What does it mean to troll? How to behave if you are trying to troll

Trolling is one of the types of virtual communication in which one of the parties - the troll - is engaged in an unconscious escalation of the conflict or begins to deliberately or explicitly downplay and bully another participant in communication, violating the ethics of behavior in the network. Trolling is expressed in the form of offensive, mocking and aggressive behavior. In real life, it is analogous to energy vampirism. It is used both by anonymous participants, and by personified users interested in shocking, publicity and recognition.

Appearance and study

The term appeared in the early 21st century. Then still no one knew what it meant to troll. Interested people in this topic created networking organizations and communities for sharing experiences, which discussed the most effective ways of fueling conflicts. In the academic literature, trolling was first mentioned in 1996 by the researcher Judith Donat, who cited several curious examples taken from conferences in Usenet (the network). Donat stressed that in the "virtual society" this identification is ambiguous.

Origin of the term

What is the meaning of the word "troll"? This term is not relevant to the field of scientific discourse, and it originated from the slang users of virtual communities. "Fishing for trolling" - this is the literal translation from the English word "trolling". In general, this phenomenon can be characterized as the process of placing provocative messages on communication resources in the network with the goal of creating a conflict situation by violating the ethical rules of Internet interaction. We hope, now you understand what it means to troll people. Go ahead.

Troll - this is the designation of the person who is engaged in trolling. Irina Ksenofontova (member of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences) believes that this term became popular because of its importance in Scandinavian mythology. There trolls, especially in children's tales, are portrayed as ugly, unpleasant creatures created to create evil and cause harm. They are very colorful in the cinema.

Wednesday trolling

We figured out what it means to troll on the Internet. Now let's talk about places where this can be done. These include social networks, conferences, thematic forums, news sites, portals and chats. The design features of these spaces allow the user to create a virtual alter-ego, designed at his discretion. Practically in each virtual community there are special fields where participants can form their data by entering basic and additional (hobbies and interests) characteristics. This is an excellent opportunity to organize provocations by people who know what is a troll person. After all, this process is not controlled by anyone, and any participant in the virtual space can generate the desired image.

The nature of the impact on virtual spaces

The provocateur pretends to be an ordinary user who shares common problems and interests of the community or group. If the participants of the conference are aware of what it means to troll, they try to identify provocative publications, and if this succeeds, they force the attacker to leave the group. The success of detection will depend on the skill of recognizing the hints that determine the goals of the creator of posts. Also much depends on the troll itself, or rather, on the level of his professionalism. Skillful provocateurs can troll for a very long time, not giving out their true face.

Trolls inflict significant harm on the communications: spoil the discussion, spread the destructive idea or harmful advice, destroy the sense of trust of the community members to each other. In groups with a high level of falsification in space, which are particularly sensitive to trolling, most naive content is rejected and is not considered a provocation.

Features

Trolling as a form of social aggression has its own characteristics. The first is the possibility of its existence only in virtual communities. Although in real society there are people who know what it means to troll, and gladly do it. The second is the rapid release of avalanche aggression, instantaneously spreading to virtually all users of the virtual community. And the third is the impossibility of the victim of trolling to enter into visual or physical contact with the initiator of the conflict.

What if you are trolled?

In this case, you have two options. Either completely ignore the troll, or become one yourself and give a worthy rebuff. And to defeat him, you need to be smart, smart and attentive. Develop these qualities in yourself.

The mind is needed to realize that it is not worthwhile to transfer the entire trolling process to reality. This is just the chatter of people who have the opportunity to spend their time on the squabbles on the network. If you do not understand this, then it is unlikely that something will help you. Then there is no point reading further.

Witty. Do not confuse with the mind. Wisdom is the ability to react instantly to any changes in the external environment and to adapt to them, if necessary. It is also the ability to apply someone else's tactics and techniques, actively used by people who are aware of what it means to troll.

Attentiveness and good memory. You need to collect and carefully analyze everything that the opponent says about you. Also watch your phrases. After all, any of them can be used against you. A good memory is needed to remember and quote stupid statements of your opponent.

Well, and, of course, does not prevent high speed printing. The higher the speed of dialing in a chat, the easier it is to touch a person with phrases about what he thinks for too long. In general, be sure to master the skill of blind printing.

Having mastered all the above qualities, you will understand much more deeply what it means to troll people, and will be able to resist any person who tries to hook you.