Carpe Datum

Troll Ecology

Karen Tumulty of Time is still trying to figure out this blogging thing, and commenters bring her up to speed on a couple of troll classifications, to which I'll add a couple more.

First, there's the plain old troll. This is the person who in the real world is called a "consultant". Consultants are like pigeons. They fly in, shit all over everything, then fly away (except they get paid handsomely for it). Trolls don't generally know or care much about the blog they are commenting on. They just know that it doesn't match up with their beliefs and so the author must be an asshole worthy of abusive contempt, ad hominem insults, Rush Limbaugh approved false talking points, etc.

Then there's the stalker troll. These are trolls who keep showing up over and over on a website, like my pet troll used to do here until he started making death threats. Stalker trolls take political arguments very personally, and they won't let you out-nasty or out-argue them. These are the ones who will go to great lengths to prove that virtually every blog owner has a commenting-ban-line that can be crossed, no matter how "open" they claim to be about comments. Stalker trolls usually need their IP's blocked. Stupid ones can be blocked with a simple string identifier since they aren't smart enough to change their handle.

There's the purity troll. These are the ones who advocate only the extreme end of the spectrum of positions. If you are a liberal but kinda support some wars (like Afghanistan), that's bad news in the purity troll's eyes. For the purity troll, you must be against all wars all the time. Or you must be against all abortion all the time. Or against all government programs or all taxes all the time. If you aren't "pure" on the issue, prepare for abuse. Liberal purity trolls are the ones wingnuts like to quote when they are attacking strawmen.

For example, if I'm a wingnut looking for a blog post of the day, I can simply scan comments on a big blog like Daily Kos. Eventually, I'll find some idiot on there who advocates an end to all wars or a treason trial for Bush right this second or who is cheering for a health problem like Tony Snow's or Elizabeth Edwards' cancer because the target is just so damn evil. A more advanced form of this is to make a comment like "Ha! I'm glad so-and-so's daughter died because he's a jerk!" anonymously, then quote it on your blog as though it was made by a purity troll on Daily Kos or Atrios or whatever.

However the comment came into being doesn't matter. The next step is to act like that comment is run-of-the-mill representative, and bam, you've demonized liberals. The classic example of this is the equating of Moveon.org with left-wing fanatics because some purity troll submitted an ad that compared Bush to Hitler that Moveon.org deleted within like 10 minutes or something.

Finally, there's the concern troll. This fits most so-called liberal pundits like Joke Line or Michael Kinsley. These are people who will claim they are strident liberals until they're blue in the face, but most of their writing expresses condescending concern that Democrats are screwing up *again* or gives compliments to "brave", "bold", "straight-talking" or "principled" Republicans.

Democrats shouldn't oppose the war, they say, because they'll look back in the face of Bush's "bold" leadership. We should move on, they'll say, and stop arguing about the past. These are the people who told Gore supporters in 2000 to "get over it". When a Republican is enmeshed in a scandal, the concern troll's response is "Hey, I'm a lifelong Democrat, but I don't see what the big deal is here just because so-and-so (a Republican) killed his wife. I hope Democrats don't overreact to this and politicize it, because that would be far worse than the original crime."

You wonder if you could shoot the concern troll and then tell him or her to get over it, to move on, because after all, the shooting is in the past, and you need to show you're made of sterner stuff than that.

Concern trolls are wolves in sheep's clothing. They like to wrap themselves up occasionally in their supposed passion for their liberal (or conservative) cause, but most of their writing undercuts the very causes they claim to care so deeply about. They act surprised and oh-so-wounded when attacked by "angry" or "shrill" "partisans", astonished that someone would question their motives.

One of their favorite constructions is "some say". Like "some say" that John Kerry is a flip-flopper who only wants to raise taxes and take away our freedoms. "Some say" that Kerry lied about his service in Vietnam and is actually by some measures a traitor to our country. They'll follow that up by expressing concern that Kerry would respond to "some say" with some sort of vicious partisan attack like calling someone a LIAR (imagine a sharp intake of breath and fluttering hanky). "What a horrible thing to say! So partisan and short-sighted!" the concern troll would say.

Concern trolls and purity trolls are natural enemies, like Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil, only I find Illuminati alignments make more sense than standard role-playing alignments. In Illuminati, the opposing alignments are corporate vs government, liberal vs conservative, weird vs straight, peaceful vs violent, and fanatic, which is its own opposite. Trolls are fanatics, and all fanatics are diametrically opposed to one another.

As such, the concern/purity trolls like to accuse any of their critics of being a member of the opposite group. Makes them easier to hate.

Posted by Observer at March 27, 2007 10:16 PM