It is now a federal crime to annoy someone over the Internet. Anonymously, I mean. I’m still in the clear.
Packaged in with the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act signed last week, the law states that anyone who uses the Internet ‘without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten” will be fined or tossed in the pokey for a couple of years, or both. Goodbye, LiveJournal. We hardly knew ye.
The intention was to reduce cyberstalking, but the law is worded vaguely enough to use against the Web’s most reviled inhabitants: shady, skulking people whose sworn duty is to annoy others. People whose only goal is to disrupt and infuriate, who pride themselves on ruining any chances of civilized discourse. I’m talking, of course, about radio talk show hosts.
And trolls. Trolls — named after the fairy tale, billy-goat gobbling monsters because of their arrogant and aggressive behavior, plus the smell — flood online forums with abusive and intentionally offensive, inflammatory comments in an attempt to hijack whatever discussion is going on. Logging in under an obviously fake name like “BadBoi” or “Stephanopoulos,” they craft their words carefully to anger the online community into closing ranks and attacking back until the entire forum has been reduced to a screaming match in flames and the trolls, chuckling to themselves, move on.
They revel in their trollness. They delight in disruption. But legislation is not the answer. We’d have to lock up MySpace and the bottom of the articles at AintItCoolNews would be a lonely, barren place indeed. No, what you need to do is to deny the troll his goal: an angry you.
The most common attitude is to treat the troll like a disobedient child, which, depending on your parenting techniques, could mean ignoring him, yelling at him or chaining him to the forum’s radiator. Ignoring is effective, if you can manage it. Like politicians and puppies, trolls live for attention and the worst thing that can happen to a troll is to never be noticed. (“I said, #@%&$ing Harry Potter bites! Hello? Anyone?”) Without attention they will fade away, and somewhere a mother will enter her son’s dank bedroom to find a pile of dust on his keyboard.
Of course an ignored troll may become frustrated and ramp up his attacks with more abuse until he gets a response (“#@%&$ing Harry Potter really bites!”). Sadly, this response is so rarely the half-ton meteorite strike from above that the other forum members are secretly hoping for.
You can try ignoring with intent. When the troll attacks, go a different direction entirely.
You: “Did you guys see Goblet of Fire?”
Troll: “#@%$ing Harry Potter bites!”
You: “Hey, who likes pie? Mmm!”
However, this can have side effects such as all of your threads getting derailed and you gaining forty pounds.
Do not counterattack, no matter what the provocation. It’s pointless, and exactly what he’s hoping for. You’re not going to hurt his feelings or cause him to change his ways any more than throwing steaks at a wolf will cause him to leave you alone (unless maybe it was a really big steak, and frozen, and you fired it out of some sort of cannon. . . but I digress).
You can report the troll to the forum moderator (and should) but don’t expect miracles. Even if he’s banned he’ll be back with a new name before the page reloads.
Instead, try engaging him. Treat the troll like a beloved relative with Tourette’s Syndrome, someone with valuable insights who can’t help screaming obscenities with every statement. Respond to the useful information in the troll’s post and ignore the rest.
Troll: “#@%&$ing Harry Potter bites!”
You: “Yeah, I didn’t think the last movie was as good, either. Did you think it’s because too much was left out, or because the director didn’t have a feel for it?”
Troll: “Um. #@%&$ing Harry Potter bites! Hard! Honest!”
You: “You might be right, it could have been Daniel Radcliff. He seemed a little wooden. I wonder if that was intentional.”
Troll: “No, I think it was the way #@%&$ing Newell directed him, so as to point out the hidden #@%&$ing layers of teenage angst and fear of #@%&$ing abandonment that were barely restrained by Harry’s civilized #@%&$ing veneer.”
It doesn’t usually happen this fast, obviously. It can often take up to ten exchanges before you get into advanced cinematic analysis, and some trolls never get past their extrapolation of the high concept narrative, but at least they’re not abusing anyone anymore.
Above all stay calm, stay cheerful, develop a thick skin, and don’t expect the federal government to handle it for you.
And, if all else fails, tell the troll that an even fatter billy goat is coming along after you. Works every time.