I typically don’t engage trolls. It seems like such a nugatory endeavor. These bots have no real intention of having a rational discussion. Their only purpose is spreading vitriol, hoping to provoke a response.
To dwell on the rantings of mad dogs is an exercise in futility. There’s no expectation for normal conversation, their arguments only get more personal and belligerent. There’s no history, or prior interaction. It’s guerrilla warfare, ambushing with words. I don’t get it. It’s really sad and pathetic to think that this is all they do, or all they live for.
It’s the pointlessness that confounds me. Why would someone spend their time cruising the Internet, usually without knowing anything other than what is read in a single entry, dropping turds of hate in the backyards of total strangers? And, it’s exactly that. They are full of shit and are dropping steaming piles of turds everywhere.
Their words, their comments, their arguments are no more compelling than what the neighbor’s mutt leaves on my lawn. While more annoyed than offended at having to clean up the filth, it’s simply a matter of tossing the muck in my trash.
There’s no point in trying to dissuade further deposits, inconsiderate trolls, like inconsiderate neighbors, can’t be reasoned with, there is that sense of entitlement to do as they please. Childish and boorish, both unworthy of my energy and attention.
I’m fortunate in that I rarely get trollish comments. (I’ve probably jinxed that now.) Since the majority of my blog features photography and fiction, there’s little to contradict.
I’m not a Comment Purist. I have absolutely no problem trashing any comment that is a personal attack on me or another commenter. My unwritten rule is, “play nice, or go home.” You can disagree, offer a different view, but keep it civil, or you get deleted and “blacklisted.”
The Trifecta challenge this week is: Dwell [intransitive verb \ˈdwel\] 3a: to keep the attention directed — used with on or upon
Great post and fantastic take on the prompt.
Once I “introduced” Blogger A (long-time blogger friend) to Blogger B (someone I’d recently discovered), and Blogger A took big offense to a post of Blogger B’s and attacked her quite strongly. I like them both and thought A overreacted, but what do you do? I’ve only had 2 trolls of my own, really, one a couple years ago, who was a psycho gun nut before psycho gun nuts were in fashion, and one just recently, who told me I was a “complete idiot” for expressing my (I thought humorous) distaste for my own Norwegian ancestry! Yes, the delete button is a wonderful thing. Most people are “cool as hell” and will disagree with you, if they do, with civility.
Wanderoneday beat me to it! I was going to pretend to be a troll! Great post! I run into those ppl on Twitter sometimes…
Twitter can be terrible about trolls. There is so little transparency there, so many people using pseudonyms. It’s difficult sometimes to tell if the suspect account is a real person or a bot.
Grrr. bark. woof. Bad trolls.
Maybe you could help us re-write our instructions page. :-) How to have a different opinion without being a jackhole about it.
I love this post so much! Your line “dropping turds of hate in the backyards of total strangers” is just awesome. Well said!
Cowards with too much time on their hands. I don’t know how so many people out there sleep at night. Great post, Tara, great analogy.
“…dropping turds of hate in the backyards of total strangers?” Love this line. Couldn’t agree with you more.
While I don’t get the trolls, I do get a lot of people offering me “unique business opportunities” or asking my advice on their sites, which are usually dating…or *ahem*…sites.
I wish this could go viral. Comparing trolls to dogs is great (:
Love the scatalogical methaphors. Perfect. I’ve never seen this, but maybe it’s because I stay around such nice people at Trifecta, Yeah Write and Ketchup With Us. I feel sheltered. Thanks for the education.
The saddest thing about trolls is that the worse cases that I’ve seen were directed mainly at mothers of special needs kids. These women, who try to do the best they can for their children, are called horrible names and even their children are targets. It’s unconscionable.
When I see those nasty comments, I’m always very thankful that life has not twisted me into something so ugly that I take pleasure in, not only being miserable, but making others miserable as well. And your analogy is spot on.
Your content sucks….. just kidding – I love your blog! I am glad that wordpress seems to be mostly free of trolls though. From what I know of my husband/brother/father, some people just like to “stir the pot” and post a contrary view point just to get a rise out of other people. They might not actually disagree at all, but they just do it because they can. Preventing anonymous commenters goes a looooong way to discouraging trolls though. They love being trolls until they can be identified as a troll in real life.
My heart about stopped for a second, thought I had opened the troll gates. HA! I think anonymity is a big thing for trolls, they can hide and make their nasty remarks without fear of retribution. They are cowards.
Sorry didn’t mean to give you a heart attack there :) But I think that’s why every website makes you log in nowadays to post a comment. It’s a pain in the butt sometimes for those of us who just want to contribute a comment once in a great while, but I suppose it is worth it to keep the flood of trolls out.
