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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: 0, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 04 2014, @06:51PM
I was discussing sadism.
Perhaps I should have also included a mention of British humour, for example when Stefan threatened a senior editor of a major trade rag, unless she satisfied him by promoting his upcoming product.
She was only mildly offended, as she understood British humour because her husband was British.
There is a wonderful film depicting the French Court in Versailles shortly before the French Revolution, I'm not sure but I think the film was called "Wit".
Much like in today's Internet, one could only get ahead among the french nobility if one was wittier than one's peers.
So some country gentleman comes by to request the King contribute some money to a public works project. It is carefully explained to him, that to have any hope of, say, preventing dysenteria and giardia in his community, he has to learn to insult all the other nobility.
At the end of the movie, the Reign of Terror is taking place. Two noblemen are hiking across the countryside, hoping to escape to England by crossing the English Channel.
One of them says to the other, "I understand that in England, they do not have Wit, they have hew-MAH!"
In the US, we tell jokes. American jokes are quite a different thing from British Humor and French Wit.
My preferred troll as is kuro5hin's localroger's favorite, is the French wit.
For example, all the guys down at the pub claim that your girl is lousy in bed, but I want to reassure you, that's not my own experience in any way.
I have a major product announcement [warplife.com] coming 5:01 PM 2014-03-21 EST.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @07:06AM
Maybe you can't because you're too full of shit.