Let’s discuss trolling. Why? Because I love philosophy. And I want to talk about it. Here, on ilovephilosophy.com, because I think that there a load of people capable of very interesting discussions who are regulars here. I want this to be a place that I can come and read, think, talk and learn about philosophy. In the last two months, trolling, in various forms, has made this much harder to do on ILP.
No, ilikenamitha was simply trying to involve as many people as possible in the conversation.
It’s a common troll strategy: make statements (or even whole posts) about the whole of the board’s membership because it’ll get more people involved in the conversation. It’s a common ‘hook’. The ‘line’ comes when people are already in the conversation: they make a few more remarks that are so easy to argue against that everyone wants to have their say. The ‘sinker’? They wait for someone to personally insult them (never takes long), then they have this big wide ticket to start a whole lot of flaming discussions about mod standards, and they often manage to get the other side on the back foot defending themselves (because they know they probably shouldn’t have made it all personal). They start the whole you said, he said thing. That’s their level: that’s where they want to be.
It’s not a particularly sophisticated strategy but, like advertising things by making large-breasted women stand next to them, it’s effectiveness seems to be timeless.
What makes it ‘trolling’? These people never came here to start a conversation about philosophy. They will respond to well thought out posts with a single, inflammatory line because they don’t want an actual philosophical conversation to continue. They will flood the boards with these posts and try to make everything a personal conversation. They waste people’s time that could otherwise have been spent in a serious and progressive discussion.
Recently, more and more posters have become engaged in trying to flood the board with personal stuff and giving it a higher status than philosophical discussions. I’m not just talking about the influx of new trolls either, I’m talking about regular contributors. It’s a slightly different form of trolling, but in my mind its trolling nonetheless. There is an inevitable social dynamic to a site where people have been posting for many years, doubtlessly people who excel in social situations will try and encourage the social elements of the board. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these threads, of course, but when they start to take over the philosophy, that’s when they become trolling. And that’s whats been happening recently.
This is a philosophy board. The more trolling we entertain, the less philosophy is going to happen. Everybody has a limited amount of time to dedicate to the boards - trolling takes up this time. Starting personal discussion after personal discussion, talking endlessly about how the board is moderated, trying to choose your ‘favorite’ posters and start popularity wars all diminish the amount of philosophy that can happen. It’s taking up my time right now.
All I ask is that everyone who is serious about making these message boards a working philosophical community should start thinking about how much time they spend writing about serious topics, and how much time they spend talking board politics or socializing, especially when they are posting in forums other than this one. I ask this particularly of the moderators, who should be setting the standards of the boards, and of the regular posters who have all shown themselves capable of discussing philosophy when they want to.
Right now, clearly, the overall balance is wrong. The many of the highest profile threads in the last two months have social. Many more threads which started out well have ended up becoming social in nature. It’s becoming the new norm here.
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