Comment Trolling Has A Psychological Explanation

just mark them as spam. lol

I love them comment trolls.

I get lots of these on a daily basis. In fact, I even publish comments of this nature in my blog.

It’s pointless to acknowledge them let alone even try to get on their good side.

Whenever we put ourselves online, we’re opening ourselves both to praise and criticism. If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. It takes awhile getting used to it, of course, and I’m not saying I’m superhuman and completely numb to it all… but think about it. Trolls suffer from ADD; the more you pay attention to them, the more you are giving them the satisfaction… and a chance to even provoke you more in the future. So why bother?

One thing you shouldn’t do to a troll, sleep with his girlfriend. This will only make me more of a troll.

… and sometimes, trolling in your OWN blog is also a nice way to spice it up and get people to react and join a hate bandwagon (you started), don’t you think?

;)

Sorry, forgot this other one: “I used to have some trolls as well on my blog. I guess they’re just people who have too many time on their hands and don’t understand the “if you don’t like what you’re reading and if it’s not your blog, just close the browser” principle.”

I believe that less popular blog, blogs with less than a hundred readers a day is not worth anyone’s time, even for the worst of trolls. The best targets are popular blogs. Engadget, which practices a more open comment system gets a lot of trolls. Hell, most commenters there are trolls, and the best and funniest ones get their due respect. Gizmodo edits their comments section, so we don’t know. Blogs that are spinoffs of real print media do not really filter their comments section. They use house rules, very broad, to sift out rude language (i.e. profanities) and defamatory and racist remarks. Take a leaf from these people, they are professionals.

Blogs are publicly available and as such must be the public’s concern. It’s not PRIVATE. Meaning, once you publish it for the public, the public has their own rights to it (Pls read up on journalistic ethics for this). Second, I believe there are two options if you have a comments section. First option: close it down, so you don’t run the risk of being annoyed by commenters. Second option: set ground rules.

The option to censor or block email addresses when the commenter does not go against house rules is (and this is just my feeling) unethical. Name-calling like calling people whose opinion and whose attitude annoy us (whether this reflects the general truth) Trolls or whatever is not only unprincipled, it is morally weak. I’m sure very few of us here would consider himself a journalist or bound by journalistic ethics, but I seem to recall a previous poll by Yuga on the topic and many of us here gave his answer to the effect that “blogging is a form of journalism.” Well, journalism is about the free flow of relevant information, and who is to say a troll has no relevant information to share?

Trolls are most welcome in my blog. Blocking them out is futile.