The notorious roles among Usenet participants, the Flamer, the Troll and the Ranter are recognized for their negative behavior in newsgroups. That they share a general goal of disruption is likely responsible for their popular conflation; the category “troll” is often used to define any disruptive behavior, overt or otherwise. In the scholarly literature (e.g. Donath 1998; Herring et al. 2002), however, trolling is defined more narrowly, as being about a deception in which the Troll feigns honest participation. Here we examine their strategy differences – the blatant, brute-force disruption tactics of the Flamer (a commonly used category), and the honest participation of the Ranter (a category of our own devising) – to further elucidate distinctions among categories of disruptive participants.
The Flamer is known primarily for his aggression; he adopts intimidation as his primary strategy. Even having no reputation in a community, a Flamer is identifiable from his first post. He does not seek to become a legitimate part of the community, so establishing communicative competence is not an issue for him. His key behavioral strategy is intimidation through very aggressive language, yelling and controversial speech.
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Like the Flamer (i.e. the traveling sense), the Troll and the Ranter are social deviants whose relation to the social community is, on the surface, generally negative. Their strategies are similar, in that they both engage in what is designed to appear to be topical debate. However, they are also known to engage in flame-like behavior and use intimidation when their more topical debates wane (Donath 1998) but the victims are already baited. It is important that the victims are indeed baited before the Troll engages in intimidation, because an established relationship is necessary for intimidation to be most effective, so that the intimidated does not simply give up and leave (Goffman 1969). The Troll’s early conversation builds that initial relationship through deception, and only later uses it as leverage for intimidation.
The Troll is a master of “identity deception” (Donath 1998). He makes others believe he is someone he is not. A Troll attempts to pass as a valid member of the social community and begins to subtly provoke other members by writing messages that outwardly appear as honest attempts to start conversation but are really designed to “waste a group’s time by provoking a futile argument” (Herring et al. 2002). Herring et al. further posit that a Troll’s formula for success is to make a show of willingness to engage in legitimate discussion while “refusing to acknowledge” or “willfully misinterpreting another’s point” in order to perpetuate conversation.
For the Troll, then, communicative competence is the most important trait. He must be adept at understanding and using the styles of speech a community deems acceptable, so as to not appear as an outsider. The Troll is dangerous precisely because his identity as a Troll and therefore his true motive is not known until it is too late. Donath (1998) considers the Troll’s actions to be part of a “game” he is constructing and forcing the others to play against their will and without their knowledge. His conversation begins innocently enough; this is how the trap is set. For many Trolls, this trap is for Newbies especially. If the Flamer attacks like a bomber, seeking to harm everyone, the Troll does so like a sniper, seeking the especially vulnerable Newbies. Because they are less familiar with the community’s standards and practices, Newbies are more likely to fall for a less-than-perfect performance by a would-be Troll. Goffman (1959) notes that, “a single note off-key can disrupt an entire performance.” For this reason, more experienced participants in the group are likely to “out” the Troll by noticing the “off-key notes” and posting a response to the Troll’s, directly accusing him of being a Troll. The more competence one has in the register of the community, the easier one will be able to identify a Troll’s deviant behavior.
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Like the Troll, the Ranter seeks to stir up pointless debate. A prolific writer, the Ranter posts with great frequency on a particular issue or issues and is unique in his or her lengthy posts and single-mindedness. Ranters exhibit some Troll-like characteristics, in that they feign participation in a legitimate debate in order to goad others into responding. Unlike a Troll, however, a Ranter has an agenda. For the Ranter, the topic of discussion is of utmost importance. The FAQ of the alt.troll newsgroup, where Trolls gather to discuss their art, draws a distinction between Ranters, which they call “mission posters,” “nuts” or “net loons,” and “trolls” because the latter engage in what they are doing for fun, whereas the characters described by these three terms actually believe what they are saying.
SOCIAL ROLES IN ELECTRONIC COMMUNITIES
Scott A. Golder and Judith Donath
Sociable Media Group, MIT Media Laboratory
For the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference Internet Research 5.0
September 19-22, 2004, Brighton, England.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~golder/projects/roles/golder2004.pdf
