

A critical look at trolling subculture and how we talk about it - ck2
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/what-an-academic-who-wrote-her-dissertation-on-trolls-thinks-of-violentacrez/263631/

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dfc
The dissertation is not online but I did find the abstract:

 _"Ethnographic in approach, this dissertation examines trolling, an online
subculture devoted to meme creation and social disruption. Rather than framing
trolling behaviors as fundamentally aberrant, I argue that trolls are agents
of cultural digestion; they scour the landscape, repurpose the most
exploitable material, then shove the resulting monstrosities into the faces of
an unsuspecting populace.

Within the political and social context of the United States, the region to
which I have restricted my focus, I argue that trolls on 4chan/b/ and Facebook
digest and often perform a grotesque pantomime of a number of pervasive
cultural logics, including masculine domination (Bourdieu 2001) and white
privilege (Dyer 1997). Additionally, I argue that the rhetorical and
behavioral tactics embraced by trolls, including sensationalism, spectacle,
and emotional exploitation, are homologous to tactics routinely deployed by
American corporate media outlets. In short, trolling operates within existing
systems, not in contrast to, immediately complicating, and often ironizing,
knee-jerk condemnations of trolling behaviors."_

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diminoten
> they scour the landscape, repurpose the most exploitable material, then
> shove the resulting monstrosities into the faces of an unsuspecting
> populace.

Not quite the dispassionate analysis I was hoping for...

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ser_tyrion
About 1900 too many words spent on trolling as a topic

~~~
ck2
If you run online communities it's important to understand troll mentality.

For many of us, it's beyond our thinking.

~~~
nirvana
I get called a troll by people all the time for the simple crime of making an
argument they can't refute.

The guy on reddit wasn't a troll, near as I can tell, he was a guy who started
a lot of subreddits and provided content for them. Seems to be the opposite of
a troll, even if the subreddits were in content areas we might not like, the
people who went to them apparently did. Yet The Atlantic writes an article
about him?

A real troll, in my understanding, is someone whose goal is to disrupt
conversation.

But these seem very rare.

"Troll" has become the catch all excuse to ignore and attack people you
disagree with, near as I can tell.

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tomasien
Lost me with that dig on Alexis. Absolutely lost me. Shame, great article in
my opinion.

~~~
leoc
What seemed unreasonable or inaccurate about it to you?

