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Why Trolls Start Flame Wars: Swearing and Name-Calling Shut Down the Ability to Think and Focus
Psychological studies show that swearing and name-calling in Internet discussions shut down our ability to think.
2 professors of science communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison - Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele - wrote in the New York Times last year:
In a study published online last month in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, we and three colleagues report on an experiment designed to measure what one might call “the nasty effect.”
We asked 1,183 participants to carefully read a news post on a fictitious blog, explaining the potential risks and benefits of a new technology product called nanosilver. These infinitesimal silver particles, tinier than 100-billionths of a meter in any dimension, have several potential benefits (like antibacterial properties) and risks (like water contamination), the online article reported.
Then we had participants read comments on the post, supposedly from other readers, and respond to questions regarding the content of the article itself.
Half of our sample was exposed to civil reader comments and the other half to rude ones — though the actual content, length and intensity of the comments, which varied from being supportive of the new technology to being wary of the risks, were consistent across both groups. The only difference was that the rude ones contained epithets or curse words, as in: “If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these kinds of products, you’re an idiot” and “You’re stupid if you’re not thinking of the risks for the fish and other plants and animals in water tainted with silver.”
The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.
In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.
Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.
While it’s hard to quantify the distortional effects of such online nastiness, it’s bound to be quite substantial, particularly — and perhaps ironically — in the area of science news.
So why do people troll in a rude way?
Psychologists say that many of them are psychopaths, sadists and narcissists getting their jollies. It's easy to underestimate how many of these types of sickos are out there: There are millions of sociopaths in the U.S. alone.
But intelligence agencies are also intentionally disrupting political discussion on the web, and ad hominen attacks, name-calling and divide-and-conquer tactics are all well-known, frequently-used disruption techniques.
Now you know why ... flame wars polarize thinking, and stop the ability to focus on the actual topic and facts under discussion.
Indeed, this tactic is so effective that the same wiseguy may play both sides of the fight.
Postscript: Fortunately, it's not that difficult to isolate the trolls and stop their disruption ... if we just point out what they're doing.
For example, I've found that posting something like this can be very effective:
Good Number 1!
Or this might be better if the troll is a sociopath:
Isn't that kind of "entertainment" more appropriate elsewhere?
(include the link so people can see what you’re referring to.)
The reason this is effective is that other readers will learn about the specific disruption tactic being used … in context, like seeing wildlife while holding a wildlife guide, so that one learns what it looks like “in the field”. At the same time, you come across as humorous, light-hearted and smart ... instead of heavy-handed or overly-intense.
Try it … It works.
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Not directed at you, George, just the usual Lame Stream New Yawk/Washington deciders for all of us.
racist, racist, racist, LOL
And it's the extremely intollerant, child-like, arrested development type lefties who are the worst at this. There's nothing "liberal" about them...they're intollerant and much more prone to violence than their conservative, Libertarian counterparts because they typically don't have a leg to stand on in their emotionally charged arguments. So they fall to pieces and start flipping out. Same as with trolls on the internet. They start flame throwing and spewing ridiculous insults because they really have no logical or factual way to intelligently express their twisted ideaological point of view.
And as Thomas Sowell perfectly stated:
"A "racist" is a conservative winning and argument against a liberal."
But of course, Sowell being a Stanford educated, black economist and a conservative, the deeply intolerant and racist lefties will always negate Sowell's "blackness" by hating him for his conservatism.
I'm sure in their twisted illogical minds that makes Sowell a racist as well!
Leftist ideology based on so-called "progressivism" and dillusional moral authority is a fucking brain rotting disease. There's no cure for the vast majority of the people afflicted with it.
So why do people troll in a rude way?
Psychologists say that many of them are psychopaths, sadists and narcissists getting their jollies. It's easy to underestimate how many of these types of sickos are out there: There are millions of sociopaths in the U.S. alone.
Here are some examples:
Executive, Judicial & Legislatives Branches of THE UNITED STATES, CORP. INC.
CIA
NSA
MIC
DOD
BATF
DHS
FBI
IRS
FDA
etc.... You get the picture?
"Psychologists say that many of them are psychopaths, sadists and narcissists getting their jollies. It's easy to underestimate how many of these types of sickos are out there: There are millions of sociopaths in the U.S. alone."
