
Study finds web trolls get a feeling of abandon similar to drunks - nreece
http://www.news.com.au/technology/anonymous-alcoholics-study-finds-web-trolls-get-a-feeling-of-abandon-similar-to-drunks-and-dictators/story-e6frfro0-1226080815072
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mattgreenrocks
The best way to shut these people down is not to give them an outlet. Few
people seem to step back enough from the problem to ask, "do we _need_
comments?" Rather, it ends up being yet another half-assed feature that
usually adds intellectual and visual noise to a page.

But, hey, it drives visitors to return, so it has to be good, right?

~~~
perlgeek
> The best way to shut these people down is not to give them an outlet.

I disagree. Give them a non-persistent outlet. Something like a shoutbox,
where the trolling disappear after 5 minutes.

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parallel
I don't think the concept of contributing anonymously is necessarily a bad
thing. Your online personality might be polite and contribute positively where
as your real world personality might very shy and unable to participate in
discussions at all.

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olalonde
> "People believe the myth that they can say things that ordinarily they
> wouldn't be able to say just because they are online."

Is it really a myth?

~~~
epochwolf
I don't think it is. I frequently voice opinions in irc that I wouldn't dare
mention to most people I know offline.

~~~
parallel
So, a question for you epochwolf. Why would you not say these things to people
face to face?

~~~
derefr
I think there's a converse to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory—let's call
it the Greater Reality Stick-up-the-butt Theory. Basically, in real life, we
enforce social norms on one another that we don't actually see the merit in
ourselves, because others expect us to enforce those norms and punish/shun us
if we don't enforce those norms (think of the monkey/water story:
[http://freekvermeulen.blogspot.com/2008/08/monkey-story-
expe...](http://freekvermeulen.blogspot.com/2008/08/monkey-story-experiment-
involved-5.html)). Anonymity allows for the relaxation of those norms, because
nobody's around to catch you _not_ calling someone out for doing something
that you would normally call them on, _but which you actually see no rational
reason to be calling them on_ , besides some vague sense of "propriety."

Basically, anonymity allows people to treat everyone around them as utter
foreigners—you don't expect me to have any grounding in your culture, and I
don't expect you to have any grounding in mine, so neither of us "needs" to be
upset when the other does something that is uncouth. Because of this,
discussion can concentrate more on facts, and less on signalling, which I (and
I think many introverted people) find a less stressful mode of communication.

Tangentially, I think this explains why many people on the internet have a
annoyance-trigger at the undefined name-dropping of specific locales within,
say, the US (with the usual response of "we're not all from the US", even if
the person stating that _is_ , in fact, from the US)—it grounds the discussion
in a specific culture, which increases the likelihood of some subset of the
people in the conversation finding a valid means of conveying subtext—which
then leaves others out of that subtext, creating a kind of I-can't-enforce-
norms-I'm-not-aware-of anxiety which is projected into a problem with the
context being introduced in the first place.

In a lesser way, this is also why people tend to overreact to women who
identify themselves as such on the Internet: they're introducing an ambient
cultural context that increases norm-enforcement anxiety. (Interestingly,
there's a specific name for Internet-age gender-role-relative-norm-
enforcement: "white knighting." It's quite common to see people calling the
practice out, though usually even the people themselves aren't sure precisely
why they're unhappy about it.)

~~~
AlisdairO
I'd say that's an overly internet-communication-favoured assessment of the
situation. Note that people from the same culture talking over the phone also
tend to pay less attention to whether they're offending the other person
involved. At least part of the difference in communication style is simply
because it's easier to not care about how you're hurting the other person when
you can't see them, or directly observe their reaction.

Anonymous communication over the internet (for all its many, many virtues)
depersonalises communication, and that has both good and bad results.

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hussong
This study only adds new data to a fairly old (and rather simple) model that
falls back on persistent character traits ("true character") and consistent
individual perceptions to explain the behavorial effects of visual anonymity.

The model seems to be based on an archaic idea of man, much like the late
1960's concepts of deindividuation--the idea that underneath our civilized
personality, there resides an instinctual force that is inherently wild,
dangerous and destructive (neglecting any peaceful, friendly or cooperative
traits that we also seem to possess).

More recent models like the 'Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects'
take a more systematic approach to considering further individual and
situational variables and how they work together.

Owing to the enhanced complexity, these newer models do a much better job at
explaining the factors and processes at play in computer-mediated
communication, but they of course make for a much less catchy story.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
I'm not sure I see how an alternate model changes much. In the case of SIDE,
it is because they are actively viewing the out-group (the site's users) with
enough contempt that they need to sow discord. OK, I can buy that.

But how does it help us know how to stop trolling? Simply saying, "it's
complicated!" without offering workable solutions doesn't help us here.

~~~
hussong
I think my comment was more academic than pragmatic: Once you let go of the
_assumption_ that people will invariably do bad things in the absence of
external control, the whole model falls apart.

As for practical recommendations, I've seen very few come out of academic
research, unfortunately. From SIDE you could derive that you should aim to
create a community or an idea that people identify with in a positive way
(thus creating a social identity), and try to facilitate the salience of that
identity by adjusting the situational setting.

