This fact, whilst unfair, provides ample opportunity for trolling.

We all experience popular culture, whether it is hip hop artists with black skin carrying guns, or white skinned alternative artists making themselves out to be better than they are. Take note of these stereotypes when you are watching films, music videos, reading magazines or just watching regular TV. People with black skin don’t all carry guns, and people with white skin don’t all puff themselves up – often except in popular culture.

So the next time someone says something, maybe offensive, or otherwise to try and ‘get one over’ on you, think of where something they said appears in popular culture assigned to a stereotype. Stereotypes include things about people’s age, sex, race, marital status, sexual orientation, disability, among others.

Each of these absolutes has more fuzzy equivalents. Age’s partner can be whether someone has young and enthusiastic attitudes or old and dated ones – regardless of age. Sex’s partner is whether someone is male or female, – regardless of whether they are a man or a woman. And race’s partner is ethnicity, which is someone’s cultural background in their mind (e.g. White) regardless of their physical make up (e.g. Caucasian). You can work out the others.

So you can Equality Troll either way – either with the PC Brigots, or other people unsuspectingly falling into a trap that even the most attuned brigots won’t pick up.

In the case of a PC Brigot, if they were to tell you that asking for ‘black tea’ was racist against ‘Black people’ you could say, ‘are you saying that all Black people are wet and heated? – you should be ashamed of yourself’. Equally if an unsuspecting person was to say, ‘you can never hold down a partner that is right for you – you are such a loser’, then you could retort, ‘Timbaland is always unlucky in his songs, are you saying because I like Black music I am a loser – you racist bigot!’

You could even consciously define yourself according to these Stereotypes. While there are more scientific means, this could be done using your music or film collection. Count up the number of songs you have by men, women, and men and women. If you had 10 songs, 3 men, 5 women, and 2 duos between men and women, then you would be 3/10 (i.e. 30%) male, 5/10 (i.e. 1/2 – 50%) female, and 2/10 (1/5 – 20%) transgender. You can do the same for any other stereotype, like the number of black/white artists, whether the artists have same-sex or opposite-sex partners, etc.

Once you have decided this, the next time someone attacks you and makes reference to something associated with one of those stereotypes then you can Equality Troll them. So, if someone was to say, as they did to me once, “I don’t rub that in people’s faces like a sweaty pair of balls,” then you can do as I did and say something like “I find that sexist. My gender is 81% male and 19% female. Are you saying that my feminine qualities of being able to remember anything for use in the opportune moment and being able to excel equally well in many areas somehow less important because my sex is that of a man?” After this exchange someone else said I was a ‘FoB’. I looked this up on urbandictionary.com and found it could mean ‘Fresh off the boat’ which is racist against Black people who used to emigrate from the Caribbean to the UK. So I said, “You mean ‘Fresh off the boat?’ That is a bit racist don’t you think? My ethnicity is ‘Mixed – Black and White’ because I am as influenced by White culture as much as Black culture. Are you somehow suggesting that because my race is Caucasian that I am somehow not allowed to be Black, in terms of being able to overcome adversity and appreciate the things I have that are important to me and see me through the bad times?”

So as you can see, by defining your ‘fuzzy’ stereotypes in terms that you are ‘mixed’, or ‘pluralistic’, then when someone says something against you (e.g. attacks you as a man or a woman) then you can claim it to be discriminatory against the opposite (e.g. if they attack you for being a chauvinist man then you can claim they are not recognising your ‘feminine side’ and it is they that are the bigots).

Understanding – Do they see where you’re coming from?

In Cyberspace we will often meet people who claim to be the most tolerant and understanding people in the world – the Sun appears to shine from their proverbial on no end of occasions. But these people are not flawless – they have prejudices just like everyone else. Whether you are dealing with a Socialist Saint, who hates Tories, or a self-professed ‘modest computer geek’ who hides a secret thirst for vanity, there are always ways these people can be wound up to reveal their true personality.

