SL for Nowt

There is a breathtaking case of trolling currently underway on the official SL forums which has held me jaw-droppingly enthralled to the point of my mug of tea going cold as I read it this morning. It’s almost applaudable as a classic of its type.

It began, as epic trolling usually does, with another poster asking a question that could and should provoke an interesting discussion among the forum members. But, after a few pages, the troll discovers the thread and sets to work. The thread then devolves into three pages of interesting posts, fifty pages of argument and counter-argument. Or, in other words: “three pages about all of you and fifty pages all about ME!”

Of course, the main aims of a forum troll are to keep the thread off-track, and to keep the focus on their own entertainment. Some trolls have their fun and then drop away, some find a good thread that they can take down for page after page of never-ending ‘fun’, and some trolls actually aren’t trolls at all: they really are that obtuse/dense/rude/nasty in real life. Some trolls are blatant and obvious, and some are stealth trolls, going undercover for weeks or months to pose as a ‘normal’ member of the forums and getting people on their side before they begin to take potshots at the one or two people they have decided to target.

The victory of a troll comes when yet another person is so incensed or upset at what they’re saying that they simply have to join the debate. When you click that ‘reply’ button, the troll has won. When you log into a forum you usually only ever read and never post on, the troll has won. When you create a new account just to post your response, the troll has won. It doesn’t matter if your comment is sincere or witty, a reasoned response or a scathing put-down; the fact is that you responded at all. The troll has won. In a sense, even my blogpost here is a small victory for the troll, because their behaviour has prompted me to make it. However, since I’ve been online for quite a number of years and seen trolling of all kinds in many an online environment, this post is more of a generic one about the phenomenon, rather than a specific response. I don’t count this post as a win for the troll.

I have, in the past, responded. Many of us have, to some degree. I don’t really ‘do’ forums much. I tend to read rather than respond. But, on occasion, I’ve been provoked enough to log in or click ‘reply’. Looking back on that now, I know that it was a futile thing to do. I played right into the troll’s game, as did everyone else who responded. The troll had a nasty, biting response to me, clearly intended to draw me further in and provoke me into the infinity loop of their game. Their response was what made me look at the screen and say to myself, “Nope, I fell for it once but I see through it now. You’re not going to beat me a second time”.

Buddha was well known for his ability to respond to evil with good.  There was a man who knew about his reputation and he traveled miles and miles and miles to test Buddha. When he arrived and stood before Buddha, he verbally abused him constantly, he insulted him, he challenged him, he did everything he could to offend Buddha.

Buddha was unmoved, he simply turned to the man and said, “May I ask you a question?”

The man responded with “Well, what?”

Buddha said, “If someone offers you a gift and you decline to accept it to whom then does it belong?”

The man said, “Then it belongs to the person who offered it”

Buddha smiled, “That is correct.  So if I decline to accept your abuse does it not then still belong to you?”

The man was speechless and walked away.

So how do you win? Simple: you don’t respond. It’s painfully obvious when you see it in black and white, but the troll knows that at some point he will say something that will get you so wound up that you simply have to reply. The moment when you can recognise him for what he’s trying to do, when you can step back and say, “Ahaha, I don’t think so, sunshine,” and when you resist that urge to respond… that’s when you have won and the troll has lost.

It takes a lot of strength to do that. Really, it does. But the satisfaction you’ll get in realising you’ve beaten the troll is far greater for its rarity than their satisfaction is in goading yet another person to join the fray.

ETA: Comments to this post are now disabled, as it was attracting a lot of spam comments.

Browsing the search terms for the blog in order to come up with another in the ‘Those Little Questions’ series is always an interesting exercise for me. Occasionally the search terms will throw out a giggle, sometimes they’ll make me frown, but more often than not they’ll make me sigh.

So many of those search terms are to do with suspicion, particularly in relationships of all stripe, from friendship to intimate. The ability to create alt accounts in SL lends itself to duplicitousness just as easily as it does usefulness, and it’s easy to read between the lines of some of those questions:

– How to find out if someone has more than one Second Life avi?
(“I think my partner/friend is cheating on me/avoiding me by using an alt account.”)

– Can anyone else see my friends list?
(“I’m worried that my partner/friend might find out that I’m talking to XXX, whom they don’t like/whom they don’t want me talking to/whom I’m seeing behind their back.”)

-How do I check when someone logs in on Second Life?
(“I think my partner/friend is using an alt, so how can I find out when that alt logs on without friending them?”)

Because Second Life is exactly that – an extension of our real lives – and because we become so invested in our avatars, we often fall harder when it comes to relationships, whereas in real life we may be more wary. How many times have you struck up a random conversation while stalking a lucky chair in SL, ending with a friendship offer? Now compare that to how many times you’ve struck up a random conversation while waiting for a bus in real life, ending with an exchange of telephone numbers? They amount to the same thing: a chance encounter culminating in the ability to contact each other whenever we wish to, but it is far more likely to happen in Second Life than it is in real life.

Why are we less wary in SL? Well, obviously, exchanging calling cards or adding to a friends list online is vastly different to giving out real life information such as addresses and phone numbers. But, quite often, SL relationships eventually progress to real life. Phone numbers are exchanged (or, at least, Skype sessions become a frequent feature) and those who begin serious relationships with others in-world often carry those relationships onto a real-world footing.

I’m not knocking it, by any means. There have been more than a few marriages in real life that were borne of friendships that blossomed into intimate relationships in Second Life. But the anonymity of SL does lend itself to a lowering of our usual, real-world cautiousness: that, “Wait a minute; I only just met you so I’m sure as hell not giving you my home address!” moment that will stop us from giving too much away in real life.

Sad to say, the vast majority of relationships in SL don’t last. In my experience in-world, I’ve seen SL marriages of less than three months dissolved, before the female avatar is once again in a bridal dress with someone entirely new. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as hearts don’t get hurt. Just as some like to roleplay vampires or Gor or pregnancy or childhood, so others love the fairytale marriages and fall quickly and easily in love.

But then there is the downside that sometimes comes, and thus we’re back to the suspicion, the wondering why the partner logs on later and later each day (and sometimes not at all), the assumption that they’re using an alt, and then the trying to find out who/how/when/etc.

Mar hasn’t been burned by this, because she’s not in SL for relationships. But she’s seen it happen a lot. She could offer the advice of ‘Guard Your Hearts’ but then if you guard your heart there’s the chance of missing a wonderful relationship, however short-lived it may be.

There are no answers; just a lot of rambly words (and I swear that this post actually had a point when I thought of it late last night, but I’m buggered if I can remember it now!) SL still retains its magic for me, even when I’m reading search terms like those listed at the top of this post, and the virtual cynic in me can almost predict the true reason the answers to them are being sought out.