The comment field on any modern website has become the preeminent battleground between mainstream internet users, veteran netizens and shell-shocked trolls. See for yourself.
If you remember in a previous post, I said that getting a troll's attention is the de facto guaranteed way to get trolled? Well, with a comment field you not only plaster yourself and your opinion for everyone to see (duh) but you leave a convenient place for a troll to express itself to you.
Pictured to the left of this text are the top comments from Justin Bieber's "Baby" video on youtube. Notice how creative and expressive comment trolls can be, ranging from the thoroughly verbose commenter wolPies to the simple, visual expression of displeasure by ferdauscool. Granted, a celebrity youtube channel is an easy target and rarely replied to directly by the "victim." However, on a smaller scale with a more personal youtube channel (such as a youtube-exclusive celebrity) comment trolling has a greater effect.
Common responses to comment trolls are, in ascending order of extremity: "Don't feed the troll" post, turn off the comments or delete &^%*ing everything.
With the "Don't feed the troll post," the original poster (OP) will beg their other readers to not give the troll their lulz (see previous post) and contain the brewing flame war. Of course, when this fails (and it usually does; someone almost always gets trolled)...
The next logical progression is to cut the flame war at the source - remove the battlefield. Turning off the comments section is slightly more extreme, preventing trolls from public input. The flaw here is that the trolls (and their enemies) will find another place to discuss the original post. Thus, the flame war continues (possibly on another site, or worse on another blog). When things get out of hand...
Scorched Earth. Delete the entire post, the source of the controversey. If the OP has been actively involved in the flame war then this "solution" is practically raising the white flag in surrender, and is the greatest source of lulz for a troll. This usually completes the cycle of trolling; the ultimate end of a flame war. After all, no flame can burn with no kindle.
Comment trolls. Interesting.
Ha ha, I used to always give that hand to people that pissed me off in chat rooms; back in middle school when chat rooms were popular. And yes, the comment section, especially Youtube, is full of a lot of explicit language and fighting. I feel that most of the people doing this are teenagers, but heck, I bet adults do it also maybe not as much as teens. On the video pages of celebrities that love to be hated on, Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black, there is nothing but hate comments and four letter curse words.
ReplyDeleteA lot of these comments are pointless and senseless, or trolling. At least, when I add explicit language to my comments on Youtube, Yahoo, or whatever I do it to oppose someone's comment that offends me, usually a comment that at least had some thought to it; heck maybe I am responding to a troll but at least I got my point out. Most of the senseless comments with nothing but spontaneous cursing is easy to ignore though, especially on Youtube.
I just think it goes too far when people start throwing s and f bombs on a video that a lot of small children watch, but I guess these days cursing is not surprising anymore.