Relevance – Are they who they say they’re not?
There are many people in Cyberspace who think they are the most important people in the world. Some are upfront about it, like me, and post using our real names. Others can only seem to assert themselves however by hiding behind pseudonyms. Take Professor Barry Wellman from Toronto University for instance. Barry Wellman posts under the name of Bellagio99 on Wikipedia, spending most of his time editing himself into pages, such as on the Bronx, where he was from, as well as his own biography, as can be seen from this archive of his edits. Outing people like this will have no effect as they and their accomplices (known as ‘meat-puppets’) will defend their right to ‘privacy’. Also, the administrators are more likely to ban you from editing because they may think protecting a poster’s anonymity is more important than dealing with a conflict of interest, as can be seen on the talk page of the Wikipedia user Multimedia Guru.

So one of the best ways to troll these people, providing you think breaking the ‘Assume Good Faith’ rule is fair because it achieves the ‘Ignore All Rules’ rule would be to very innocently remove something about them, or cite something about them they’d rather not be there. When they go to remove it they will be set up-on by persons who dislike their masked attempts at puffery, which in the case of Barry Wellman include Antiselfpromotion, and BarryBelagio, while their meat-puppets step into protect them. In Professor Barry Wellman’s case, these meat-puppets include; Jeremy Hunsinger (Buridan), and Anthon Eff (Anthon.Eff).

Aspiration – Do they really know everything?
There are many people in Cyberspace advocating like they do in print that one can have ‘mind over matter’ and through ‘self-help’ books one can achieve everything in one’s dreams. Such delusional persons are ripe material even for novice trolls. Whether these people run ‘Agony Aunt’ columns, or like Tony Robbins that they make motivational speeches with no substance, there is always the opportunity to send a question that is clearly a wind-up, or by leaving a comment that will provoke their supporters into a rush of defensive flaming.

Choice – I’m sorry to be rude, but…
In Cyberspace there is no end of people who claim to be ‘open-minded’ and think everyone is ‘entitled to their opinion’. All too often however, such people will have red-lines. Whether it is a bigot, who foams with venom when the words ‘immigration’ and ‘gay marriage’ are mentioned, or a so called democrat who will accept posts from anyone, so long as they scrutinize them first, there are plentiful of these to troll. In the case of the former, one just needs to take on the role of ‘Devil’s advocate’, and argue against the things their passionate about. In the case of the latter, who try to keep a tight ship, more subversive methods are needed. Whichever Web browser you use, there is likely to be an application that allows ‘spoofing HTTP referrers’. This is where you can get your browser to make this closed-minded bigot think people are searching on their site for things they would rather not. You may be unlikely to see the effects of this type of trolling, but it is never the less satisfying as these control freaks have no say over their server-logs.

Expression – I dare you to prove me wrong
There are many people in Cyberspace who claim to value ‘free speech’ and say that ‘censorship’ is completely out of order. Why not test how much they are true to their word? There is no better place for this than Twitter. Iconic free-speech figures like Simon Singh (@SLSingh) regularly post here. See how long it takes of provoking them before they block you, and go against the values they claim to uphold. Another related group of people are those with religious convictions. Getting Christians to be unforgiving towards you, Atheists to be moralistic, or people of any religion including Atheism to call you deluded for a religious ‘conviction’ for you only then to turn it around to show that they are also is also a satisfying type of hypocrisy trolling.

Further information
This article should give you an idea of some of the types of trolling opportunities available, which don’t harm people, beyond potentially exposing the hypocrisies in what they say, which will entertain others. If you would like to improve your technique at trolling for others’ entertainment then why not take the course, Becoming a Better Troll at The Trolling Academy?

kely to think that ‘trolls’ are vicious and nasty characters who go online to harass others. This is I’m afraid to say, inaccurate.

With high profile trolling cases, like the bullying of Natasha MacBryde by Sean Duffy, or the harassment of Georia Varley’s family on Facebook, one might solidly hold this view – yet it is still mistaken.

Trolling, as you may know, is the posting of inflammatory or obnoxious messages intended to provoke a response others for humorous effect. The people who carry this out are in fact collectively known as ‘Trollers’ and not ‘Trolls’. The latter of these is simply a type of troller, which is one that takes part in trolling to entertain others and bring some entertainment to an online community.

