Deconstructing the Troll

By  John C. Mahler

Writing ignorant abuse to garner links, or trolling, looks to be the fastest-growing hobby on the Internet, and I've been studying the phenomenon to death. I intend to do my own troll, but I wanted to have a better understanding of what constitutes a really great troll.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of troll. Faux trolls can be set up by authors promoting books or newsletters, or they can be periodicals posing as trolls to get attention from bloggers. To me, the true troll is an ignorant recitation of prejudices, designed to undermine debate. I've deconstructed over 100 such trolls. This analysis led me to produce some formulae for a successful troll. Here are my Eight Rules for the Perfect Troll.

1. The right attitude. Make it clear that you spend the day, week, or month sitting on your rump reciting your prejudices instead of reading others' thoughts and perspectives. Or if you actually work, make it clear that you are writing the troll at work, because you hate thinking.

2. Community. Prove that you're a dedicated troller by citing at least five stereotypes. Repeat them ad hominem. Don't ever include examples or links, or anything at all to justify your absurd prejudices. If you're trying to jazz up your troll, number the points. Sentence teasers work well too. "The right attitude" or "Community" or "Rich language"

3. Humility. Troll weekly. If you miss a week, use the next weeksentire column to abuse profusely. Avoid explanation in detail or fascinating adventures. Make sure to rant about how dumb blogging is and why everyone should avoid it. Try not to show your fear though.

4. Rich language. Show that you're an insensate chained spirit by adding a lot of banality to your text. Cliched headlines and general abuse show people that you are an derivative writer not bound by the silly conventions of logic—those lousy rules that make you have to write something inspiring when you should be getting a check from PC Magazine just for joining cliches end to end!

5. Jargon. Pepper your text with big ugly ads from Intel, Dell, Micron, and other opportunites for getting spam. Make sure the only links on the page are paid for, and never give useful or relevant information, just contain buzzwords.

6. Controversy. Make sure your troll page has a clunky, registration-required comment system, and hound those you attack to use it. If they say anything cogent, censor their posts, make a public outcry and demand to be returned to the place of honor, or threaten to take their posts off your list. Go through this routine weekly with someone. Send them spam after they register

7. Humor. Give your troll a high tone name, perhaps even using a word you don't understand. "Deconstructing the Blog."

8. Specialize. If you want to trumpet the fact that you're a clueless fossil, include a photo of yourself in brown shirt with wire rimmed spectacles. No-one thinks of these as with connotaions of lying propogandists any more.

Finally, for all trollers, consider using a Romantic Composer's name as your own.

A couple of reasons

Well, I was away at NAB this week, hence my relative silence. Also, it is Tax deadline day on Monday for those of us privileged to work in the USA (or to work overseas and pay US taxes).
As a tea-drinking Englishman in the US who can't vote, the cry of 'no taxation without representation' comes to mind at this time of year...

Great Gonzo reading in an article that shows how you can model human behaviour with the right assumptions (people are different; they have disparate friendship groups).

Gonzo Comment

I sure hope this blog is getting read, because while Gonzo Marketing surely struck a chord with most here, it still needs explication in the world beyond. To wit - I don't seem to have gotten the whole church-and-state, renaissance guild, "Slate" concept across to TCS columnist James Miller with this post (the earliest on 4/10; see his comment). Anyone who feels like chiming in is most welcome. (And, anyone who feels like giving me a clue as to why my permalinks still point to several posts at at time, instead of just one - even though I've applied Phil Ringnalda's fix - gets a virtual hug.)

I'm no fan

Hey Tom--good post. I've found that talk is thin everywhere this week. It's spring break here in GA--maybe other places too? We gotta come up with a gonzo publicity stunt or something.

As for Office Depot, I hate them for another reason. I once ordered two printer cartridges from their online store (is that still in biz?) that they never delivered, that showed a deliver status on their site of "On the Truck" for more than four months, and that they NEVER credited me for. So I can't take my business anywhere else because I already have. See ya at Staples!

jeneane

Bye Bye Office Depot

Is anybody reading this blog anymore?

