Comment by bobby_9x | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobby_9x | Hacker News Reader

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"Just a theory. I've known some trolls who are easily among the smartest, sanest people in the world, and who are totally normal in all other aspects of their lives. Some are dear friends. This activity has been described in these terms by more than one of them."

If trolling was in a vacuum, I would say go for it. But it's not. The trolling described in this article have real consequences and hurt real people.

It's pretty well known that really smart people suffer from mental issues more often than the rest.

"My point is be careful ascribing psychological illness to something you do not understand. That is crazy."

It's not that I don't understand it. Frankly, I'm tired of dealing with it and wish more people would just exclude these trolls completely from society. psychological illness or not, it's causing real-world damage to many people.

Trolling actually hurts many causes. For instance, it hurt gamer gate. Instead of just letting the facts sit, trolls have to make things up.

"I have trolled before. I'm not good at it, but I have. I can vouch for the positive feeling it produces and I've come to terms with what that means about me and my self."

That you're an asshole?

"This is the thesis of numerous psychological works as well as, say, Fight Club (in a way)."

Your entire post is glorifying trolling. I'm not entirely sure why. I actually see trolling as an act of someone with lower intelligence. If you don't have a real point to make, you need to cover it up. It also causes me to instantly ignore anything you say in the future.

A real troll you wouldn't even know. The idea is to get your entire mentality in the tip of their finger so they can wind you up and down whenever they need to.

What kind of healthy individual would gain any sort of pleasure from taking that level of control over another?

I think taking any sort of behavior we don't like and saying obviously no decent person could enjoy it therefore it's only for those who are pathological[0] betrays a gross misunderstanding of decency. It is in fact fun for normal people to act like a dick, in the same way that it's fun to shoot roadsigns or piss on the sidewalk.

The reason we don't do these things is a mixture of training (we all know doing these things will make society worse off, perhaps we personally don't like it when we're driving along and a roadsign has been shot up), consequences (people will probably think less of you for urinating on sidewalks, it's illegal, etc) and maybe a healthy dose of inbuilt aesthetic and moral standards, empathy (how much and to what extent these really end up resulting in object-level actions as opposed to determining on what axis object level actions will be inhibited doesn't seem clear cut to me).

People who are willing to go around dominating and exploiting others for the sake of mere petty cruelty are unpleasant, the common term is 'bully'. Few people would want to be on the receiving end of it. Most people find this behavior less than charming. There is also the element of personal danger, who wants to be around somebody that might manipulate them for fun? So it makes sense to play up how different we are from such people, because that shows others how righteous and safe we are to be around. However as the child with the magnifying glass who burns ants shows, the capacity for petty cruelty is within all of us.

[0]: There are some behaviors which are pretty much reserved for pathological people, but the set is probably smaller than we imagine.

I'm very surprised you're getting downvoted for this, since it's basic psychology, the basic human condition, and unequivocally correct. Do people really not understand the human condition? It's a very powerful thing once you come to grips with it and quantify its role in your life, and it was key in me shedding a lot of parts of my self that I did not want.

I personally believe it's important to accept it instead of trying to deny it, before you can progress toward the positive role you want from your life. How can you be good if you don't understand your ingrained propensity for bad? How can you control something you do not understand?

You should heed what this comment is saying and think about it, rather than try to be 'above' it. It's accepting yourself...

I think you're right in general, but keep in mind that my question was in response to this quote:

"The idea is to get your entire mentality in the tip of their finger so they can wind you up and down whenever they need to."

Let's deconstruct this:

- get your entire mentality in the tip of their finger.

- wind you up and down when they need to.

The first part of that is an extreme level of control. The second point hinges on the word 'need'.

The OP previously claimed that he/she knows many trolls and they are among the most intelligent and sanest (his/her words) people he/she knows. This comment does not jive with that.

That seems like a reasonable analysis.

Executives.

Wait, wait, wait. Hold the phone. You're going after me for glorifying trolling, you say (I very clearly wasn't; I was cautioning against throwing mental health around as it complicates understanding), and you subtly included an inference that GamerGate was, quote, 'hurt' by trolls and we just needed to 'let the facts sit?' Oh, boy.

The incongruity of you defending one of the Internet's largest havens in history for trolls to demean, harass, and harm women by threatening to rape or kill them simply for being involved in video gaming, by then going after me for "glorifying" trolling and complaining that trolling harms people, is probably the most shockingly hilarious irony I've ever seen in my life. That's not hyperbole. You just seriously used GamerGate to attack trolling, which is either the work of the most master troll I have ever seen or, as seems more likely, your genuinely and outstandingly horrible opinion. I can't even comprehend the thought process that would take you there.

HN is definitely not the place to positively speak of GamerGate; I don't know about others, but I don't want anybody to ever speak of GamerGate positively again, and I'd extend this to even hiring if I could get away with asking about it.

So you believe what the media tells you about GamerGate? Because there's pretty clear evidence that regardless of your side in this debate, there was a decent chance you'd be trolled, bullied or doxed because of it.

Just see the many, many examples of people getting attacked on Twitter or Reddit or other sites for supporting it, to the point there were some people trying to frame others for crimes because they supported it.

And no, the majority of them do not attack or harass women because of it. The majority of them are sick of the media strawman constructed that anyone who disagrees with their ideas of censorship should be attacked at all costs.

And if you're trying to blacklist people because of political fights they get in, then I'm sorry, but that's pretty damn sleazy. It's exactly why there's so many issues in certain industries, because certain people want to blackball anyone who disagrees with their politics.

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