Trolling - The story of Hitler McSatan

General Off-Topic Discussion
1

Once upon a time…
No, wait. That’s no way to begin this tale. What’s the other way? Oh, yes:

It was a dark and stormy night, when Hitler McSatan was born. He was born the only child of Hitler and Satan, and as Hitler McSatan grew up, they taught him everything they knew about how to exterminate and torture people, with pleanty of child battering to ensure that he became an agressive and cruel person. …but when it came to destroying the world, Hitler McSatan didn’t just imagine camps and nuclear weapons. He also included Interactive Fiction into his vile plans, to make the people suffer and despair.

…and so did it come to pass, that Hitler McSatan found his way to an internet forum, not unlike this one, where he needed advice on how to program in order to bring about his evil scheme. In the off-topic section, he often wrote passionately about how to hurt innocent kittens, because that was his favourite subject, and he hated everyone who didn’t. Often he would find himself expressing his disgust for other people. Why did they have to open their foul mouths in the first place, when it was so clear that his opinions were the only ones who mattered?

On this forum, was also the cute little girl Alice McBumbum, who was born from two understanding parents. She was only twelve years old, and loved horses. (This is what she looked like: dontfierme.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/jdiz.jpg ) She soon read Hitler McSatan posts, and she started to cry. She cried and cried and cried, and there was no end to her innocent tears. Her parents did the best to comfort her, and they even called in a doctor, but he said that there was nothing he could do, and that it was possible that Alice McBumbum would be traumatized for life. Luckily there was anti-depressants, so she was soon back to her normal happy self again.

Instead of crying, Alice McBumbum found new ways to cope with Hitler McSatan: Laughter. She figured that as Hitler McSatan was not only a mean person, but also an aggressive one, she could bother him until he exploded and began sounding much like Donald The Duck about jews and whatever. …so whenever he posted in threads about things like Before and After rules, she tried to sneak in mentions of the jews in them, trying to spark a delightful reaction in him, to reveal his true nature for everyone, and then she would go: “See, everone? He’s actually a troll! There’s a jew-hating troll on these forums!” In turn, being called a troll instead of a mighty Führer, served to infuriate Hitler McSatan even more, and soon every thread on that little forum burned with Hitler McSatans fury, because it was all his fault.

The End trollface

2

(I wrote this story just to demonstrate what a troll actually is, because there’s a few people on the internet who doesn’t understand that a troll isn’t some guy with unpopular views who makes you cry, but someone who deliberately tries to get a rise out of people just for the sake of getting a rise out of them.)

3

If this is about the thread I think this is about, then as I pointed out, the post did seem trollish, because it didn’t seem like an unpopular view; it seemed like trying to get a rise out of people, specifically people who’d come in from another community to announce something they were doing.

I get that your style is inflammatory at times, and seen in the light of your later apology, the posts I’m talking about come out as being rather thoughtless, in that “if you’d stopped to really read and think about what you wrote and how other people would take it, you probably would have written something else”. Happens to everyone.

Basically, we respond to what we see, it’s only natural. If your usual manner, as you’ve often claimed, is “mean” and possibly abrasive… well, people will respond the same way.

None of this is really necessary, by the way, not even this thread. If you don’t want to be labelled as a troll, simply don’t post inflammatory things outside context and without proper explanation of what you’re doing… and this is pretty much social common sense, really.

I mean, if the thread I’m talking about had happened in real life - guy comes in, announces an event, you start saying what you say about his language - you’d have been lucky not to be punched in the face. And not necessarily by the other guy.

4

No, the story wasn’t about you at all. Well… …it was barely about you. You were just the hundredth person who seemed to possess that misconception. This story is about the internet in general, because there’s a huge danger to letting forums declare unpopular speech to be trolling, because that threatens to turn the internet into some kind of ugly socialdemocratic brainwashing machine. It’s not about you at all. It’s about the abstract misconception. …although I’m pretty sick and tired of people (Again, not you.) trying to figure out if I’m a troll or not on this forum - Jesus Christ. Is there a full siege of trolls on this forum that I’m not aware of? I didn’t check when the last time was that Pudlo haunted these forums, but enough with the suspicions already. I’m just an angry, stupid guy.

There’s a reason why I don’t have any friends. :stuck_out_tongue:
Yes, I’ll do my best to not be mean, but I actually start to make involuntary faces and odd muffled sounds In Real Life, whenever somebody mentions how German is such an obvious global language. That language really annoys the heck out of me. (Every freaking movie they have to freaking dub!)

5

Surely on this forum you’d be a Grue.