I wanted to broadcast my bitch against the office supply giant to a wider audience than that of my personal blog, but judging from the paucity of posts here lately, I'm wondering if this an exercise in futility. My initial thought was that maybe everyone had defected to blogtank, but the discussion's been almost as thin over there. Maybe everybody's on spring break, or recovering therefrom?

Anyway, to anyone who might still be out there, here is my Office Depot rant:

If you enjoy the new, highly intelligent, quality cop show--The Shield--on FX, you might want to join me in withdrawing your patronage of Office Depot--in the event you're a customer. I've been buying from them for years and it pains me to change my habits. But I feel that I have no choice when they've been so stupid and prudish as to have withdrawn their advertising from such an outstanding show.


If young children were their target, I could accept it. But what's more adult than office supplies? Bye, Bye. See you at Staples

if you'd like to express your displeasure at their stupid move, you can write to the following:

Jocelyn Carter-Miller
Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

Bruce Nelson
CEO


Office Depot Corporate Support Center
2200 Old Germantown Road
Delray Beach, FL 33445

We create the possibility of community simply by calling it thus.

It is an act of assertion, as much as the assertion of equal rights (of equality under God or the Law) is an act of assertion. To declare oneself a sovereign individual is an act of assertion.

Whenever we say "we" then we create the possibility of community.

Paradoxically, only an *I* can say "we" - but this I won't let that stop us. For in the agreement, in the answering "oui", the "we" is made real. And only two are required to form an agreement.

All of language is about agreement, the symbols must have common meaning to be honestly useful.

One can declare oneself responsible but only in agreement with others can one be made accountable. Only in agreement with others on fundamental symbols can the declaration of responsibility have any meaning beyond the individual, i.e. have communal meaning. This is a necessary antecedent.

Perhaps the most visceral objection to much of what passes for marketing is the abuse of established symbols to convey errant (and often enough deliberately so) meanings:

"Buy our minty fresh toothpaste and you'll get screwed!"

This is of course the formula for most advertising: "Buy product-X" and "You'll get screwed!" are conveyed as Cause and Effect.

This is why BMW sponsors James Bond movies.

The unintended honesty of the formula (the secondary meaning of "getting screwed") is simply one of lifes little ironies.

"Voice" as I see it used here is a synonym for honest communication, speech without hidden agenda or antagonistic interest in a particular outcome. It is communication that one trusts to use agreed symbols honestly, and thus it is speech that reveals our commonality, which is our humanity and all that this entails. It must do, since we are human and if we communicate honestly this will be revealed in our voices.

It is a glaring contrast to the attempts of artifical legal constructs through marketing to presume to human qualities which they not only do not and can not possess but to which they are often in direct opposition.

It stands in similar contrast against individuals who make pretense (deliberate deceit, again) of having inhuman qualities of inerrancy, of goodness, of infallibility, or perfection. Some of our current crop of politicians spring to mind. (Why should that be so? Could it be that marketing and politics are becoming the same cynical practice of deliberate deceit?)

Although Gonzo Marketing may be completely wrong about communities and their effects on marketing as an art and a science, it is equally possible that the practitioners of traditional marketing methods and measures may also be completely wrong about the longevity and significance of communities.

I could care less about their simplifying assumptions; I value the communities I've become part of on the 'net, and I know what I spend on them in terms of time, effort, intelligence, emotion, and yes, money, and whatever else you want to mention or measure.


President Gas is up for President - The Psychedelic Furs in prophetic mode, 80's style.
(I've been taking the advice of my memetic cleansing advisor.)

