The Troll Thread

It is a misconception that trolls are necessarily stupid.

If a troll gets a rise from you, then their work is done - they have succeeded.

But there are other forms of troll, which are actually of great use, as they can help liven up a dull debate, or cause forum members to engage braincells that otherwise would be as dead cogs. Often this is non-productive, but that's beside the point...

One high-level form of trolling is the Adequacy Style Troll, or AST.

An AST might be a topic or posting along the lines of; Paedophiles perform a public service by accelerating the rate of maturity of our kids.

Typically, though, one would keep such topics more bland, so that the troll isn't spotted.

It doesn't have to be the topic either - a good troll is a post that twists arguments around using claims that are weak, but suggesting them in such a way that the reader feels that the claim is general knowledge, e.g; "Everyone knows Dream Theater are crap, therefore..."

Logical violence is by far my favourite troll. There are several methods of achieving this;

1. Use material from another website to back up a particular claim you make. This has the two-fold effect of making your claim appear irrefutably proven (when it isn't - unless the website is an absolute authority on the subject matter), and drawing attention away from the main thrust of your argument, which could be pathetically flimsy (the strength of the material you post should be sufficient to imply that you know all about the topic but are simply making an example).

2. Wear down the competition. If you rattle on at suffucient length, you can bury the real argument beneath a pile of rambling and off-topic discourse, until the actual spark of the discussion is all but forgotten. You can then triumphantly close stating that your claim is proven - although the material you used to prove it bears little or no relation to what you said.

3. If you don't know anything about the subject matter of a particular post, get the discussion into an area you do know something about and trundle on for ages about that before moving back to the original topic. The technique is simple and used by most degree students when writing exam essays; Start by appearing to answer the question, but then twist it - e.g, when faced with a question about Hamlet, when you have only revised Macbeth, you could start by saying "When considering the sanity of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, it would be useful to compare him to a soveriegn of another land, for example, Scotland. The madness of Hamlet could then usefully be compared to the madness that overcame Macbeth...". Weak, but might fool someone...

4. Use loads of hyperlinks to reference material. By the time the competition have read a few links, they might get bored and go away. If you use a hyperlink in the middle of a large block of text, such as this, then chances are that the reader won't click on it, but will simply assume that you are right. If the link contains a sufficiently large amount of information and the reader does click on it, they won't read it all anyway, further backing up the assumption that you are right.

5. Pounce on every error the competition makes - no matter how small. This is risky, but can carry the added bonus of making the competition look more stupid than you, as well as prompt them to off-topic ranting and generally getting their back up. The risk is that it's very easy to spot when someone is trying to get your back up by pouncing on something insignificant. The majority of people don't notice though - because you've got their back up...

6. Always remain calm. Getting emotionally involved is for the competition - that's part of the point. When emotions are stirred, people make mistakes - that you can then pounce on to continue your troll. Trolls that get upset and start name-tossing are pathetic creatures, and generally get banned.

7. Make authoritative comments that are only tenuously linked to the original subject material - e.g. in a post called "The Troll Thread", you might decide to educate everyone on what trolls really are, and waffle on at great length - giving the appearance that you really know what you are talking about when in fact you have stolen the idea from another website and are simply blathering about a bit to gain creedence and make yourself look knowledgeable - despite the fact that your sentences get cyclic and self-referential and have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever it was you started out saying.

8. Make several points, each of which say more or less the same thing...

I guess the cat's out of the bag...