DON’T feed the trolls!

A rule of thumb when dealing with bile spitting, button bashers behind the internet’s nasty comments.

To reply, engage them in civil discussion or question their, often poisonous, views is pointless, the theory being you just fuel their fire by doing so.

This week, I went directly against that advice to turn James Cox: Troll Hunter, in the name of social experimentation. Think of me as a David Attenborough of digital subcultures.

Finding them isn’t hard. Practically every news story and Youtube clip is strewn with comments - and you can guarantee a few would veer into troll territory.

I started on The Guardian - that smugly liberal bastion of free, unedited discourse.

The article: Michael Phelps’ girlfriend transgender confession. Perfect.

It took me approximately five seconds to find user ‘Britton George’.

“Gay folks are one thing, I don't mind them as long as their not colourful and flamboyant,” he wrote. (Spelling as is).

“Trannies - whole nother matter. Seriously messed up.”

Cracking my knuckles I attacked with positivity.

“Hi George,” I started.

“Can't say I agree with you, sir. Wouldn’t the world would be awfully dull without the colourful and flamboyant. I imagine a young person dealing with transgender issues might find your position on "trannies" offensive.”

It took seven minutes for him to reply: “**** you ****. You need to **** your **** and mind your damn business. ******* **** ****”.

I noticed several other users jumped to my defence and he treated them to the same muddy expletives.

What about somewhere closer to home? One of my own stories perhaps?

I recently published an interview with a local chef online, as per the instruction of our web editor. She has assessed the user diagnostics for our websites and seen that people like a longer read on their lunch hour and summised people would like it if lengthier features, rather than punchy news stories, went up online between 1pm and 2pm. Good idea made for the pleasure of our readers? This guy disagreed.

“ADVERT ALERT... ADVERT ALERT...” wrote one user over and over again, as if he was exposing Government corruption.

Normally I let this kind of thing go, but today I’m Troll Hunter - baiting negative commentators and scything down digital ignorance.

“It's not an advert. It's a an interview with a chef,” I corrected.

My comment got eight thumbs up from anonymous supporters compared with his two. #Winning

“Then why is it classified under the "news" section of the site?” he fired back.

“How are these "features" chosen, because it reads like an advert?”. That garnered 13 thumbs down.

This wasn’t a particularly nasty attack, granted. But trolling is more than sweary racism and homophobia. It’s that urge which makes people post pointlessly negative comments. I mean - it IS a feature and it IS in the news column. But we did that purely to serve our readers based on the net stats. There is no obligation to read it, let alone get angry about it. Some people even liked it.

I checked the user’s web comment records (we can do that). They’ve had six banned (ie, deemed unacceptable) and 11 suspended.

I explain who I have interviewed in the past, how we like to support local businesses, I explain our new web policy and finally invite them to call me, apologsing for not meeting their expectations and offering my office number. The phone never rings.

My guess is real life, person to person confrontation is too much effort. It’s easier to moan in text knowing a text rebuttal, or at worse comment deletion, is the biggest reprisal.

My study continues.

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Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here