Trolls: They’re doing it for the Lulz (Part 1)

So we’ve encountered a problem with trolling. It is both infuriating and, at times, fiendishly amusing. 

What a catch-22 for a moderator!

Here’s the deal for the uninitiated: a Troll in common webspeak parlance is an individual who stirs shit with a single goal in mind. They’re their own personal amusement at your enraged, befuddled, jaw-dropped expense. These are the people in high school who would fart as loud as they could in the middle of a lecture just to wake the people up around them. The types who years earlier ate worms to gross out female classmates in the elementary schoolyard; a healthy breed of oddball sociopaths who gets “lulz” at your expense. "Lulz" incidentally is a bastardization of the term “lol”; it is as if lol was written by the cats from lolcats and conjugated in the style developed by the Cheeseburger Network 

(If you don’t know, Google it on your iPhone – welcome to the future…)

A troll can take on many forms. Initially it applied to people who would write asinine and provocative comments on Internet message boards, such as newspaper and broadcaster websites, though at present no one is safe from trolling, and indeed everyone who runs a website with a message board is all too aware of these sick, hilarious people. Often quite contrarian -almost to an absurd degree, the common troll is looking to get you enraged, though he may or may not believe in what he’s writing, saying, hell – maybe even singing. He’s out to get your goat, as it were.

Who is a troll? 

Glenn Beck is most likely a troll, and he has a syndicated radio show, not to mention a very popular infotainment program on Fox News Channel. In fact, he’s probably the most recognizable example of pure troll. Because he does it for the lulz.

Here at TXT-TV, the Mods have been encountering a problem with trolling. 

Individuals send in all kinds of obscene messages, which due to various provincial and federal regulations we are prohibited from airing before 11pm. Moreover, there’s a bevy of other terms, words and phrases that for obvious reasons, can never air on Canadian TV. This would include, among other things, hate-speech,  racism, libel and a wide range of cultural and social taboos. 

As moderators, it’s our job to filter through the messages sent in and, in effect, censor those that violate the myriad rules concerning what’s appropriate for national television. This is a complicated, subjective and context-dependent problem for us to solve, and getting a specific consensus on how to deal with a problem that is inherently personal is even more complicated. 

Thankfully, we have the benefit of working in teams, and this often leads to two or three-way discussions on meaning, intent and context. 

It’s fascinating in its own right, and you tend to learn a fair deal about how people deal with taboos when they consider offensive statements in an objective fashion. It’s not easy, and we’re reminded constantly that the individual message has cost someone money. 

Caution is the name of the game.