You read an article, like the thoughts expressed and post a comment appreciating it. Next thing you know, your comment has been followed by a thread of comments where you have been termed from a douche bag to what not. No, it’s nothing personal; it’s just that you have been trolled!
Gone are the days when slandering was the forte of the big bully and pranks and practical jokes had to be resorted to embarrass people or trigger them to a fight. With internet being the latest toy of toddlers and its availability being more than that of water, its wrong use was somewhat inevitable.
Troll finds it origin in the French hunting term of troller. In internet terms, it refers to a person who posts indecent comments, extraneous messages on online forums with the intention of eliciting response from the other person or triggering him into an online battle. It could also refer to the messages posted, for example: “stop posting trolls on my article.”
The verb of trolling is quick gaining popularity, with people finding it a good medium to vent out their anger against someone and cause public defamation. After all, you can escape prying eyes, but you can’t escape the omni present internet! Trolls are generally posted on online communities, where a sane and regular discussion gets disrupted by a troll looking for shallow recognition.

But with changing times, even trolling has gained acceptance as a fun activity, with many websites gathering trolls from different forums. But this is acceptable only if it does not cause harm to someone or infringe on someone’s privacy.
Internet slang has now come to become a part of regular language and it wouldn’t be a surprise if one day a dedicated dictionary hits the book shelves. Today’s youngsters are effortlessly and also unintentionally conversing in internet slang even in regular talks. It is now commonplace to get a ‘lol’ as a response to a joke or an ‘OMG’ to a comment which earlier received a simple and understandable ‘Oh my God’. Internet slang generally comprises of abbreviations in order to allow fingers the freedom from the pain of writing full statements and make chatting faster. It has made its way to SMS and instant messengers as well. So if, in the middle of the night, a forwarded joke from your side gets you a reply of ‘rofl’, just hope that the person didn’t hurt himself when he rolled on floor laughing! And if a person is excessively boring or you have had the displeasure of encountering a troll, just squeeze your way out with a ‘brb’, only never to be right back.
Apart from abbreviations, internet slang also comprises of emoticons, the latest method of expressing your feelings with the help of brackets, colons- practically every key which the keyboard has to offer. And of course, it should not shock parents, who when scolding their teenage kids, receive a trite ‘do not troll me’ repartee!
Internet slang originated from the use and popularity of internet messengers and chatting. Trolling too developed as result of the internet phenomenon and the following frenzy. The reasons for someone indulging in trolling vary from personal enmity to psychological problems, but the view on it has witnessed quite a dramatic change.
Initially, trolling was used by online communities and forums in order to recognize the newbie or the ones who were not part of the insider group. A topic which had already been discussed to death by the members was again posted, and trolling would begin by the insider members when an unsuspecting, newly joined or irregular member would post his answers. This was later substituted by the more lethal attention seeking trolling, where people would post controversial remarks, just to gain attention or in their psychology, receive recognition for their different opinions. Popular psychologists have found its roots in the desire of lonely people to engage in a conversation, and quite unsurprisingly, this loneliness is caused by internet itself. The ripple effect of internet causing a loss in human contact is another topic that has been discussed to death. (So don’t fall for it if you happen to see it on an online forum

But talk to today’s youngsters and the reasons for trolling get a completely new dimension. Reasons of loneliness and psychological problems don’t feature here. Rather, fun and time pass seem to be the culprit. Also, when in an online Armageddon, a person realizes he has lost the debate, as a way to cop-out of the embarrassment of defeat, he can embarrass the opponent by a sly “dude, I was just trolling you!”
Trolling is not essentially dangerous if it is limited to posting of comments that do not injure the dignity of a person and if the other person does not lose his sleep over it. But trolling gets out of hand when slanderous pictures and incriminating remarks make way in the disguise of entertainment. Ideally, a person should refrain from giving any kind of response to a troll, as that is what they are looking for and answers only encourage them. But if things get out of hand, then its best to contact the website manager or other online forums which specialize in tackling of trolls.
Even tackling of troll poses a dilemma as what can be constituted as a troll is a subjective matter. What might seem as undignified to one may just be harmless entertainment for another. But every fun has its boundaries and personal or undignified remarks should never be entertained, even if it means losing some members who were enjoying the fun.
But the harmless trolls who do not possess any ulterior motive can make hours spent on the internet quite entertaining. Funny home videos, witty remarks, someone’s deafening karaoke session or the dance training of a person with two left feet are not harmful in their general sense and are good for quick laughs. With certain websites dedicated to collecting trolls from different portals and giving their viewers a funny time, harmless trolling is definitely a boon.
Only rider: trolls should thrill but not kill!