Truth in trolling

Was on a break reading through some of the aggressive GamerGate style @-replies to Martin Belam, when I ended up looking into a couple of accounts in more detail.

What I found really struck a chord with me on my experience of “trolling” and general negative behaviour online. These people are just desperate to feel like they are being heard and feel some kind of importance. And often that’s because of difficulties in their “real” life.

They’re attracted to journalists or other people with power because they know that these people have what they crave — after all, the “troll” is seeing that writing somehow. So if they can engage, they can feel slightly like peers.

I grew up out in the countryside but my Dad worked in technology — so we had things like the internet long before most people. As a result, I spent a fair bit of time on newsgroups then forums and online communities around games I enjoyed.

While I didn’t exactly have real tragedy in my life, I remember what it was like to want to join in and be part of that community — but often not quite understand how to participate. I didn’t have any real problems. But I still might act indignantly about someone else’s efforts to mod a game in a way I thought was a waste of time.

Ultimately, the way I ended up really joining in was to post threads which created value. I made one thread highlighting remakes of classic maps for the game. I made another which organised a pack of “skins” for characters, which we would then distribute.

The answer is to be constructive. But it’s hard. And on a platform like Twitter, possibly not really an option.

In the good old days, anyone could punch above their weight, reply to someone famous, say something witty — and it would probably reach far beyond their usual circles. But it feels more and more like that’s gone.

The powerful stay powerful and the weak can only wrestle any feeling of impact or cut-through by going for shock. Ironically, it’s similar to the case with journalists and their link-baity headlines sometimes.

The thing is: neither solve the real problem long term.