By: vowe dot net

vowe dot net — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 17:46:11 +0000

Lotusphere aftermath

We have returned from Lotusphere yesterday. The travel was uneventful, the bird that took us across the pond was running at 30% capacity so we had plenty of room to move around. Now I need some time to recover from sleep deprivation; I could cut out ab…

By: Sean Bonner

Sean Bonner — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 00:00:34 +0000

we’ve got one of these on blogging.la right now, she’s commenting in just about every post and trying really hard to cause problems.

By: John Fuller

John Fuller — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 15:24:46 +0000

Crushing dissent? You sound like a dictator! If nothing else I think you have coined a new term. By the way, anyone have any TP? Sorry about stinking up the site. I guess I am one of the not so subtle trolls. Muahahaha

By: Joel Spolsky

Joel Spolsky — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:56:33 +0000

Ha ha! I thought I was the only one with happy trolls. Well, one happy troll. Your definition is perfect.
Cynthia put it perfectly: they use “reasonable dissent,” they agree with some things, then suddenly they go mental.
As of last Friday, he’s banned.
Luckily our software has bayesian filtering so it can find our young troll as he moves from IP to IP, and it has this neat little trick where the troll continues to see his own posts, so he’s not even aware that he has been banned, which reduces the chances he’ll be able to run off in one of his predictable “censorship” rages.

By: The Progressive Blog Alliance HQ

The Progressive Blog Alliance HQ — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 23:21:23 +0000

Beware of Happy Trolls

Gapingvoid has identified a new species of Troll, which has been classified as "The Happy Troll" .

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 18:48:49 +0000

I don’t mind “dissent” or disagreement. What I don’t like is bad manners, and I’m pretty ruthless about it.
Sure, “bad manners” is a subjective call… but it’s my call to make.
PS: “Dissent”. What a pompous-ass word. Heh.

By: The Blog Herald: more blog news more often

The Blog Herald: more blog news more often — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 14:07:49 +0000

Happy Trolls????

Hugh at Gapingvoid has written about a phenomena he describes as “The Happy Troll”:
“Basically, the Happy Troll is happiest when he is “shitting in your living room” without you actually noticing. That’s the art of it. He does this by “ad…

By: Joi Ito's Web

Joi Ito's Web — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:55:27 +0000

Happy Trolls Hugh has a great post about "The Happy Troll". I've been thinking about this recently as well and I think he hits the nail on the head. This blog is my living room and if you can't behave, I'll...

By: campester

campester — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 08:14:29 +0000

without the once-a-year troll and the far more frequent comment spam, i wouldn’t get any email at all. hello? hello? is anyone there?
sometimes when i can’t seem to get any radio stations, i just tune into the white noise turned down real low, and soothe myself with the sound. trolls are in some ways like a mindless wave machine on the night stand. their only downside is bandwidth consumption, which is usually fairly minimal. if i initiate a conversation that gets hijacked by trolls, the conversation was already dead meat.

By: Brett

Brett — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 03:00:14 +0000

Here’s something my friend wrote to a happy troll who came into our group of lyricists and tried to battle everyone 8-mile style:
you got your battle tactics, noticed, and overated,
fixated, a personality mistakin, mad tight, and in depth,
but this aint war, its communication…
so keep your tactile pads a fluctuatin
your ego fucked up… the path youve taken, its breakin.
This dude, complicatin the heart, manipulatin the art
fabricatin his arch, eradicatin the spark
too much masturbate in the dark…
the only light i think you see
reflectin off your computer screen.
“yo im tighter than all these here fuckers!”
no, you

By: Jon Husband

Jon Husband — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 01:16:46 +0000

After a couple of years of blogging, (I think) I’m surprised to find myself agreeing more-or-less with kinrowan above that trolls can be occasionally useful.
One of the things I’ve noticed with blogs that have regular communities of commenters is that the online facilitation skills .… the listening and “looking-for-the-learning” skills of the blog host … can be very useful. Some people are masters of this, like the Happy Tutor over at Wealth Bondage … skillfully done, responding to a troll via acceptance and a well-wrought question that turns a troll’s contribution inside out can lead to useful insights, and growth in learning all around — as well as showing the troll’s comments for what they are. I think it takes a lot of skill, and patience, however.
Just like real life … if we take the time to listen and learn from the obnoxious asshole next to us in the bar (even the one that’s grin-fucking us with his superiority), we can find out some interesting shit … at the very least, about ourselves.
kinrowan also makes the point that they are almost always ignored … which is true in my experience, and helpful. And thus what does wanting to keep our own blog neat and clean show us about ourselves ?
I’ve found trolls a useful wall to bounce ideas off of (as in cynthia’s “reasonable disagreement” point above), in order to deepen a point .. and clearly, when it becomes useless to do so, one can just stop the feeding.
Jeebus, hope I’m not being a happytroll.

By: Cynthia Rockwell

Cynthia Rockwell — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 22:22:00 +0000

Hugh to Happy Trolls:

“So they got too may wedgies at summer camp back in the 70s.

By: cynthia

cynthia — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 20:58:29 +0000

no, lots of people ‘reasonably disagree’, but a troll uses that to get his foot in the door before going mental with personal attacks. a troll always has the personal attacks awaiting just under the surface, and tries to create a situation where they can let fly. and the first step is to ‘reasonably disagree.’

By: kinrowan

kinrowan — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 12:42:14 +0000

Interesting. If I reasonably disagree with your point of view, then I’m a Happy Troll. My comments get deleted and my IP banned and no one can hear me scream.
Sounds a little like what Bush and cronies do to silence dissent — kind of an “if you’re not with us your against us” approach. a little.
Personally (at the risk of being branded a troll), I think trolls can be occasionally useful. Mostly, though, they’re just irritating, and I think experienced web-dwellers just ignore them. I also don’t have a problem with them on my blog (yet), so it’s probably easy for me to talk.… However, if it makes you feel better to ban them then go for it.

By: solios

solios — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 09:07:39 +0000

I avoid the problem entirely, by having gutted all of the comment tags out of the templates that spit out my MT posts. Solves the problem– if people wantr to actually talk to me, rather than verbally masturbate all over what amounts to a public space, they can email me.
Of course, they don’t, just like I’m not emailing you, and probably for the same reasons. Nobody responds to email these days, especially from somebody they don’t know. Comment leaving at least ensures that somebody will read my thoughts on the matter… which is probably all a Happy Troll really wants. Attention.

Comments on: happy trolls