6

Yes, but again, this story wasn’t about me. It’s an example of what a troll is and what it isn’t. This is about two made up people that serve only to prove a point.

7

Hmm. I dunno, my sword’s glowing pretty brightly right now… And thanks for clarifying that Alice McBumbum and Hitler McSatan are made up people, that totally clears things up. :wink:

8

takes your flashlight and puts it under my chin:
The thread I made before that, was actually about you. I just called you Persephone, but it’s actually a clever deconstruction of you on a personal level. Search your feelings - you know it to be true. :smiling_imp:

9

It depends on what your intent is. I’ve enjoyed talking to you, because you have a good sense of humor, when it’s turned in the right direction. But, if you’re talking about making friends, one thing I’ve learned in life is that you make friends because of common interest. Once you get out of high school, people are busy. Friendships dry up. If you can find a common interest, let’s say, for the sake of argument… umm… interactive fiction? :smiley: Then, you’ll find friends. But if you don’t know someone well, and you post something that’s argumentative, disruptive, or derogatory, that’s how you make enemies. It’s because they don’t know you well enough to figure out if you’re being sarcastic, or honest, or trying to get under their skin. Either way, if you’re going wildly off topic, then you’re trolling for a response, rather than contributing to the discussion.

10

If a hundred people are accusing you of being a troll, then you should probably check:

  1. Your context - is your voiced opinion wildly antithetical to everyone around you? (For example, someone blindly expressing extreme pro-life views on a pro-choice forum, or vice versa, would likely be dubbed a troll, whether or not the label is really appropriate.)

  2. Your context, again - are the hundred people reliably accusing other apparently non-trollish people of being trolls? If so, then it’s not you; it’s something weird about the environment.

  3. Yourself - because if everyone around you isn’t completely out of sync with you, and if they’re not accusing random passersby of being trolls, then something you do must be encouraging them to treat you as a troll. (Alternate possibility: a hundred people got together on private messages and decided to accuse a totally normal forumite of being a troll. This seems relatively unlikely.)

Has this ever happened to you in other online communities?

11

But I’m not even looking to make any sort of social contact here. I’m obviously not looking to make enemies, but not friends either, because friends are people who you can meet up with and do stuff. I like Mostly Useless, because to me he’s funny and lighthearted, but that’s it. Mostly Useless could probably be some serious dude who tries really hard to make people take him seriously, but I wouldn’t know that, because 95% of what we see of a person that we don’t meet face to face, is our own image and conception of that person. I like to be argumentative, because I consider that to be helpful and constructive.

Anyway, it’s a good thing that I don’t get along on a person level with people on forums. I’m stuck enough to forums as it is, and that’s not healthy.

12

Other people don’t get to decide whether somebody is a troll or not. It’s that simple. Either the troll is doing it deliberately, or he’s not.
Appearing to be a troll, isn’t a fault. That’s like saying that a hundred bullies can’t be wrong. These people could just simply not assume that there’s an army of legendary trolls at their doorstep, but they don’t, and they’re at fault for these assumptions.
If somebody gets lost and wanders into an opposite forum, he’s just lost. Possibly he’s looking to do what you are meant to do on forums: Argue and discuss the topic, instead of joining some sort of cultish online club.

I’ll tell you guys why you do it:

It’s in the human nature to single out people to piss on. In a social circle, the one guy keeping things together, is the one that people distance themselves from, because that distancing makes that circle exclusive. The whole of humanity calls itself civilized because “at least they’re not like those apes - just look at those guys, not even being able to use forks or spoons”.

It’s also because you don’t want to understand other people. Ignorance is bliss, so when somebody comes along and states or thinks something that you don’t agree with, then it’s simpler to just dismiss him as a troll, rather than considering that he might have a point, or at least believing himself to be right. You assume that you being right is so obvious, that people not sharing your obvious views, must be arguing them just to piss you off. They can write pages upon pages trying to explain their views for you - which is the ultimate proof that they’re being trolled by your ignorance - but it’s still more comfortable to your psyche to think they’re trolls.

Finally, you think that other people are smart, so that if somebody has been judged by a hundred people already, then they must surely know what they’re talking about. That’s herd behavior, and it’s only true if we’re dealing with arguments below the 100 IQ line, because that’s by definition the average level of intelligence. If you consider yourself a smart person, you don’t go along with “the majority”.

13

Stopped reading after this sentence.

14

Pfft. This forum doesn’t need any more Jew lovers. Go back to Africa.

15

…because there’s nothing wrong with you - that’s just impossible. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s meant as a stereotype. I bet some satanists could probably take offense too, if they wanted to.

16

Topics about the meaning of trolling don’t deserve to exist. Locking this now.