If you think “don’t feed the trolls” is always the right answer, that might just mean you haven’t been trolled hard enough.
Ill Doctrine is a video blog on music, politics and culture, launched in 2007 by Jay Smooth. We will be premiering two episodes a week on ANIMAL. Older episodes can be found at IllDoctrine.com and you can follow Jay on Twitter here.
Your background music is too loud throughout. Distracting from your message.
Jay,
You are usually totally on-point, but on this issue you have come down on the wrong side of the politically correct, anti-free speech line, IMO.
Yes, trolls are asshats.
Yes, they do say a lot of hateful, sexist, racist, whatever-ist things.
But since they do so anonymously, they generally can't be called out on any of their hateful shit in a constructive way.
Further, because they are trolling to provoke a specific reaction, they say anything they can to provoke that reaction without actually believing what they are saying.
You can't debate with them.
You can't call them out in person.
You can't win, because they just shift tactics on you.
Paying attention to what they're posting and saying 'you can't say that' accomplishes two things only:
1) legitimizing their hateful shit discussing it in a legitimate forum as if it was meaningful in some way
2) making you come down on the wrong side of the free speech line.
People know hateful bullshit when we see and hear it- we don't need you to tell us that it's hateful bullshit. You doing so is disrespectful to our intelligence, as is every other kind of censorship.
The only answer is-
DON'T FEED THE TROLLS
If you don't feed them, they go hide under the bridge again, honest.
Sometime feeding the trolls isn't the point. The point is to get through to the fence sitting lurkers.
Mike, that's like the trickle-down economics theory of internet communication.
And like trickle-down economics, it's nonsense.
Word. You should be able to say whatever you want. If you want to come off like an idiot, that’s your right. And it seems to me that one’s attitude when dealing with trolls dictates whether they are harmful or not. Conversely, o e should be able to engage a troll all day long if one chooses to. Just don’t get frustrated with the fact it could be a waste of time.
Ok Jay,
I just found your May 25th post on 'Why Trolling needs to be legal,' where you helpfully make pretty much every point and more I do above re: free speech.
http://www.animalnewyork.com/2012/why-trolling-ne…
Now, I'm not intending this as a 'gotcha,' but I'd really like to hear your thoughts on how you reconcile these two seemingly oppositional positions.
Thanks!
He must not be feeding us trolls.
Good stuff. I agree with you on the 'there are different categories that require different responses' part. I also agree that a lot of trolling now just seems to be about silencing the minority opinion through fear/ hate. However, it would be good to get some thoughts on how the different responses should be articulated. Also, yea the background music is a bit loud and distracting.