Tom does it again

Tom, this is a beautiful look at a well-thought-out piece by Shirky. I never made it a secret that I think Clay and the gonzo believers approach things from different points in the universe--him from the outside in and us from the inside out. That analysis doesn't lend answers to all of the questions and unknown potential of the net drives Clay into deeper analysis, where he seeks answers to unfathomable quandries, while we, on the other hand, tumble within the vastness and connectedness of the net, open to and welcoming to a reality skewed.

So, Tom, in addition to saying you offer an amazing take on this topic, I also say to you, thank you for finally giving some meaning to the allied title of my blog:

"There are souls in the world whom one will never meet or know, but to whom one - we - are allied by something far more binding than overt modes of human interaction, or possibly even common ties of language, country, or religion."

Yah, that's what I meant when I named it.

coup de des

Dave Rogers points to a new piece by Clay Shirky that addresses some of the issues bandied about a while ago on this blog when Clay was still in evidence. But he takes a somewhat different tack, beginning from some math models to distinguish his notion of community from passive, anonymous large audences.

Shirky is pretty adamantly convinced that there is a numerical death sentence upon the life of a community - which he defines as groups whose members actively communicate with one another. He also appears to think that viral communication occurs not within or between communities themselves, but flow from communities to mass media back to communities. He therefore does not see the phenomenon of blogging as a means of overcoming the "great divide" between communities and audience.

I think any effort to understand changes to mass media resulting from technology needs to get past Clay, who stands like Cerberus at hell's door, wagging his three heads, two of them filled with math and frightfully excellent logic. The third head might be his heel of Achilles, as it were. It's where he seems immune to the possibility that something other than active connectedness is necessary for full-fledged community. There are souls in the world whom one will never meet or know, but to whom one - we - are allied by something far more binding than overt modes of human interaction, or possibly even common ties of language, country, or religion. The wild-ass wager of gonzo might just be that "we" create communities through "voice" and that these ties do create possibilities of large-scale social networks that defy the very high odds he lays out for us so well.

Comment trouvez-vous assez temps de les entendre?

Vous avez assez CD's d'empleinir quatre iPods la.

Small pieces.com & Bombast crossed the channel.together.
Smallpieces for kids en V.F.
Would need some french links to finish a translation ;-)

French Tracklist - Vous n'aurez pas les moyens de vous l'offrir ;-)

Fuck Celine Dion !

Colette N°3  
Portrait d'un styliste sonore . 
Signe la compile la plus snob du moment. Inabordable (28 €). 
Le coffret 1,2,3 figure en série limitée et numérotée. 
Un créatif culturel ou un mondain ?
Michel est un chercheur de pépites... :
Tracklist et vente sur le site de Colette. 
Michel, je crois qu'aux USA certains pourraient bien t'entendre bloguer sur les circuits de distribution du gonzo.  ;-)

coucou ! désolé de revenir si tard...
Bonjour Denise. "Joke" = farce, plaisanterie, rigolade".

Pour la définition du blog en français, je vous recommande trois liens récents en français :
douzelunes "Un carnet de notes virtuel et partagé".
Le coup de langue de la grande rousse : "Weblog, joueb, blogue, alouette !
et le dernier très sérieux ;-) : Matthieu Pommier : "Vie, coutumes et usages du weblog au début du XXI° siècle"

Avant de filer, avez-vous lu l'article tout neuf d'Henry Copeland ? Article écrit hier de Paris et pas con du tout...
"Talk is cheap and so is blogging"
Obligé de vous laisser. Henry insiste sur le terme "useless".
J'ai du boulot. La poste française vient juste de me déposer "Smallpieces". Repos au soleil ! A + tard. xtof.

That is the answer

What they should be doing is making the CDs more attractive to computer users by using the Enhanced CD stuff, so when you put it in the computer you get lyrics, photos, extra personal bits like you suggest. I hadn't thought of them varying this component to create collectibles, but that makes even more sense.

Almost all CDs published in the UK have these on, and production houses have got the cost down to a few thousand a CD to do it. (It's even cheaper if you do it yourself).

