Signs of a Troll

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I don’t know what the signs are.

Typically they like to get a rise out of you. They may say stuff that's inflammatory or makes you angry - because they want to make you angry. They think it's funny.

I think there's different types of trolls.

There's people who are seen as trolls because of sincerely held views that are outside of the Overton window of a given community; there's also people who say extreme things in order to start arguments, as well as people who say absurd things in order to see how others engage with them. Generally though, it's for one's own amusement, whether it's driven by malice or just attention seeking.

As for identifying trolls, I tend to look for signs that one is arguing not in good faith. Like for example, if someone lays out a position and a rationale, receives a response that rebuts their rationale and then completely abandons their rationale while rejecting the response, I'd view that person as a troll.

I wouldn't treat everyone who's arguments make you frustrated or angry as a troll, because there's multiple reasons why one might feel angered in that situation and only some of them boil down to the other person was just seeking to upset you. In particular people often get angry when faced with an argument they can't effectively rebut, but devolving to trollnaming the other party doesn't do much but provide an emotional balm.

I was thought to be a troll on another forum I used because I kept posting about the same problems & arguing about the advice I received. I was dealing with a bad depression & feeling very lonely. I was wanting advice that I might could realistically apply but most of the advice was not practical for my exact situation. Also some of the time when I seemed argumentative I was trying to sort things out & process the advice & such. Lots of members got tired of my posts & misjudged my intentions & I started getting hostile reactions including being accused of trolling. I eventually realized it was best for me if I left. I also realized some of my issues were related to my autism & misunderstandings due to my autism & I decided to join this forum & things went a lot better for me here

You see one of those cute, little dolls with the funny hair.

Most trolls come under the Narcisstic Personality Disorder. They mostly disrupt things for fun, but sometimes they are paid to follow their urges, and appeared in their hundreds back on sites like Aspergia, whenever anyone tried to start a meaningfull debate on, amongst other things, the validity of "autism" diagnoses, or the direction research was going in.

The ultimate trolls are those who pay them, who are strangely obssessed with a need to keep people in the dark on subjects like these.

I've heard claims connecting trolling to dark tetrad tendencies (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism), but never specifically to Narcisstic Personality Disorder.

I think they just wanna be loved but don't know how to ask

BOOM!