Many of them work in the FIRE sector.
Or maybe we just don't like you, George;)
I couldn't care less if you like me or not ...
I do care if you defend the powers-that-be or whether you are on the side of the Founding Fathers and the people.
Maybe on some issues, but you have been awfully pro kleptocrat for an awfullly long time.
Money, George. When are you and Krasting ever in favor of taking money away from the statists, except the military, off course?
"pro kleptocrat"? Huh?
I think you set yourself up for all manner of sarcastic humor in this post. I myself resisted the temptation, YOU TWIT! ;-)
Fucking Hilarious!
I found this very interesting. It happens all the time in Greece especially during the economic crisis. An example is the government trolls in forums after events in Cyprus (with the banks there). I wrote an article about this but unfortunatelly only in Greek language.
Psychologists, Economists and a litany of other sudo sciences, one mans thoughts are not anothers.
Using grandiouse thoughts to belittle another.
Send them back to their goat bones.
It's "pseudo", silly even by the standards of English spelling,
but your thought process is right on;)
It's sudo if you're logged in as root.
> sudo science
That's some powerful shit - the result of
> sudo apt-get install rationality && sudo apt-get purge religion
why would someone already root use sudo?
I curse. A lot. Even in the real world. Also....i'd like to hear these dildos discusussions that wrote this crap behind closed door as everyone knows how many goodie-2shoes are really up to no good doing things you'd likely be appalled by all the while doing it yourself. The good ole USA....."I'm outraged".....lmao please. I do have some guidelines like I don't brew up a storm in front of kids etc. I rarely pick fights with other posters on any sites, often don't defend any of my comments but one things for damn sure........i'll be taking 'Fuck Ben' to the grave with me.
If you want to see the experts at work, try 4chan's /b/ or /pol/.
/pol/ is so tame relative to /b/ that it does not deserve to be in that sentence - like saying "If you want to see disease at work, try Ebola or a case of the sniffles".
this is fucking stupid
err, i mean, no
seriously though, interesting read
i'm thinking i have fallen victim to this in discussions of global warming which make me insanely angry, because i feel it is unfortunate the levels of propaganda for this ............................cant do it,just want to spew epithets on this subject
John;
,Shit man, the AGW crowd are brutal. You want to be labelled a sociopath, disagree with this bunch, they are the absolute definition of what it means to be a troll. AND, I can guarantee that they will accuse you, before you can accuse them.
Agreed. Thermometers actually show rising temperatures & ignorant people pretend
a) that means cooling
and b) winter in one hemisphere is winter for the entire planet.
It's disappointing what levels of IQ this represents.
When your only tool's a hammer everything looks like a nail.
BTW, how's the carbon credit business going?
has no relation.
carbon credits & other fiat taxation can't cure a thing.
Take the machines and shut them down, by any means necessary, that emit excess CO2 & methane.
You want to burn it you contain it or the rest of us will shut it down by force. Our survival depends on it so we have no choice. Weapons will be used. Big ones.
okay, you fuckin luddite...i'll let you pull around my rick-shaw. and i'll slice up that hide of yours with the crack of my specially made MDB-whip; and i'll lash it up all fancy-like, in sorta art-deco motif...so don't you dare slack-off, boy!
and easy on that huffin & a-puffin...i don't want to be resoponsible for your CO2 exhaust. have you no shame?! panting like that while gaia suffocates!
i predict a grand adventue for us both,
janus
ok, fuckwad, justify why I should lose my water & food so you can run your machines. You're not paying me, not replacing my food & water, so what the fuck do you think is gonna happen?
Sort your shit, keep it self-contained, and we have no problem.
Fuck with my water & food and there will be rocket-launchers.
okay, if you're gonna take that kind of attitude about it...i'll take your machines, and you will receive no compensation; i will not replace your food and will spill out your water on the parched earth in honor of my dead homies.
your shit will be mine for the sortin...so keep it in good repair and working order while i'm away.
your food and water are no more! i will splinter your rocket launcher and level your position with an abram's tank...don't bother wearing clean underwear.
all that, and i will double your hours under the yolk of my rickshaw.
and so i ask myself...why stop there?...i want it all!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvZgwtpPmLY
sorry to say it, dude...you're evangelizing for a new faith. i know it's tough; but you must transcend...you must become a heretic...an infidel...an agnostic. you must be healed!
you will drink in poisons and not be harmed by them/
you will take up serpants and not be bitten,
janus
Those rockets are anti-tank. I have no fixed position & your tank can't move that fast.