Add value instead of subtracting it.

The Golden State (hear that?)

Only a handful of cases have been decided under California's Penal Code Section 502. Lacking judicial guidance on how the statute should work when applied to the Celine scenario, a court would likely look to the legislative history and intent, part of which is spelled out in the statute: "It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this section to expand the degree of protection afforded to individuals, businesses, and governmental agencies from tampering, interference, damage, and unauthorized access to lawfully created computer data and computer systems. The Legislature finds and declares that the proliferation of computer technology has resulted in a concomitant proliferation of computer crime and other forms of unauthorized access to computers, computer systems, and computer data. The Legislature further finds and declares that protection of the integrity of all types and forms of lawfully created computers, computer systems, and computer data is vital to the protection of the privacy of individuals as well as to the well-being of financial institutions, business concerns, governmental agencies, and others within this state that lawfully utilize those computers, computer systems, and data." (Emphasis added.) In other words, "each" may be an option. A prosecutor could gauge that better than I.

But why limit it to criminal penalties (which require a D.A. or the Attorney General to get involved), when civil actions for compensatory damages - including "any expenditure reasonably and necessarily incurred by the owner or lessee to verify that a computer system, computer network, computer program, or data was or was not altered, damaged, or deleted by the access" - and injunctive or other equitable relief also are authorized for each computer owner who suffers damage or loss from activities barred by the statute? [Subd.(e)(1).] A court hearing such a case also has the discretion to award attorneys' fees to the injured party. [Subd. (e)(2).] If you listen closely, you can almost hear the "tap tap" of legal keyboards, cruising the Celine fan sites, seeking out the plaintiff class.

-Later: Better move to CA first, Jeneane, then give it a go.

another reason not to listen to Celine Dion?

Like I needed one. Thanks for this update Kevin. I hope we can garner a class action suit against her. I'd go out and buy it today and crash one of my computers if it would help. The more I think the music industry heavies can't get any stupider, the more I am proved wrong. Don't get me started. I am married to someone who has dealt with this corrupt industry all his life at many levels, me by his side. Signed to MCA for many years, I could scan and link to original contracts that would make you puke. Goes like this: We parade you around the world, work you like mules, and we give you nothing but notariety in return. What, you think you deserve more? What publishing? Oh that's nothing. Don't worry your head over that. You're artists. We'll take care of the business.

The recording industry today is nothing short of a pyramid scheme. And the few who reap the financial rewards at the top must defeat anything that threatens that structure (i.e. the net). To spread the control around the middle and bottom of that structure would mean the destruction of an entire industry as it was built. And I would love to be there to see it come crashing down.

My husband and I work our business within a corrupt industry the best we can. We were pro-napster people, seeing it as an incredible tool, a digital library at our fingertips--what was that chord change? How did that section go? Ah. Would have paid for it too.

As for the hubub over giving music away, I see nothing wrong with throwing a few tunes from a CD online for download, free. You like my work, you'll buy. If you want to put those two or three tunes on your own CD with two or three from another artist, and another, why should I as an artist, label, or record company care? It's the best promotional gimick going.

And how is it any different from what Amazon does with books? You can get up to 20 sample pages for some books, free for the reading, you like it go ahead and order it. If not, go read pieces from another book. How is that so different? Because it doesn't open in acrobat and let you save it to your hard drive? You could do screen clips if you wanted to. But you don't want to. If you like the work, you're going to BUY it. You want to see the jacket, you want it in your collection, on your bookshelf. You want to refer to it in its entirety from time to time.

Here's an out there idea for the taking--you heard it here first. Fill the dead air between tunes with value-add stuff (interviews with artists, outakes from studio sessions, cooking with Bono in his kitchen--conversations, humor, political statements, whatever). Give away 2-4 tunes free for downloading. The real macoy CD has all the tracks plus this new between track shit that makes it worth buying the disc.

this betwen track stuff becomes the meme. Right? Has anyone but me heard the Buddy Rich on the Bus bootleg that's been floating around for years? Buddy ranting at his band day and night, with explatives even RageBoy hasn't uttered yet? Or the Ray Charles gig where the drunk guy comes off on stage and Ray spends a good two minutes trying to get someone to "take the man off the stage."

