<Trollish Post>

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<An incoherent idea stated here>. <Insult to people who disbelieve said idea>. <An outrageous idea stated here>. <Speculative comment on a cherished belief of yours being evil>. <ALL CAPS>. <General insult to the entire forum or world>. <Extensive and unnecessary length>. <Insults to specific posters>. <Insult directed at Orwell>. <Pour qwalitee of speling or grammer or organizashun>.

Who's offended now??? How do you judge the troll from the non-troll?

That's easy, a troll is anyone who disagrees with me.

Posting with the sole reason of provocation for the purpose of self-amusement.


M.

Bah, I'm most annoyed by the folks who can't be bothered to ask why someone believes what they believe, so they just attack the person. C'mon folks, it may be an internet message board, but we could probably try to do a little better at being smart than just sniping at people who disagree.

You can't win a war by denying the enemy is standing on solid ground, indeed you must have a map of the opposing army's location. Only once you know where your enemy stands can you defeat

Well, of course, that is an inference that one must make based upon certain factors, as purpose is somewhat difficult to know without digging into another person's skull.

ALL CAPS IS A GOOD WAY TO SPOT A FORUM TROLL1

Though "Insult to Orwell" certainly qualifies as trollish behaviour to.

The verdict on a troll seems to be that he/she is malignantly amusing his/herself at the discomfort of the rest of the site. But anyone who indulges in that type of amusement is obviously somehow wounded into a sadistic direction. It's pitiful.

There's the thing: "amusing his/herself" is a mental fact, however, we actually cannot know what this other person is thinking at all, and thus appealing to this psychological fact is methodologically nonsensical. Therefore, there have to be identified characteristics in this person's post(s) that allow us to determine what they are doing.

This is basically the same argument I made to makuranososhi, and it is difficult for either of you to assert the position without actually pointing to some metrics.

You seem to be saying that malicious trolling can be accepted as the normal behavior of a balanced mind. It leads me to question your own evaluations of normality.

No, I am saying that in order to say that someone is "trolling" you have to define how you determine this to be known as happening. I said *nothing* about normal behavior or balanced minds, I instead argued that neither issue is relevant, after all, a person can have abnormal behavior and an unbalanced mind and still not be trolling, nor can you diagnose the person's behavior in person as a psychologist might do, so an additional metric is needed. After all, nobody here has psychic powers to know who really thinks what, so something must be referred to other than mental states, such as evidence from a post or multiple posts to indicate the poster's purpose.

In any case, actually, yes, I think it is quite possible that a mind of the level of balance equal to that found on the average forum can also be found in a troll. After all, a lot of people here have outlandish opinions and perspectives, and a few of us are probably more crankish than the average individual, so it does not seem absurd to say that trolls are probably not psychological monsters, but rather the same as bullies or power-abusing cops: average people with an additional propensity to be jerkish. Heck, Orwell probably is a troll, we've just have come to terms and accepted him.

There you go. Bullies and power abusing cops are "normal". That thought is one I find disturbing. It certainly paints a rather unhappy picture of normality.

Well, they actually are probably normal. Have you never heard of the Stanford Prison experiment? They took a group of people, all of whom were previously psychologically tested for being normal. Put them into groupings, and then found excessive and insane seeming behavior on both sides. That was a group of people tested for psychological normality, and let's face it, forums aren't tested for anything.

Frankly, I find your views on psychology more disturbing than mine.

Either deriding people for not accepting one's own views, or making fun of theirs.

Frankly I'm not surprised about your views about my views.

I am well aware of the experiment that induced normal people to exhibit abnormal behavior.

No one is a mind reader; the evidence is more often found in the response than the original post.


M.

Can you provide something more analytical? At least something that fits pre-existing categories that I can create a category I can understand.