War it is.
No faith is involved here: the damage you do is easily measured with other machines. We call this science, and gathering evidence. It can't be denied. YOUR position is one of pure faith, anti-science, declaring no warming where there is warming, declaring no damage where there is evidence of damage, declaring no involvement where clearly your pollution IS the cause & of all things, declaring "correlation is not causation" all the while there is no other possible cause. The SUN sure as hell isn't the CAUSE of the rising industrial methane output, so what's your story?
You are the one telling a religious story, I'm the one using only evidence, only science.
Paris 2015 in a nutshell once all the fancy shit's taken care of. Two more melts till Paris.
How is that line of non sequiturs going for you...
Hey Fluke, how's your IPCC cherry picking going?
I've heard global warming was so bad in Canada this winter that polar bears considered hibernation a plausible option.
Here's a thought.
The climate is going to change.
Influenced by humans? Not influenced by humans?
Doesn't matter.
The important thing is, it's going to change.
If humans don't get their act together pretty soon it will be moot, anyway.
Knowing change is going to occur, one way or another, it would seem sensible to plan for many scenarios.
Hedge accordingly.
I fail to see the logic logicalman. I would be careful if I was you because folks around here don't take kindly to any "planning". Even when evidence is presented (you know like scientists and international bodies and such), which you offer none of, "planning" will have you labelled a socialist or communist or statist or self serving and you'll find yourself hard-pressed to defend your sensibilities.
And what exactly do you mean by moot? Sounds alarming. Care to share your thoughts?
Govern yourself accordingly.
So what date does the GISP2 data go to?
You must be a masochist since you clearly want to be bitchslapped like "TheAnswerIs42" was when he used the same plot...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-19/polar-vortex-shock-and-awe-util...
What may be even more important than that study:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/02/25/0359246/nsa-and-ghcq-employing-shills-to-poison-web-forum-discourse
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Too bad I'm banned from the CNN comments section due to... uh.. trolling.
Explains why MDB failed as a troll and became the laughable, lovable contrarian in the ZH family. His lack of insults allowed readers to stay on topic rather than explode in anger.
The fact that everyone here laughed at whoever bit MDB's bait was a factor...
Look up Poe's Law...
The way I saw it MDB would cause a string of comments usually unrelated to the article that the comment thread became difficult to follow.
Everyone needs a little humour.
MDB often supplies it.
Not seen him for a while.
MDB.... Where are you?
I think that's an implementation of "Cuil Theory", which is a pretty brilliant concept (RedDyeNumber4is a genius).
Aaaand... say 'Hi' to political correctness!
oh, I disagree completely. First, people who are angry are less able to evade using deception.
Second, people who are angry are motivated to make a point which means perhaps they'll go that extra mile to provide sources or back down because they don't have any.
3rd, if people feel stupid or mocked for being wrong, that's a good thing. We need a lot more of that.
4th rule... oh shit, we aren't supposed to talk about it and that was 2 rules ago. Aw man... back to the fucking porch
While I agree with the overall gist of what GW's blog states, I disagree with the details: today around 70% of comments aren't human, they are trollbots, both from external sources and site-generated (meaning the web site itself generates them).
The other day, as an example for a friend of mine, I made a number of comments at a story on the teacher supposedly pushing "conspiracy theories" (the article author's supposition) at rawstory.com and the majority of my comments were deleted --- we could see this in real time as email responses would arrive, yet my comments had since been deleted (this works with discus but might not in other situations) --- this had the effect of making my comments appear stupid, since the offensive trollbot replies to my comments went unanswered, as my comments providing data and links had been deleted/censored!
The worst offenders today, that is practitioners of almost absolute censorship of comments are:
huffingtonpost.com
boingboing.net
rawstory.com
disinfo.com
nakedcapitalism.com
economicpopulist.org
rollingstone.com
(And yes, many of these purport to be "liberal" and support free speech [Cory Doctorow is such a complete and total fraud] - - when what they practise is the complete opposite.)