This is the stuff that could make CDs more than 11 separate tracks joined together by silence. And something that could bolster the worth of any compilation. And how about we get really cool (my husband has no idea I'm saying this shit), and we have more than one version of that stuff between air--Hey man, did you get the one with Sting swearing at his dog or the one with him talking on the phone?

Hell, I don't know. I'm on a rant today. Tell me I'm insane and I'll shut up. Or I probably won't.

Celine Dion could crash your computer

It seems that the music industry is determined to go beyond Gonzo and use Bozo marketing.

Sony have released the latest Celine Dion album using a 'protection' technique that crashes PCs and Macs when the disc is inserted.

Denise, are they liable under this law for $10,000 and 16 months for each computer they crash, or just once?

(4) Knowingly accesses and without permission adds, alters, damages, deletes, or destroys any data, computer software, or computer programs which reside or exist internal or external to a computer, computer system, or computer network.
(5) Knowingly and without permission disrupts or causes the disruption of computer services or denies or causes the denial of computer services to an authorized user of a computer, computer system, or computer network.

As ever, this will do nothing to prevent the CD being ripped and distributed, but lots of people will be upset by this when they put he CD into their computer.

No, in French the word for "joke" is "englais" . . . .

Tee fucking Hee, an antipodean former British colony joke.

Anyway, last monday was my birthday and a bus driver rammed the back of my four wheeled pride and joy, so that's either a warning not to invest too much sentiment in material things or not to expect your birthday to necessarily suck any less than any other day.

Take your pick.

I am comforted by the law of absolute liability that accrues to any driver hitting another vehicle from behind - hooray! Still, it puts a dent in your joy when you see that big orange bumper surging up in the rearview mirror.

How about that Beam, eh? Bit presumptive of him to assume that *he* is "people" I thought. For all we know he's a bot produced by the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

Indeed, for all *he* appears to know he is a bot produced by . . . . . . well, you get the picture.

Now lemme tell you a story
the Devil, he's a plan
Bag o bones in his pocket
Get anythin you want

More irrelevant nonsense that nevertheless somehow seems appropriate by Talking Heads, aka David Byrne and Friends.

Denver Fletcher
Head of Inappropriate Material Dismissals
blogtank

Bienvenue!

Is it true, Christophe, as Geoffrey Nunberg says, that en francais "blog" is the word for "joke?" If so, you must be having a good chuckle!

Cobblers

I only ever read a newspaper article when someone links to it. I never read one on paper.
On the web, we can know how many readers we have, how they found us, and roughly where they come from.
In paper they can indulge themselevs in the comforting illusion of the circulation figures, and pretend to themselves that they all read their column. (I just found out that my blog shows up high on searches for CBDTPA - I'll have to write some more reasoned rants about it - for example the Enron-style accounting of the 'losses' due to copying).

Boston Globe on Blogs and Micromarkets

Alex Beam writes for the Globe (quoting John Ellis of Fast Company): "'The golf stuff connects directly with about 35 people,' Ellis says. 'But those 35 people really are into it.'" Not that Beam is buying any of it. He exhorts would-be bloggers to give it a go by promising maybe they'll "even be mocked in a medium that people actually read." [Link: Library Stuff]

Merci Jeneane !

Hi all, hi rageboy.
A lot of work today. Like David, I really need to sleep...
Currently trying to find out new "french commutations", "hook" and "pro-create" french "gonzo spirits".

Yesterday, I found out a quite old french funky magazine (published in 1995 by Ariel Wizman - famous french gonzo guy).

Could we say the co-authors of the manifesto have "stolen" one of his "edito" n° 9 : ...

