Ask Lemmy

Trolls are just bullies, I guess. For some of them, getting a rise out of people strikes then as funny, probably because of superiority issues. The psychology is interesting, but those people likely aren't leading very happy lives. Karma probably isn't top of their priority beyond it being funny how many people have gotten a rise.

There's also toxic people who hang around with trolls and other toxic people. They form social groups where some minority group becomes the butt of a joke, which then becomes an "in joke". This historically has been against lgbt folks, certain nationalities, furries, disabled people and neurodivergent people, among others.

Then those people internalise those feelings, and spread them to other social groups, where they either land or the person gets confused as to why people hate them. If you run a community, you need to keep an eye out for this sort of thing and stop it before it takes hold.

Trolls attack people to get a reaction. Toxic people attack people out of indifference to their feelings.

There's also a group of people that feel they have a moral imperative to help people. That is, they should actively spread their own moral views and opinions so that other people may learn from them. This may or may not be a problem depending on the views of you and the platform.

Anyway, that's just me rambling a bit, sorry if it's all nonsense.

I don't think it was ever honestly about the points, even on reddit.

I think they're under the unfortunate delusion they're being funny.

I think it's just human nature to get enjoyment at making other people upset. It comes from a lack of empathy, understanding, and perspective.

When I was young, my cousin and I would hop into randomly chosen public chatrooms on MSN, or Yahoo, and just start typing stupid messages. We'd spam the chat with constans messages of "booger" or "poopy fart" and watch people get annoyed with us. Sometimes we'd pick a random message from someone and call them out telling them "hey {username}, shut up stupid." The whole chatroom would get mad and tell us to leave, or to stop, and that made us keep doing it more. For a good half hour to 45 min, the entire chatroom was having a bad time except us, who were laughing out heads off at how mad they got and how compeley powerless they were to stop us.

We were also 10.

We haven't experienced how annoying and frustrating that actually is. We didn't understand or even care just how disruptive we were being, nor did we care about our contribution to making the space a bad space to be in. We, as children, didn't have the empathy, compassion, or perspective of experience to care about that, and were just reveling in the attention and the power to force a group of strangers to focus on us and not what they originally wanted to.

Some people eventually develop empathy, self awareness, gain perspective on the world, or otherwise come to understand how immature these acts areof getting joy at being annoying, and stop. Other people don't. The internet is home to people in all different stages of their life's journey, and a lot of them haven't reached that point yet.

Some troll because they're immature. Some do it because they actively dislike a community and pettily get joy at annoying them. Some people just like the attention. People are complicated and weird, and often hard to understand. There is just one thing that will always be true:

As long as people exists, so too will trolls.

Same thing I've been wondering about the spammers. Like, ok, you thought you left a mark? But few people will remember your username and the mods will just bulk-delete your shit. I don't get it. Too much effort, time and probably some money for literally nothing.

In addition to what others have said:

Since Qanon and covid conspiracies, it became clearer that trolling is not just a past-time to engage recreationally in. It is something that can actually have policy effects in democratic societies.

As a result, it begins to make sense for an international rival to exert itself to inexpensively cause disruption in unfriendly powers.

This sort of troll cannot be simply ignored, unfortunately.

I like to think my trolling is more fun and whimsical, but I guess I mostly just troll bigots and whatnot.

How does one define a troll here?

I'm not a troll on Lemmy, but there's another internet forum where I let it out a little. That one's a hobby forum, and it happens to be a hobby that a lot of people are trying to monetise. The forum rules are clear that you're not welcome to advertise your product unless you participate in discussion as well. Of course, a lot of advertisers post without bothering to read the rules first. They're engaging with us in bad faith, so I feel justified in doing the same to them. I like to ask disingenuous questions and pretend to be stupid while stringing them along with the possibility of a sale. So:

• It's fun to mildly bully people who've done something to deserve it.

• You could have bought a banner advert, Scrooge.

Sociopaths like to antagonize and cause distress as a means of exerting control over others. In the case of online trolls they aren’t just sociopaths but also pathetic losers who can’t antagonize others in person without getting their heads handed to them.

Trolls have existed as long as social spaces have. No one really knows why trollers troll; it is one of the great mysteries

Trolls are trolls. The number is an excuse on Reddit, but it's not the reason they really do it. If it were, why are there trolls on Twitter, Facebook, and in the YouTube comment section?

As long as I get some amount of engagement, the points really don't matter to me. I once posted something in an attempt to call attention to misogyny. The post broke no rules, but given my intent, I suppose it could be considered trolling. Most people (and probably some of their sock puppets) didn't agree with me and I got quite a few downvotes on the post itself and in the comments, but if it made one person reconsider their position, it was worth it to me.

Poopy fart.

Well I've been behaving on lemmy for the sake of our instances users. So yea there's that.

I mostly troll on plemora and the reason I even started doing that is because......

I HATE how all the posts are out of context. It's like a bunch of conversations that don't make any sense. And that you're not included in.

At first no one talked to me at all. So I got mad and started spit firing insults. Then all of a sudden lol.

I don't do it much. Usually just when I'm bored and most of the time I insult and move on. I don't really engage in replies just bc why?

I'm of the opinion that I'm an internet person who shouldn't matter to you. Just ignore me. Don't engage you're wasting your time

The salt from tears is tasty

yes. its human nature to push boundaries. mostly the more immature humans, but definitely a human issue not even really tied to forums.