Yves Smith, nakedcapitalism.com?
I have a hard time believing that.
huffpost, I would have believed that easily, but Yves Smith?
Hmmm. I am not convinced of that one.
Yves, like many places, demands civil discourse...
I have posted there a number of time, the level of debate is high, but the conclusions are foregone. After all, it is damn well near impossible to defend a liberatarion ideology without being demonstrated that you are naive about the human condition or just a bald faced narcissist...
You are good as long as you follow the rules: No strong swearing, no bigotry and no ad homs...
well, if we can't call the fucking cheesepopes on their tricks, as it applies to locally-connected geopolitical events, what's the fucking point? I like it better here at the hedge.
Funny you should mention Naked Capitalism, I used to enjoy that site but it seems to have been taken over by Lambert Strether and his group of neo-liberals. Sad really, Susan was really on top of it for a while.
Yeah, sgt_doom, the vast majority of Web sites practice such automatic censorship that it appears to have been automated. I discovered several years ago that the majority of my "readers" were robots.
IT ALL GOES BACK TO THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM, WHICH IS THE FUNDING OF POLITICS, AFTER THE MONETARY SYSTEM HAS ALREADY BEEN COMPLETELY CORRUPTED, TO A DEGREE WHICH IS CRAZY.
Mostly, the bigger and more "successful" organizations operate within the established monetary systems, which means that they promote the evils of the social pyramid systems. Most of the bigger environmental organizations are now funded in such a way that one can not trust them anymore.
(The same thing applies to the mainstream "legalize marijuana" movements, which have become mostly funded by a few of the typically evil billionaires, which steer that movement towards neoprohibitionist dead ends, rather than promote more radical Hemp Truth.)
On the other hand, while there are lots of fake groups, which have a big public presence, because they gets lots of "instant organization" in the form of money, the smaller genuine groups that become successful enough find that they are infiltrated, and subverted, by people who are probably paid to do that.
Overall, the dominance of the ALREADY almost inconceivably corrupt and crazy monetary systems, which have allowed private banks to make the public "money" supply out of nothing, as debts, has enabled those banksters and their buddies to dominate the funding of almost every kind of political activity. Thus, their fake groups have way more money to promote their fake activism, while genuine groups have to cope with people being paid to infiltrate and subvert their group.
The trolling phenomenon is merely another aspect of that overall problem, that after any group in society starts to get away with fraud, then they can reinvest some of the profits from that fraud in more frauds. Tragically, there is nobody who is able to compete with people who can create "money" out of nothing, unless they could legally do that same thing.
Politics becomes like a sports league where the winner in a previous season gets to appoint the referees, and unilaterally change the rules for the next season. After enough seasons of that, the overall long game of politics has become so totally rigged that there is no reasonable hope to fix the runaway problem of society being controlled by Huge Lies, backed by Lots of Violence. The theory of "freedom of speech" that is supposed to allow the truth to come through open debate is totally subverted by the accumulating power of the best liars to have so much social success through fraud that the public debates are practically tilted to become a vertical cliff. The liars can drop rocks on those trying to have rational debate, who are at the bottom of that cliff, while those at the bottom of that cliff can barely hit those at the top back at all.
According to my experiences, all of the more popular Web sites, including most of the so-called "alternative" ones, are already mostly rigged, to the degree that they appear to have automated their censorship. (Zero Hedge appears to me to be one of the very few remaining, that is relatively popular, on which my kinds of comments are allowed to be posted, and do not immediately disappear after being posted.)
It's pretty clear there was evidence of cognitive infiltration on the ows.org site, and people shouldn't have too much trouble understanding that now regardless of their political opinions of OWS. The funding that poured into OWS was most likely grassroots/organic as well although it certainly appeared to 'get complicated'. For those who were cheering when the filthy, feces on police cars, rapists in the parks were taken down, perhaps you are now willing to revisit your opinions on the matter when you see that there was an online version of what Radical Marijuana has described above so well, brutally reflected in the OFFline scenes replayed over and over in the media. OWS began just before Zuccitti Park with a handful of people, struck a nerve all across America and beyond, and was summarily squashed by bullies with unlimited amounts of money.