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griffin tucker
Canberra
Australia

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are we feeding 'trolls' the wrong food?

often i find in anything where an extremely popular website or part of a website has a functionality to comment anonymously, no matter the topic, 'trolls' appear.

of course if you knew they were 'trolling,' you would not feed them anything, right?

i think this is the wrong way to go. these people are not 'trolls,' but in fact human. feeding them the wrong food is one thing, but not feeding them at all could be considered just as bad.

what suggestions do you have to 'feed' or talk to someone who is trolling, and curb their behaviour?

Topics: anti-social behaviour moral psychology psychology troll trolling trolls

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Dylan Gonzalez
- +1
Oct 20 2011: Fact is, some people find it funny to piss people off. If they piss no one off, then it is no longer funny. My best solution to combating "trolls" is to ignore them. For some odd reason we as human beings believe that by arguing with someone we can somehow change that other person's opinion. My favorite example of this is the classic "atheist versus christian" argument. If we learn to ignore that impulse we have of arguing with others, then not only would "trolls" get bored and cease to "troll", but we would also begin to live more easy, fulfilling lives.
- Matthieu Miossec 100+
  - +1
  TED Translator Associate
  
  Oct 21 2011: All true. Except I don't think that religious discussions are always futile. I can think at least two people who became atheists after the many conversations I and others have had with them. If you see a willingness to discuss religions, I don't see why you wouldn't. Maybe religion fights on youtube and facebook are futile.
Evaristo Rivera
- 0
Oct 14 2011: first off i mean no insult when i say that you mean curve not curb. it is merely the troll within me. but i have had this troll within me (note i do not use quotation marks as i acknowledge it as a very real terminology since it is used by a vast amount of people) since i can remember. The question that should be posed here is not how should we change trolls but better yet should we attempt to change trolls. For within all humans is there not a troll within us all and within those who have a higher capacity to troll is there anything wrong with this? it is an innate instinct for humans to cause unnecessary conflict among one another. Here is the origin of the troll, basic fact, no matter where you go you will find someone who has an opposing mindset, in the case of most trolls it is merely using false and usually unfunny retorts but it remains nonetheless a human condition, other more advanced trolling methods are simple discussions like these on the TED forums i would hope to be able to say that the majority of us on here have a intellectual keenness to us and poke fun at each other (although we do not know each other, we do it for the same cause, this being to impose our beliefs upon someone else) by stating our beliefs/counterarguments. trolls have always existed within humanity and i dare to say it is only due to the advent of the internet that we have discovered just how many trolls there are. The internet has given us the power to survey websites with vast amounts of information. When speaking in terms of a survey you want the biggest possible sample group, where in the 1990's and prior we as a world were stratified by our location hence we could not survey the amount of trolls that existed, and now we have the internet where we have a sample group by the millions if not billions it comes with no doubt that we would find more and more trolls as more and more people gain access to the internet, i ask why change what, most likely, has always existed?
- griffin tucker 10+
  - 0
  Oct 16 2011: it seems, Evaristo Rivera, and correct me if i'm wrong, that you don't wish your behaviour to stop, but in fact you want to spread your behaviour to other people.
  
  do you think your trolling on the internet affects your quality of life in the real world?
  - Evaristo Rivera
    
    0
    Oct 16 2011: i shall correct you since, as i have dully noted, trolling ,as it has now come to be known as, is merely a higher degree of a natural behavioral response of wanting to either make oneself recognized through a feeble effort or as others might say merely a bit of a fit just for the hell of it, i never stated that i wish for such behavior to expand and extend around the globe. Seeing as you have misinterpreted i shall make my statement in a less complicated way, i understand that my explanations can sometimes be rather odd; since we are able to take note of more people's behavior rather than a small groups behavior (as a result of being unable to sample a larger group in the past due to a separated world) we now view not through a key hole but through the window(due to the internet) the real prominence of trolls throughout and around the world.
    
    I feel that yes it does change life in "the real world", but so does everything else i am a very high believer in the creation of alternate futures or ,as some view it, in the theory that every decision eliminates other alternate universes as they are no longer possible due to their elimination via a key action, in this same thought process i find that every single action and breath, any thing, no matter the insignificance, causes our future to change. These changes are more so like a snowflake rolling down a hill gaining a momentum and the increasing mass being the amount of change caused by the first small rolling snowball, where as a deliberate and profound decision starts out big and ends up beyond comprehension, hence the smaller is never noted as our small attention spans are drawn towards the greater more noticeable changes. So in the end i find the question of whether or not it is affecting me or another irrelevant.
Jacob Miller 10+
- +1
Oct 13 2011: I usually associate trolls with 12- 14 year olds on youtube. I don't even know how to begin to have a conversation with a functioning adult that does this.
Matthieu Miossec 100+
- 0
TED Translator Associate

Oct 12 2011: Trolls will always be fed. There's always someone to confront the trolls. Even if the more sensible ones among us ignore them, they're not going to starve anytime soon. Sometimes, I do like to throw them off their game if they're identifiably bad at trolling.
- Tyler Spriggs
  - +1
  Oct 12 2011: Lol we may not agree with gun laws but I fully agree here with you.
Gerald O'brian 50+
- 0
Oct 12 2011: I suggest you find more interesting thing to write about, you're an idiot.
Wait a minut, no you're not. What's with me?

I think trolling is like driving your car in a trafic jam. It's time-off from being a good person. The closed car and the web give security, give you a little cockpit from which you can be an ass without facing real confrontation.
Maybe this time-off is good. Or maybe it's disastrous. I don't know.
I try not to honk people too much, or cut their priority. But I do enjoy it when I do.
Is it about control, about mesure?
tishe Hires 10+
- 0
Oct 12 2011: This is an excellent question!
I have just learned the computer, recently, it's hard!
I am not a "troll?" I would not even, know how to be one.
I have learned, to go into webs and forums.
Yes, Mr, griffin, there are some, out here!
OKAY, what is trolling? (oh and why would a human waste their time? )
Oh no! I am becoming, one ?
With Respect to Ya!
Bob Shingles 10+
- +2
Oct 12 2011: I find that some forums or groups are too quick to label a poster as a troll if the poster does not agree with the common view point or is so enraged by the topic that their inflammatory comments are marked as trolling and they are dismissed.

On the other hand, "some men just want to watch the world burn."

Sometimes the first group can be engaged but, in the later case, I say it is indeed best not to give them fuel to burn.
- tishe Hires 10+
  - 0
  Oct 12 2011: It is an addiction,
  Mr. Bob, the internet is a popularity contest.
  It is an, intellectual contest.
  However, Ted has a concept, that will try to get every one to get to agree.
  With Respect to ya.

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