Trolls

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 44 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

One of the most annoying features of online life is the troll.

Most have experienced it. Many have done some trolling themselves. I won't pretend to be 100% innocent in it.

But I had thought I'd gotten over it.

I first experienced this phenomenon in the late 1980s. I had been covering the online world for three years then and felt pretty comfortable there. Most of those who spent time online then were educated, erudite, looking for sincere give-and-take. Being online was an elite activity.

Then I entered into a political discussion. Under my own name.

I was soon involved in a flame war, and flaming back. I'd get hit with 3,4,5, angry notes and fire an equal number in response. I used logic, I used facts, I wrote with passion and conviction. (Picture from Steve Jackson Games.)

Most of what I got back was junk. Jackasses laughing at me, at anyone like me, and (since I was there under my own name) threatening me personally.

After a few weeks I got out. But there was lasting psychological damage. These people had hurt me, bullied me, and laughed at me while they were doing it.

I learned this was not uncommon. I learned that, from the safety of our keyboards, it's easy to take the stance of a bully. It's easy to say, not just that I disagree, or you're wrong, but that you're a jerk, I know you are but what am I.

There's no psychic difference between an online troll and some kids on the street corner who pick on little kids, kick dogs, and write on walls. But there is an enormous physical difference. Because you're online, you can be (to all appearances) a normal, middle-aged citizen. You can be a secret bully. And when you find a few others of like mind, you can terrorize out of all proportion to your numbers and gain some real power.

In American politics, the period from 1988-2008 may be known as the Age of the Troll. All the big radio yakkers are trolls. Rush Limbaugh is a troll. It was an act that was cheap to move to TV. Bill O'Reilly is a troll.  It's easy to know when a yakker is a troll. They interrupt callers, guests, they hector, they badger, they bully. And when they're done they usually laugh.

Rachel Maddow, by the way, is not a troll. She has people who disagree with her on her show and she treats them well. She listens, she responds, she doesn't shout them down or shut them up. Anyone who calls her a troll is either one themselves or doesn't understand the term.

Trolls helped give liberals an inferiority complex that has become institutionalized. Since Republicans won by having trolls raise a stink over whatever they could imagine, American politics became like  a bad marriage. Republicans were the wife beaters, Democrats the wives, and the real issues didn't matter. What mattered was the GOP could swing their big dicks, bully and intimidate any Democrats who stood up to them, and the media assumed this is the way politics works.

The Netroots changed all that. Starting in 2003, when it became clear that conservatives were not going to just troll their countrymen but troll the world, some liberals finally stood up and said enough. Thanks to community management system programs like Scoop and Slash (eventually Drupal and WordPress) liberals found places where they could be the bullies, because there were more of them. They could speak freely, knowing that trolls would be pummeled. They weren't alone.

The 2004 election was close, horribly close. The Netroots wanted Howard Dean, but in Iowa they went about it like trolls, and Democrats (as a rule) don't like trolls. They fear trolls. So Democrats went with John Kerry, who the party leaders wanted, who we could say was a war hero, but who turned out to be typical of his generation of Democratic leaders, half-beaten before he started. He wouldn't really fight back. He assumed that someone would see through the troll-like attacks of the "Swift Boat Veterans," who had followed Kerry throughout his political life, and tell truths that would shame them into their corner.

But it didn't work. The success of the Swift Boat attacks was that Kerry didn't counter fast enough, didn't counter hard enough, didn't counter personally enough, and so made himself out to seem weak in a time of war. The attacks were lies, the men behind them liars and trolls with no honor whatsoever. They were  bullies backed by money and ideology. But Kerry refused to get mad, and so he was destroyed.

The Netroots were supposed to be at the heart of the 2008 campaign, but the Obama people realized something important. It's possible to rise above the charge and counter-charge of the online world, to use branding effectively online, and to adapt all the database-driven technologies of Amazon.Com and Google to mass political organization. Members of the Netroots became just faces in the crowd under Obama, just one interest group among many.

As I have written here many times, the Obama Thesis, driven by this Internet medium, is one of consensus. He lets people contend, then tries to move forthrightly in what he deems the most practical direction. The whole hurly-burly that defined politics, online and off, for 20 years is meant to happen below him. His government can treat trolls "as they come," as trolls, and can treat his own online supporters in much the same way.

But when you have a Thesis defined, at its core, by troll-like attitudes, by bullying, by ideology, you don't go quietly. Trolls are now the official opposition. Non-trolls are no longer welcome in the Republican Party. The divide seems to be one between people who want to think about things and people who just want to scream incoherently. It's the stupid leading the assholes.

I got a taste of this recently at ZDNet. A small group of trolls, maybe a half-dozen or so (they all go by screen names, and it's always the same ones) have settled under the bridge at one of my blogs, where they like to harass me. They call me names, they say I have no right to work in my field, that I'm biased. They question my story selection. They don't argue. They spout ideology, they support one another with "attaboys," and they bully anyone who challenges them. Me included.

I first tried engaging them. I tried laughing at them. I tried ignoring them. Stubborn trolls.

What will satisfy them is running me out of town. They want my blog closed down, or want me replaced by someone more to their liking.

They won't get it. I've dealt with my bosses, I've worked carefully, and I'm going to see them in a different light now.

Trolls are small-minded bullies. They are online blackshirts. They are worthless excuses for human beings. But they are humanity at his most cavil, and I won't be intimidated by them any more. If my bosses choose to be intimidated by them in the future, I can get new bosses. I strongly suspect they won't be.

Because there's something the trolls don't know. Every moment they spend on my blog makes me money. Each time they hurl an insult, they make me money. That's the business model. It traps the time of trolls and generates revenue from advertising. I get a cut.

Once you see trolls as profit centers, you can laugh, ignore them and sleep well at night.