Though I must admit, all this talk of trolls has me picturing cranky guys, because they are guys most of the time, sitting in front of their computers with a poof of pink hair on top of their head and a sparkly jewel in their belly button! Do you remember seeing those troll toys from the 1990s? Perhaps if you picture online trolls as those funny looking toys, they’ll get under your skin a little less!
Yes! Those wild-haired, barefoot trolls. That is the perfect mental image.
ah, thank you for explaining to me what ‘trolling’ is – now I get it!
I have to think that there are just a lot of people out there who are REALLY bored at work and in front of a computer. It’s an unfortunate part of human nature that being provocative can be fun; easy to take it too far.
Amen! Great analogy. Many times I kick myself for reading comments on-line. Anonymity makes people say the worst stuff!
“play nice, or go home.” exactly! “They are full of shit and are dropping steaming piles of turds everywhere.” – well said. i rarely get these comments but when i do, it’s quite annoying at most. really, their pointlessness puzzles me too. quite pathetic. i love this post ^^
I couldn’t agree more! I’ve seen troll comments on national news stories, which is one reason I don’t read those comments anymore. (The other reason is that if the comments aren’t from trolls, and people really feel that much hate, I see no hope for humanity.) I haven’t encountered them on my blog (thankfully) but I did see a troll comment on a blog I read. Really don’t understand them and the need to spread hate.
I can’t read comments on news articles either. The intolerance and hatred is so vicious. I can only hope that these are knee-jerk reactions and not what these people really believe. If it is real, our society is very sick.
Agree completely! I’ll still read blog comments because, like you said, they can be policed but I refuse to read the comments on news web sites…especially with the national climate as it is.
Your words are brilliant and truthful as always…
I couldn’t agree more! Well said!
Amen, sister!
Trolls do what they do because they are emotionally stunted individuals who feel powerless in the real world. This gives them the attention they crave. Nothing upsets a troll more than being ignored (except for the rare cases of successful counter trolling in which they rage quit and leave in a huff, having been vanquished).
well said :)
OMG,I had completely forgotten that they exist here in the writing/blogsphere too!I have been playing some designing games for the last two years & have sen some nasty ones -no idea what pleasure they get-we even designed some rooms exclusively for them-boy,it was fun doing that contest,lol!Loved your piece-apt choice of words Tara & I completely agree with your rule:-)
I couldn’t agree more. Well said. Unfortunate we have to deal with these *&$Y@^*’s…yeeh…*gets horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach*. Do you know, I once had somebody write a hate article filled with nastiness and vitriol and venom on their blog about me…huh…yeeh…what some people will do…UGH. Best thing to do is to just ignore it and not respond, in that case. You never know who’s out there on the internet…there’s all sort of whackos and sick, sick, sick, twisted bleeps in the world…yeesh. *shakes head*. Internetting (made up a word…heh heh :) ), so to speak, is a risk you take, putting stuff out there. There’s also the problem of spammers and of copyright violators and plagiarists too, which is of special concern to those of us who put our work out there where anyone can copy and steal it and post it verbatim on their own websites and claim it as their own…Lotta risks out there. But then if you think like that, you can never blog, so…I dunno… :(
There’s a special place in hell for a plagiarizer. I’ve had the same person steal content from me twice, kept claiming she didn’t realizing she was doing anything wrong. I guess when you decide to put your work and words out on the Internet, that is just one of the risks.
There will always be jerks.
Oh my goodness, I had someone steal content from my professional website this last week – she populated her *entire* site with it. And, what a muppet, she wrote notes to her web designer at the top, saying, “This is plagiarised but it’s good so I might customise it.”
Well, hello, screen-shots! They, and a carefully worded email convinced her to remove the content…
*glowers*
Even without identifying my plagiarizer, my faithful readers and friends found her. It was a bloody feeding frenzy. She too removed the offending posts. I was prepared to take legal action against her. Screen shots are always wise in those cases.
Good! There’s no excuse for stealing someone else’s work – it’s so appalling that I’m not surprised your readers went after her like a pack of sharks. Let’s hope it taught her a lesson!
Eek! That’s totally frightening. I’m glad she was found out.
Haha, loved this post. And your unapologetic stance on comments here on your blog: good for you! My blog, my rules! x
The pointlessness confounds me, too. I don’t understand why someone would spend precious hours of their lives trolling on the internet.
“hate turds” OH YEAH. That is awesome.
I agree with you. Sometimes, its hard to tell a troll for the rainbows, though.