Troll in the basement!

[inverarity]

We all know the ancient wisdom of the internet: "Do not feed the troll." I.e., don't respond to trolls, don't let them bait you, don't give them the attention they so desperately want. If everyone just ignored a troll, it would eventually get bored and go away disappointed.

And this never, ever works.

In all my years on the internet, I've never seen a dedicated and persistent troll actually fade away by being ignored. Why? Because there will always be someone who just can't ignore it. It's just not realistic to think that on a newsgroup or email list or forum with dozens if not hundreds of people, every single one of them will be able to refrain from responding.

I withdraw increasingly from online interactions because the urge to want to punch people through the internet is too strong.

Comments

[swissmarg]

I'm the mod of a forum that is plagued by a troll, but am not allowed to discipline him in any manner (I wouldn't even have the permissions to ban him) because the forum is owned by a company that has set a policy of allowing anyone to post, as long as they are not posting pornography or anything really offensive. All of the longstanding forum members know to ignore him, but the sad thing is he always makes a very unpleasant "welcome" for any new posters, and it takes a very tough skin to get through it. So it's sometimes a tough situation, where on the one hand you want to allow freedom of speech, but it can end up being a matter of interpretation whether someone's posts are productive or not. I basically think he's an elderly guy, lonely, and sees his provoking as the only way he can get a reaction or someone to interact with him, and he's probably that way in real life too, which is why he has to resort to the internet for a "social life". I have to admit, we went a couple of weeks without any posts from him, and I was already feeling relieved that maybe he had died. But then he came back. >.