{"id":278,"date":"2016-06-19T05:45:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-19T05:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=278"},"modified":"2016-06-19T05:45:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T05:45:57","slug":"lost-art-trolling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=278","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Art of Trolling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

D<\/span>
avid Thorne is an internet legend (even if that means nothing in the real world). In 2008, he got an email about an overdue payment of $234 that he had to clear, resulting in possibly one of the greatest email\u00a0exchanges<\/a>\u00a0of all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thorne sent back a (terrible) drawing of a spider as payment. When the lady at the other end, Jane Gilles, refused to accept a drawing of a seven-legged spider as payment (understandably so), Thorne asked her to send back the drawing. Then he accused her of sending back a different drawing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This went on for several emails \u2014 the cringe comedy and absurdity, as well as the commitment with which the farce was executed, is what makes it so celebrated; it\u2019s the pinnacle of trolling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things are different now. These days, everyone\u2019s a \u201ctroll\u201d. A person having an opinion you don\u2019t agree with is a troll. Overzealous supporters of political parties are trolls. Even fake, obviously automated accounts are trolls. The word has lost meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the good old days, a troll was the practitioner of a very specific, sophisticated art form \u2014 one not many could appreciate, and one not many even understood. But they pretended to. Sort of like\u00a0modern dance<\/a>. Or\u00a0Yoko Ono<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may seem like I\u2019m bemoaning the decline of the web troll, but it\u2019s much the opposite; now is a good time to say good riddance and move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The troll was sometimes a bored nutjob like Thorne. But just as often, he\u2019d be a specialised kind of sociopath, lacking any moral compass and overcompensating for his awkwardness by committing to being cruel and vicious. He had no allegiance to any school of thought \u2014 he was a free agent and a mercenary. A predator who\u2019d trawl forums for fresh meat, destroying his victims by any means necessary (often crossing boundaries, birthing\/sustaining hellholes such as 4chan), all the while basking in the glory of anonymity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a professional shit-stirrer. Trolling was disruptive psychological warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t feed the troll<\/i>\u00a0was the internet equivalent of\u00a0don\u2019t talk to strangers.\u00a0<\/i>It was argumentative in spirit, no doubt, but that isn\u2019t what defined it. It was art for art\u2019s sake, with the larger purpose being nothing more than humiliating your opponent and walking away victorious. It was frightening and obnoxious and horrifying.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take the case of\u00a0Sean Duffy<\/a>, who was put in a UK jail in 2011 for posting messages of ridicule on tribute pages for teenagers who\u2019d committed suicide. That\u2019s how deeply the troll was disconnected from reality. Without playing up a stereotype, Duffy suffered from Asperger\u2019s Syndrome and was an alcoholic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terrible instances of cyber bullying exist today, of course, and they\u2019re far worse than anything poor Dave Thorne \u2013 limited artist that he was \u2013 could have thought up. Remember\u00a0#GamerGate<\/a>\u00a0and what Anita Sarkeesian was subjected to? Or the time Rajdeep Sardesai\u00a0quit Twitter<\/a>\u00a0after facing a lot of abuse from internet warriors? (Sure, he returned within a week because Twitter is like melted chocolate, but that\u2019s a different matter.) Apparently, political parties and big-budget production houses even hire soldiers to \u201ctroll\u201d and suppress any dissenters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this is not a premature ode to a progressive society. It\u2019s just that \u201ctrolling\u201d today has been reduced to boring screaming matches stemming from ideological differences \u2014\u00a0animated arguments,<\/i>\u00a0in other words. The surrealism has practically vanished.

Trolling is now just a stand-in for outrage and disagreement.<\/blockquote>
It may seem like a tired hypothesis, but that has to have a lot to do with how the internet has gone \u201cviral\u201d now. It has always been mainstream, but, even seven or eight years ago, it wasn\u2019t a primary concern for so many educated Indians (at least empirically).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, my parents are on Facebook. Less than a decade ago, I don\u2019t think I was on Facebook. Social media happened, anonymity, and false bravado were replaced by vacation photos and teenage poetry. (Then food, then hashtags, then selfies, then Vines\u2026)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook and Twitter slowly started replacing old-running forums as the places to be, leaving the troll starved of attention. So the troll became a lurker, an infrequent disruptor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subsequent job opening at the very bottom of the digital pile has now been filled up by many different kinds of people: right-wingers, left-wingers, feminists, meninists, Chetan Bhagat, me, you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trolling is now just a stand-in for outrage and disagreement. It still shares traits with its origins \u2014 the bullying, threat, rage, fear, mild sociopathy \u2014 but not the implicit nuance and commitment, and definitely not the comedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word, once worn proudly and pitied in equal measure, has lost all meaning. Everyone\u2019s a troll because, really, no one\u2019s a troll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the day, trolling was a sophisticated art form. Today, it has been reduced to boring screaming matches. The surrealism has practically vanished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[62,63,64,65,66,67,490,354,491,492,357,493,111,71,72],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-arre","tag-arre-digital-platform","tag-arre-originals","tag-arre-reads","tag-arre-text-articles","tag-arre-website","tag-david-thorne","tag-facebook","tag-gamergate","tag-sean-duffy","tag-social-media","tag-troll","tag-twitter","tag-web-series","tag-web-shows"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Lost Art of Trolling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Back in the day, trolling was a sophisticated art form. 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