Trolling

Trolling is an internet and social media phenomenon. It generally applies to any behavior, particularly a comment on a discussion board, that is purposefully disruptive. The comments made by a troll can be intentionally naive, requiring an excessive amount of explanation on a seemingly trivial point. Or they can be outrageously inflammatory or simply be irrevelant. In general, a troll's behavior (called "trolling") is a type of online behavior that is intentionally designed to annoy, yet is not considered "cyberbullying." Paul Levinson discusses their tendecy to "bury a dialogue." Although some people may talk to trolls for a peculiarly long time (this is what they like--thus the adage "DON'T FEED A TROLL"), their conversations never take on any ostensible depth.

__**Famous examples**__ __Gingervitis:__ Following South Park's episode about "gingers" and their "lack of soul" through a disease called "Gingervitis," the trolling of red heads exploded. It was a phenomenon that grew so large it moved from interpersonal trolling to prevelant new new media such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. A famous YouTube video from the user CopperTop responded to the ginger phenomenon (he is red headed) with anger. His situation possibly moved beyond trolling to the point of bullying, but his personality may just be over the top as well (depends on your interpretation).

Watch CopperTop's famous video, where he literally uses the term "troll."

__Reddit.com's Joke Explainer:__ Perhaps an exemplary case of trolling, "Joke-Explainer" is a still-active Reddit.com user who goes to considerable length in order to explain jokes. This often involves a subtle (and often, entirely needless) account for the puns, metaphors, and other tropes enacted in the joke. This style of trolling never nears cyberbullying, maintaining an innocent and naive tone, although it is conclusive that he is a troll--wasting people's time explaining the obvious and degrading comedy by explaining it in drawn-out analyses. You can find a collection of his work [|here.]

__**Trolling Taxonomy**__ "Naive" Trolls-- A troll who attracts attention and pesters people by pretending to mean well but misunderstands or is confused about some (usually trivial) thing. "Irrelevant" Trolls-- A troll who does not add to the focus of the conversation, but attracts attention by either focusing on a trivial point (i.e. impertinent minutiae) or discusses something completely extraneous/unrelated. "Smart-ass" Trolls-- A troll who corrects and fixates on minor errors of another user, such as grammatical mistakes, poor video editing, etc. "Mean" Trolls-- A troll who will attract attention by 'yelling' profanities either related to or completely unrelated to the user/discussion board.

__**Possible Redeeming Qualities?**__ If one were to consider the internet as a sort of "rhizomatic field" then the act of trolling might not appear as irredeemably deviant, or detrimental. Following Deleuze & Guattari's notion of rhizomatic language and meaning, let us consider the internet as a medium (or system of enframement) that operates like a map. On a map, there are no "essential" or "necessary" points, nor does a map "contain a trace." Instead, we can simple relate any two points together and make them equally as meaningful as any other. For Deleuze & Guattari, this extends into language and how the mind works, i.e. there is no "arboresque" or essential nature to meaning, or even chains of signifers, instead it is a complex "vector" of overlapping and interpolating points of reference. Every relation is as arbitrary as any other. In this sense, we might benefit from a look at social media interaction. If we consider any act of communication as an act of rhizomatic relation (i.e. bringing together two non-essentially related points) then this must include the act of trolling. Here, trolling might offer itself as a benefit. Its benefit is in the very act of relating, or "raising up" an opinion that is of least regard, or has been "laid to rest." In so doing, we can see the "violence" of a consensus opinion by labeling this act as "trolling," while it is, in fact, as necessary and meaningful as any other opinion. By evading any ostensible utility in convseration, it in fact articulates a very peculiar nature of language by articulating a sensible (i.e. we understand it), yet senseless (i.e. no general or necessary utility) statement. This benefit might be further acknowledged through a Heideggerian analysis of "enframement systems" (and how they render each other system and user increasingly arbitrary and insecure), as well as an analysis of democracy (e.g. Malcolm Bull) and ideology more generally (e.g. Zizek).


 * __Tetradic Analysis__**