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Members kef and einar have written about some recent research:
"A new study from the University of Manitoba has claimed that internet trolls might not be so nice or mentally stable in real life. While previous studies have shown that people with negative character traits are using the internet more frequently for their own amusement, not to socialize, the results seem to link trolling to sadism. Two surveys among amazon's mechanical turk users were conducted which allowed creating a character profile of the participants. Based on the profile, internet behavior could be correlated with different character traits. Trolling appears to be correlated to sadism.
From the study:
... correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What's more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet. ... To be sure, only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed "trolling." By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were "non-commenters," meaning they didn't like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by metamonkey on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:32PM
I generally think of trolling as a prank, or a joke. I don't see how telling some nerd that your favorite part of The Hobbit was when Dumbledore told Frodo to use the Force links to sadism. Perhaps they really mean "stalking" or "cyberbullying?"
Left a beta website for an alpha website.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MozeeToby on Tuesday March 04 2014, @05:58PM
Trolling as they are discussing it is purposefully making other people angry or upset to get your jollies off. Your Hobbit/Harry Potter/Star Wars mash up would be on the very minor end of what they are looking at if it's intended to make the fan boys get up in arms. As a straight joke it would not be, and given that you're giving a deliberately exaggerated example I think you know what I mean. Intentionally annoying, harassing, insulting, or provoking others are all sadistic behaviors to some extent or another.
(Score: 1) by Iskender on Tuesday March 04 2014, @07:18PM
I guess it comes down to "trolling" as a term not being specific enough, due to it having so many users.
I see the wisdom in the jargon definition: http://jargon.net/jargonfile/t/troll.html [jargon.net] . It pretty much paints the troll as the opposite of the flamer. People who start hurling insults too easily cause a lot of the trouble in forums: it's too bad trolling them in the old school way doesn't work. Or rather: it doesn't work when the seasoned net users are in the minority: no one will look like a fool for falling for a troll, if everyone is tricked equally.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 04 2014, @09:31PM
Well, troll is an art.