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Everybody hates trolls, those scumbags that spend their lives bullying people online and causing spam chaos. But how do you deal with them?
There are many ways to deal with them, and many work, but what do you do personally?
I tend to go after them and, given that all they want is attention, it's perhaps not the best way of dealing with it. I absolutely love it when someone is patently trolling and four days after their post aired, there still isn't a single reply.
Having said that, flame wars can often be amusing. On a British financial advice forum, one chap had posted about his son having frittered all his money away and how he was now unable to afford a mortgage. The people who posted there seemed to be all middle-class, middle-aged and exceptionally polite and helpful. Apart from one single person who took it upon himself to say what everyone else was no doubt thinking. In the middle of a message thread talking about very boring financial dealings, he simply wrote, "Even a squirrel knows to save some nuts for the winter".
It gradually descended into chaos as the politeness ebbed away and people got increasingly hostile. This carried on for weeks and spilled over into other threads. It was like soap opera. Three people posted the same question, asking about bonds or gilts and someone who was obviously close to snapping point responded to them all with one of the best original lines I've ever seen. He simply said: "Do some research, you internet pigs". I was crying with laughter to see respectable people reduced to outright childishness and hostility.
After his post, things became all "Lord of the Flies" and they had to first install a mature language filter on the board and finally close it for a week to give everyone time to cool down. When it re-opened everyone was back saying they were "so dreadfully sorry, old chap" to each other and expressing disbelief at how things turned out.
For me, it was one of the best couple of week's entertainment I've ever had and it all came from that original person's indelicate comment. So I'm in two minds...
I've talked with an obvious troll too. He's on YouTube. His username is MercenarySlick, and he absolutely despises every country that isn't the United States. He believes that no country in the world except USA has achieved anything, and he constantly raves on about how Britain has failed and such in a bevy of curse words. Even if you tell him obvious facts about successes around the world, he thinks up some miserable excuse to counter you. He's like a child who hasn't done his homework. An example:
"Some of the world's best bands come from the UK"
"All f***ing overrated. None of them match up to Elvis, The Doors and Bread you pommie c**t".
Yeah, he's really heartless. Wouldn't be surprised if he lives by himself with no one to talk to. Poor guy.
He's so deluded and childish that everybody's laughing at him as if he were joking, and it's made him very mad and bitter because nobody is really offended because his statements are so untrue. Remember though, if you laugh at a troll, that's good! Trolls hate it when you find what they say funny. Trolls hate: compliments, when you laugh at them, when you patronise them ("awww, poor you, you silly thing"), when you tell them they have no life/friends (it reminds them of it) and when you ignore them. All four work fine.