"C'est, selon la façon dont on le perçoit, l'ambition ou le manque d'ambition de ce journal, qui est fier de ressembler parfois à ce que l'internet a de plus utile et de plus délectable : LA CONVERSATION HUMAINE".... "Peace. Love. Rhino".

Gonzo spirits exist in France. But for most of them, it's a bit tough to be heard on french TV ;-)
Sorry for my very poor english. I have first to find out french copywriters.
Thankxxx. xtof.
New french partyblog running on http://www.elanceur.net. You are all welcome in the "international commutations block".

France is in the house

I've added Christophe Ducamp of elanceur.org to the team list. If you see posts in French, you will know that Christophe is talking to us, and to his colleagues in France who would like to follow our conversation as well. Perhaps Christophe or another team member can provide the English translation of his posts so we can keep up too.

Sorry I've been such a slouch lately. I had gotten rather mad at blogging and the whole notion that we might be changing the world here. Because it seems the more we blog, the more fucked up the world becomes. And I don't know if we're keeping it from being even more fucked up, or if the fucked-up-edness is a result of too many charged voices. Or what. I guess I don't know much these days. But I'll be back. I just have to get my head around what's new, which, I feel something is, but I can't quite define it yet.

Marek, we need a nice stream of consiousness world changing post from you about now. Are you back from Poland?

Blog on.

Nickles for Net Heads

If you didn't buy your copy of Gonzo Marketing through the EGR link to Amazon that chunks a small pourboire into the RageBoy coffers, then your purchase doesn't count and you will have to try again. I have expressed my irritation at this attitude with Mr. Boy. He complimented me on my ranting style. Now I gotta work on the screeds.

"Buzz"

Gonzo Marketing is 3,518 this morning on Amazon. Do you think there's a way to submit sufficient proofs of purchase to be politely excused from the next "you guys are a lower form of life than moldy toe-cheese" edition of EGR? (Nah, forget I asked. "Sufficient" might require leasing extra storage space. And just for the receipts...)

Kevin, thanks for the link to Thomas's site. Cause-oriented Gonzo - I think I read about that somewhere? Now, if we could only secure a partner for Thomas with influence, ahem, somewhat broader than our own. I like the artwork, especially The Tiger, and the fact that even Dad displays a piece, although "not officially a child."

Thomas Pacheco

Thomas Pacheco is a bright, loving, and happy seven-year-old who was diagnosed on March 7, 2002 with a rare cancer.
Thomas will lose his right eye and eye socket to this cancer, and will subsequently undergo at least six months of chemotherapy. This horrible course of treatment is Thomas's best hope, but he is fighting a rare and tenacious cancer with long-term survival rates of less than thirty percent.

Edamame

Over at blogtank I've posted my theory of why the web is like boiled soya beans.

Fair Use Protections "Remain Vague..."

Alex Salkever comments in Business Week about the Hollings bill. (More here.)

Loosely Joined Conversation with David Weinberger

Marek J interviews David Weinberger about his new book "Small Pieces Loosely Joined".

 

Resistance is Futile...

I work in a place where most of the employees have hockey sticks in their offices (it's a Canadian thing). Most of our great ideas or solutions come after a 20 minute hockey break when all seems lost. Smart employers realize that people need these kinds of breaks and if they don't get it, there is nothing. It doesn't matter how hard they work if they are stuck. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity.

It's time to invest in home-detention anklets...

because we don't have the jails to house the multitudes who would violate the proposed Act. Its efforts to preserve "the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright owners, including the fair use doctrine," and to restrict security measures that flat-out prevent copying, appear half-hearted. And leaving fair use considerations aside for a moment, seeking to eliminate a crime by banning the means of carrying it out seems better suited to guns than computers and mp3 players. I'm sure there will be discussion and debate in the legal press and I'll keep my eyes open and try to point you toward anything that looks worthwhile.