass the “loser”.
Honestly, of all people, trolls are the least concerned with “purity” in the sense of ideology or merit. They do not actually care about community. Community is just a means to an end: It is a weapon. They are most concerned with manipulating, harassing, and even causing pain to other people. Their community spaces are spaces where they can possibly find either encouragement in such activity, tools for continuing such activity, or both. They aren’t so much concerned with “purity” as much as they are concerned that having their targets also become part of their community makes it harder for them to get their weapons and makes it less convenient to organize and attack.
At least that’s how I see it. Obviously, the assessment is subjective.
1. This has nothing to do with trolling. Trolls, like anteprepro #3 has noted, do what they do for personal satisfaction. They can be sadist, or people who want attention, or to feel superior to another human being, or they’re bigots who want everyone else to die in a fire, or all of the above. But gatekeeping is just a useful tool.
For evidence see 4chan and the like, where trolls cannibalize themselves.
2. You can’t honestly believe that Dawkins is a person who contributed the least to atheism or science or skeptical education.
Dawkins is an asshole, but he’s a prominent asshole precisely because he stands at the foundation of New Atheism and his fund is probably one of the two largest atheist funds in the world (please correct me if I’m wrong). Not to mention that his scientific credentials are likely to be a bit higher than those of most people. Even on this blog.
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anteprepro #3
This really depends on what you mean by “gaming community”. People like TotalBiscuit and Yahtzee are professional trolls who contribute nothing (in the case of the former) or haven’t contributed much for years (in the case of the latter).
On the other hand, there are people like Daigo Umehara, Ricki Sophie Ortiz and the like who are pro-gaming champions and are respected and loved by millions. Others yet are major game designers like Sid Meier who are worshiped by some as a living god.
There is more than one community and more than one hierarchy.
Oh, cool, we’re redefining “troll” to mean “gatekeeper” now.
It almost certainly is…
…but what does he actually DO with it?
It seems to me that the concern with purity is just a fig-leaf over who’s in the club-house and who isn’t. It’s the exact same thing as the “no icky girlz allowd” subdivision age 9-13. I suspect that’s a matter of some kids not growing up with exposure to a broad social scope and consequently wanting to narrow theirs artificially. Nature or nurture? Who cares, I guess. It sucks either way.
The comic is pretty clearly talking about the concept of a bridge troll and not an internet troll. Words can have more than one meaning, you know.
There are a lot of different kinds of trolls. Lots of different motivations for trolling. Lots of different ways to troll. A “Brave Dawkins Defender” troll is different from a “4 da Lulz” troll. I think Anteprepro’s assessment is accurate for the latter but maybe not for the former.
themadtapper is right about the comic, though based on PZ’s post, using trolls to illustrate the concept has made it seem like the comic is actually about….well, trolls.
AlexanderZ, good point. When I said “gaming community” I meant specifically an online gaming community i.e. a gaming forum, website, etc. And a subset of that, full of assholes/bigots/trolls. The entire “gaming community” is far, far too complicated to describe in that fashion, as you said. It is a simplification even for many websites, but even “many hierarchies” might not encompass the gaming community. It is part of the “gamers are dead” concept that pissed off gamergate so much last year: Gaming is vast now. The gaming community, gamers, people who play video games, encompasses almost fucking everyone now. There is such a variety, even if you arbitrarily try to pare the demographic down to True Gamers, Hardcore Gamers, Ultra Mega Nerdy Gamers, Straight White Cis Male Gamers, or whatever.
It’s Daphnes Nohansen, by the way….
YOB
Agreed, to an extent.
Brave Dawkins Defender “trolls” vary too. Some are mindless sycophants with an authoritarian mindset that blinds them to questioning prominent figures and makes them offended at the idea that people criticize their superiors. Others are legitimately oblivious to why anyone is taking offense because they are privileged and live in little cushioned echo chambers that ensure that they never have to hear feminists talking about things that would make them feel uncomfortable with their privilege. And still others are MRA-aligned, anti-feminists, or other assorted, disingenuous assholes. Only that last one would almost always be considered a troll. The first two cases there could be trollish or not.
(This all leads to and stems from a very common debate: “What does ‘troll’ even mean?”. Sometimes you just know it when you see it. And sometimes the definition of a word is too fluid and slippery that discussion involving it is near impossible.)
Words and their meanings change over time; the original definition of a word is not carved into stone to be forever referred to as the True definition. But because there are people all along the spectrum of interpretation, we get confusion and the evil child of Chaos– semantic arguments.
Way back in the Stone Age of the 90’s, an Internet “troll” was a liar. They were pretending to be someone or something they weren’t, they were faking opinions or views they didn’t hold, just to stir up trouble and laugh that people were buying it. At least, this was the working definition on the IRC. Coming in to a chat room and saying something provocative, outrageous, annoying, or insulting wasn’t considered trolling if the person doing it was sincere and actually believed that shit — and demonstrated this by being dedicated enough to stick around to defend it (those who hit n run might count as honorary “trolls,” or more likely be called a “seagull” (squawks, lays a turd, flies off.)
By the same token, if someone came in or — worse — became a respected member of the community through expressing what seemed like reasonable views, and was later discovered to be someone from the Other Side only pretending, then that person was also a troll. The guiding principle behind behavior considered “trollish” wasn’t causing controversy , making people leave, or even just being mindnumbingly stupid: it was insincerity. Back then a “troll” was sort of like a “Poe” — before that term had been invented.
If we’re really, really lucky, Ahmed will be the next Eben Upton some time in the next 20 years.
Sastra:
Back in the wilds of usenet, when there was still a scent of almost-innocence in the circuits, a lot of people trolled, used in the fishing sense – you set up bait, and trolled about, seeing how many bites you’d get.
I honestly thought this was going to be about stuff I’ve seen going on around here all too often, not about Dawkins. Now I’m wondering how many people still recognize this behavior when it’s them doing it?
Pen @ 16:
I do. Saw it right away. I try to not be that way, I haven’t always succeeded.
UnknownEric the Apostate #6
Good point. Nevertheless, Dawkins himself did do a lot, and almost every atheist who hadn’t been brought up atheist has read at least one of his books.
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Pen #16
I lack self-awareness entirely and rely on other people calling me out.
It has been a mixed success.
@AlexanderZ You are assuming a lot. I wasn’t “brought up atheist,” yet even before knowing how horrible Dawkins can be, it never once occurred to me to read one of his books.
Or one of Hitchens’, or Harris’, or any other prominent atheist, really.
Dawkins has had positive influence on my atheism at all.
Damn: “NO positive influence”!
Unfortunately, I can’t see it because it keeps redirecting me to PopSci Australia. Which never has anything recent on it.