Internet troll - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
One-shot trolls
One-shot troll messages are intended to be disruptive, and tend to be very obvious to ensure that they will receive annoyed replies.[citation needed]
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Disruptive trolls
Attention-seeking trolls
This class of trolls seeks to incite as many responses as possible and to absorb a disproportionate share of the collective attention span.[citation needed]
One-shot trolls
One-shot troll messages are intended to be disruptive, and tend to be very obvious to ensure that they will receive annoyed replies.[citation needed]
[edit]
Disruptive trolls
- Off topic messages: Those that are irrelevant to the focus of the forum. This can also be done in the middle of an existing thread to attempt to hijack the thread, or otherwise change the topic at hand. Off topic messages usually occur when a member has been completely disproved in a serious debate, thus causing that member to use his or her other multiple pseudonyms for the purposes of changing the subject matter. These disruptions may result in the degeneration of a well informed thread into a heated juvenile exchange consisting of insults and childish accusations between multiple parties.
- Page breaking: Filling up fields with large pictures or characters to make previous posts unreadable. A skilled troll will use an extremely wide and narrow picture that blends into the forum background to make it harder to catch.
- Offensive media: Annoying sound files or disturbing pictures in a message, or linking to shock sites that contain such media. Often these links are disguised as legitimate links.
- Inflammatory messages, including racist, sexist, classist or otherwise needlessly hateful comments.
- Opinionated statements: Posting messages expressing their own opinions as generally accepted facts without offering any proof or analysis.
- Spoiling: Deliberately revealing the ending or an important part of movie, book, game etc.
- Bumping an old discussion, or rehashing a highly controversial past topic, particularly in smaller online communities.
- Constantly answering questions with questions in an attempt to infuriate others.
- Misspelling a poster's name in such a way as to belittle and anger that person.
- Promising nonexistent pornography to people who post in the forum, producing an interminable flood of "please send" messages (especially common in the alt.sex Usenet hierarchy in the mid-1990s) [4] [5]
- Defensive trolls
- Radio station trolls - promoting their station
Attention-seeking trolls
This class of trolls seeks to incite as many responses as possible and to absorb a disproportionate share of the collective attention span.[citation needed]
- Advertising another forum, especially a rival or a hated forum.
- Claiming to be someone they cannot possibly be: "As an actual, real-life samurai, I have some problems with (the film) The Seven Samurai."
- No longer having affiliation to or current knowledge of the subject at hand, yet continually posting opinions and commentary as "experts".
- Messages containing a deliberate flaw or error: "I think 2001: A Space Odyssey is Roman Polanski's best film." Or "Federico Fellini is the Greatest Living American Director"
- Asking for help with an implausible task or problem: "How do I season my Crock Pot? I don't want everything I cook in it to taste the same."
- Intentionally naive questions: "Can I cook pasta in Evian instead of water?"
- Trying to look for vulnerable people and being offensive to them.
- Intentional typos: "Does anyone have a copy of Super Maria Bras. for the Nintendo?" There are also many common usage in arguing against software, such as, "Who here likes Microsoft Windows XP?"
- Messages containing a self-referential appeal to status. "Pepsi is for white trash. I prefer a real soft drink like Coke."
- Favoring other software or rivals, especially on product support or development communities. A well-fought battle across many forums are people posting on phpBB support forums or development boards arguing points like "vBulletin has this feature and pwns phpBB".
- Intentionally posting an outrageous argument, deliberately constructed around a fundamental but obfuscated flaw or error. Often the poster will become defensive when the argument is refuted, and may continue the thread through the use of further flawed arguments; this is referred to as "feeding" the troll.
- A subclass of the above is the flawed proof of an important unsolved mathematical problem or impossibility (for example, 1 = 2); however, these may not always be troll-posts, and are sometimes at least mathematically interesting.
- Politically contentious messages: "Everyone knows that all **********s/********s are evil."
- Posting politically sensitive images in inappropriate places.
- Feigning innocence, after a flamewar ensues.
- Off-topic complaints about personal life, even threats of suicide: sometimes, this is the "cry for help" troll. In other instances, this type of trolling may be for amusement. If the motive is amusement, the troll may post ridiculous comments seemingly out of the blue. "I want to marry a hyena."
- Plural or paranoid answers to personal opinions expressed by individuals: "I don't think that all of you really believe that - you're just ganging up on me!"
- Paramour trolls get a thrill from establishing serial online affairs with females of a group. This incites public rivalry among the women who once thought the nicknames, poetry, and declarations of affection were exclusive to them. Since the online love affair is developed separately in chat programs, it takes a long time for the online cat-fight to be detected.
- Combinations of the above. For example, a troll combines inflammatory statements with poor grammar and Internet slangleetspeak'): "lmfao! d00d, ur so week minded an predictable i thought i wan iggied i play ya like a card... pwned j00 n00b f00! l4m3r! w00t!" (also known as 'netspeak', 'chatspeak', or '
- Pretending to be a scriptwriter on a long running TV show (e.g. Lost) and giving away false spoilers.
