On Wed, 23 Mar 2022 21:20:58 -0400, Rin Stowleigh
<
rstowleigh@x-nospam-x.com> wrote:
On Wed, 23 Mar 2022 12:24:22 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson ><spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
I can understand the why of the shift, though. Back in Usenet's
heyday, a good troll could inflict their horrors on thousands -
potentially hundreds of thousands - of people. But Usenet - and forums
in general - have become so fragmented that most boards only have a
few hundred or dozens of readers; it's hardly worth the amount of work
it would take for a proper troll. So the purveyors of that art have
moved on to brighter pastures where their reach is greater (maybe to
GBNews or Fox? ;-).
My own definition of a troll back in the day was, as you said, mostly >synonymous with trawling. Usually it was someone who was going for a
high post count, to see how many responses they could get / how many
people they could annoy in a single thread, etc. Sometimes they just
seemed to derive satisfaction from annoying others. Personally I
believe many of them were satisfying a craving for attention they
couldn't get any other way.
What was different back then is that a lot of the *effective* trolling
that took place usually crept up on the reader in the sense that early
in the thread, it didn't reveal itself as a troll attempt. It
presented some intriguing or maybe controversial topic or stance. And
then slowly as you read or participated in the followup posts, it
started to become obvious that the poster had no intention of
participating in a productive discussion, and then this sinking
feeling set in like "fuck, I just got trolled" because of the time
invested in reading that far.
Skilled trolls knew how to spark and attract interest in thread >participation, while sending the thread, unnoticed, into a slow
downward spiral that always ended in regret for anyone who didn't
ignore what was being posted along the way.
"Trolls" these days mostly aren't that. I don't think the IQ level of
the average social media poster these days is on the same playing
field as, for example the average Usenet poster in say the early 90's.
And, it's probably only going to get worse for future generations, the
impact of the pandemic and the disruptions to in-school learning has >apparently substantially damaged formative academic years for an
entire generation, and I doubt the disruptions are going to find a
permanent end any time soon.
In addition to that, I think the advent of smartphones and social
media meant that being an ass behind a keyboard simply became
available to a much wider spectrum of people -- many of whom are
incapable of intentional, skilled trolling I mentioned above. What
they are capable of is using their phone to be an ass, and since that
doesn't take any skill, it becomes a favorite past-time of many.
While I won't go so far as to assert any vast difference in
intelligence (I've no data to make any such assumption), there
certainly was a significant difference in education levels. In those
ancient times, to troll on the Internet (or even local BBS forums)
there was a significantly higher barrier to entrance.
At best, you merely had to have the technical chops to navigate the
arcanities of computer technology (IRQs and DOS commands and Hayes/AT
modem configurations, oh my!), all without access to easy answers from Wikipedia or Google. And for most people, Internet access either was
through a university or through a job that demanded a degree. Few were
able to achieve either without mastering the ability to string their
thoughts together into a reasonable approximation of intelligent
conversation.
Nowadays, it's click-click-click and you're on the Internet; it's
literally so easy that children can do it, and - clever as some of
those enfant terrible may be - their ability to converse is
understandably limited. If so many modern 'trolls' sound like
children, it's because many of them actually are minors ... or only
have the education and literacy of the same.
But even more importantly, there has been a culture change on the
Internet. During the troll's heyday, the idea of netiquette - and that
one should heed it - was palpable. You just didn't post one-line
insults; it was an uncouth indicator of the author's own foolishness.
Trolls took their time to slowly hook their victims because any other
method was unthinkable.
Of course, the changing nature of the Internet affected this. In an
era where everybody's identity was attached to a valuable (often
expensive) account, it was easier for moderators to shut down the
worst fools; the worst could get banned from the Internet for their
actions. There were fewer forums too; modern trolls can jump from
platform to platform; the worst they may suffer is no longer being
able to post to some random website. It's hardly a loss when there are
millions - billions! - more websites to exploit. But getting kicked
off Usenet in the 80s and early 90s? That was a major hit, and there
were fewer alternatives. Be an ass too often, and you've cut yourself
from the entirity of your audience.
I can't say I really miss the trolls of the elder days - they was a
reason we compared them to the ugliest of mythological creatures - but
I do have some appreciation for their talent. It's why I rarely
bequeath their modern descendants by the title; they don't deserve it.
Modern 'trolls' are little more than foul-mouthed attention-seeking
deviants who - at best - deserve pity for their risible attempts to
enflame their audience, but are mostly better left ignored; they've
not put any effort into their work, so why should we expend any energy
on their behalf?
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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