Schadenfroh
Elite Member
I am talking about troll as in:
Internet troll
I have wandered ever since i came to web forums why people involve themselves in this kind of activity. I have not only come to the conclusion that trolls love what they do, but also the people that participate in troll threads love flaming. Despite what they may say, the majority of people actually enjoy these "troll threads" and "flame wars". This is evident by the large amount of traffic these topics receive.
I created two threads to prove my hypothesis:
Explain why people buy macs
Unofficial Circumcision Thread
Note that both threads grew very swiftly. I did not get any "joy" from posting them and i did not read hardly any of the responses. Troll threads appear to generate a good deal of traffic very swiftly and die out very swiftly unless they are resurrected by a thread necromancer. Both threads were on over used anandtech topics that appear every week and thus there should be nothing new to discuss.
I recently had the chance to talk with the Anandtech troll, BoredToDeath, who attended my old high school and is now at my college. He was banned sometime ago and so far he has not returned (or at least he has not informed me of his returning, but after all i don?t see him around campus very much, although i did see him a good deal in high school, where he saw me on Anandtech a good deal during breaks through the day and he started lurking the forums).
I did ask him a few questions the last time i saw BoredToDeath. I would not have figured out whom he was, if it were not for the Anandtech Moderator that found a PM that i sent to boredtodeath asking what he had against me (this troll followed me in threads, but his post here really ticked me off). The Anandtech Moderator alerted me that some of the IP addresses he posted from matched my school that i sometimes posted from myself. BoredToDeath had bragged about how in HS that they (AT) had banned several of his email addresses, so it did not take me long to figure out who BoredToDeath was. I confronted him about it and he laughed and asked me if i liked his work. For those of you who do not recall, here are a few of his sins, there are a great many more if you search the archives and he did not post anything that was not flame bait.
BoredToDeath
Why is intel so much more stable than AMD?
Is homosexuality by choice or by birth?
Who would you rather have as your president?
Here are my questions and the gist of what he said from what i can recall when i talked to him friday:
How many times were you banned from Anandtech before creating BoredToDeath
Do you recall the names on these other accounts
Why do you create troll threads?
Fun?
Are you going to return to Anandtech?
As you can see, it appears that AT has no need to worry of him returning, but there are still plenty of troll threads out there created by common, hard working anandtech posters. The people that participate in them seem to be at just as much fault in my opinion as the troll himself. Very few threads i see actually ask a legitimate question when it is flame bait. The favorites include topics of religion, politics, ati versus nvidia, occasional sports flame war (although one needs to see the ESPN forums for that) and others. But... i would like your input......
Why do you think people troll?
Internet troll
I have wandered ever since i came to web forums why people involve themselves in this kind of activity. I have not only come to the conclusion that trolls love what they do, but also the people that participate in troll threads love flaming. Despite what they may say, the majority of people actually enjoy these "troll threads" and "flame wars". This is evident by the large amount of traffic these topics receive.
I created two threads to prove my hypothesis:
Explain why people buy macs
Unofficial Circumcision Thread
Note that both threads grew very swiftly. I did not get any "joy" from posting them and i did not read hardly any of the responses. Troll threads appear to generate a good deal of traffic very swiftly and die out very swiftly unless they are resurrected by a thread necromancer. Both threads were on over used anandtech topics that appear every week and thus there should be nothing new to discuss.
I recently had the chance to talk with the Anandtech troll, BoredToDeath, who attended my old high school and is now at my college. He was banned sometime ago and so far he has not returned (or at least he has not informed me of his returning, but after all i don?t see him around campus very much, although i did see him a good deal in high school, where he saw me on Anandtech a good deal during breaks through the day and he started lurking the forums).
I did ask him a few questions the last time i saw BoredToDeath. I would not have figured out whom he was, if it were not for the Anandtech Moderator that found a PM that i sent to boredtodeath asking what he had against me (this troll followed me in threads, but his post here really ticked me off). The Anandtech Moderator alerted me that some of the IP addresses he posted from matched my school that i sometimes posted from myself. BoredToDeath had bragged about how in HS that they (AT) had banned several of his email addresses, so it did not take me long to figure out who BoredToDeath was. I confronted him about it and he laughed and asked me if i liked his work. For those of you who do not recall, here are a few of his sins, there are a great many more if you search the archives and he did not post anything that was not flame bait.
BoredToDeath
Why is intel so much more stable than AMD?
Is homosexuality by choice or by birth?
Who would you rather have as your president?
Here are my questions and the gist of what he said from what i can recall when i talked to him friday:
How many times were you banned from Anandtech before creating BoredToDeath
Do you recall the names on these other accounts
Why do you create troll threads?
Fun?
Are you going to return to Anandtech?
As you can see, it appears that AT has no need to worry of him returning, but there are still plenty of troll threads out there created by common, hard working anandtech posters. The people that participate in them seem to be at just as much fault in my opinion as the troll himself. Very few threads i see actually ask a legitimate question when it is flame bait. The favorites include topics of religion, politics, ati versus nvidia, occasional sports flame war (although one needs to see the ESPN forums for that) and others. But... i would like your input......
Why do you think people troll?
