Here are what anonymous troll demons are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4mHYuOrNeY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(slang)
[focus on the last 3 words of this sentence only] In slang, a troll is a person who posts or says inflammatory, insincere, digressive,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, a online video game), or in real life, with the intent of provoking others into displaying emotional responses,[2] or manipulating others' perception.
In this video, they are called "Andrews": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3xSJuoUnN8
The most common type of troll is someone trying to cause you irritation or cause you to get upset. I am as stoic as humanly possible and nobody can do that to me directly.
However, I FUCKING CAN'T TOLERATE when a troll uses his "troll energy" to manipulate other people's perceptions of me. That's the most brutal type of trolling. Here is how it usually goes -- someone will portray themselves as a "normal member" of the community and give an extremely short/brief (yet highly powerful) comment that "piggybacks" off someone else's suggestion in such a way that AMPLIFIES IT BY 500x.
Here are some examples:
Random person: I'm starting to wonder if OP is blah blah blah
Perception-manipulating troll: (in response to the random person) I mean, hasn't it been incredibly obvious for the past 3 weeks that OP is blah blah blah?
The perception-manipulating troll's comment comes across as very "casual-seeming" but it's so short/simple that people overlook how much perception-manipulation went into it. Furthermore, if you engage with that person and call them manipulative and try and convince others that the person is being manipulative, they'll respond with yet another extremely short-manipulative comment such as "oh what happened, someone upset you?".
The perception-manipulating troll is literally "undefeatable" because they will constantly manipulate you with powerful, brief statements and convert your "explanations" into the way they are trying to frame it.
Let me emphatically state how badly this upsets me -- it literally is affecting my sleep and praying not to see that perception-manipulating troll interacting with my community that I've built and poured hundreds of hours into building. At least the perception-manipulating troll has taught me one thing -- my community is dumber than shit and easily manipulated, so thanks I guess?
I am extraordinarily hopeless since (by design), a perception-manipulating troll cannot be "beaten" by defending yourself or proving his claims untrue nor by trying to convince the people whose perception have been manipulated that they have had their perception manipulated by a perception-manipulating troll.
My current strategy is to "just ignore him" and let him manipulate as many people as he wants from my community and trash my reputation to them. I'm hoping that he wants me to defend the minds of my dumbass community that is easily manipulatible but that's on my community for being full of dumbasses, am I right?
The only painful thing about the preceding paragraph is watching him do it. It's like I'm watching him "light fire" to that which I've spent so much time, effort, and energy into building. Maybe John Bain (total biscuit, R.I.P.) said it best in his "death by 1,000 cuts" essay posted 8 years ago on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cynicalbrit/comments/1xrx27/in_light_of_tb_abandonning_his_own_subreddit/cfe3rgc/
People like you are the reason I dread talking to my audience on a daily basis. A long time ago I used to love waking up, logging in and seeing what the viewers was saying, replying to their comments, doing the whole interaction thing. It was great. But that was a long time ago. Now everytime I post a Hearthstone video I have get anxiety over the amount of horrible comments it will get. It keeps me awake at night. I barely play the game now because of it. I used to play it for hours a day, now I only play it for videos, maybe an hour or two a week at most. I guess I've associated what was once a fun activity with constant complaining. Everytime I make a mistake I don't beat myself up about it because I made a mistake, I do it because I just gave people another avenue to complain and say things like "It was painful to watch" or "it was cringeworthy". I've heard so much of it I'm rolling in self-doubt and the only reason I keep that series up is because it pays well now. It used to be through passion for the game but the audience killed that.
But it's not just that. It's when the audience stomps on my principles. I think that's what hurts the most. I made a career out of trying to protect my audience from bad purchases. It's hardly saintly, its still just videogames on the internet, but whats a little light entertainment/info for you is MY LIFE. That's what I get up for every day now, that's what I live for. I work that job 6-7 days a week and I do it because I believe what I'm doing is helping, that it's making gaming better even if it's just a little. Ignoring your blatant misrepresentation for a second, when you say something like "It's not the devs fault there's bugs", or you go after me because I don't support early access and I want to be consumer-first, dev second, that isn't just a debate point, you're attacking the principles that are at the core of my day to day life. This sounds really dramatic but this is my life, this is ALL I DO. I only exist to do this right now.
And this is just one "perception manipulating troll" who is fucking with me. What if I keep growing my community and another perception-manipulating troll shows up and they double-team me?
My current "strategy" is to just ignore him while he manipulates and turns my dumbass community against me 1 person at a time. My current strategy is to act unaffected like I don't care what he is doing. I just hope and pray that he is doing it "for a reaction" from me and that if I don't give him one, he'll get bored and (hopefully) find someone else's community to light fire to.
Please help...
mattyanon Admin 3y ago
You can't win, you have to ignore them. Your responses give them strength. All online people suffer this shit.
Peter_Henderson 3y ago
In the 3 days since I wrote my OP, I think I found a solution. Mimic the troll (using an alt account) but piss everyone off. That way my community will associate "people that hate me" as obnoxious fucking idiots.
Plus since I'm trolling myself from within my own community (with an alt) -- it lets me have "influence" over the negativity (by being part of it). Think about the math for a second:
If 1 person hates me and I create an alt account pretending to be a "hater", I can sabotage the effectiveness by copying stuff similar that the super-troll writes about me and "faux-agreeing" with him but fucking up the message really bad and making myself look retarded in the process (which will let my community "see with their own eyes" that the dumbest person in my community also "hates" me and also agrees with 99% of what the super-troll says about me).
Does this solution not work very easily? Plus I can use my alt accounts to dilute the "signal to noise" ratio by making outlandish hateful claims about me that would be cringe-worthy to believe/agree/support.
whytehorse2021 3y ago
Typical narcissist.
Initial-Glove 3y ago
I had an online community turn on me. Was about 3, 4 years ago. Seems like forever ago.
I had one enemy. They disliked that the community "chose me" over them. Truth was, they had a terrible reputation for being a troll. They were rude. They were mean and they made a lot of enemies in a short period of time. They knew JUST what to say to rile ppl up. They were beyond a super troll.
They were masters of screen shots, and photo shop and would manipulate conversations and post them. They made over 300 accts and would make private chats filled with these accts that would just spread lies.
Due to their doxxing and screenshots and accts, I had lost any support I had. I couldn't say "that's not me", when my screen name was next to some really horrible comments.
I only got relief after I deleted my acct. I should have done it the day the troll started pulling cards on the mod team. They all deleted and separated themselves from the troll. I stayed bc I had nothing to run from and that's my biggest regret.
I never engaged in any of the shit but it only seemed to intensify the trolling. Never once...
Well I wont say once. That would not be true. I didn't sit idly by while my online life turned to shit. I dug and dug and dug. I linked 300+ accts to the troll. But my troll? They bought accts online. Yes they actually paid money to try to get new accts. I posted a list of them under a deleted acct to a sub they had made about themselves but couldn't access anymore. Yes. They would make "hate subs" about themselves. The community had been on this troll for years. The troll used to make fake IG's of certain users. A few of us were able to link them back to an original acct from 2015. They talked a lot. We collaborated and got their real name, address, found their FB and Lexis Nexis told us they owed $13K on Amex. Internet is not anonymous when you tell bits and pieces here and there. We didn't harass though. We didn't dox or post info. We just knew who it was and that took so much power away from them.
If its Reddit, set a really high Karma and age filter with Automod, so they cant just make new accts to harass you. Block certain key words that they use. And yes DONT TELL ANYONE what you set.
Peter_Henderson 3y ago
Were they doxxing you or someone else?
Usually when someone gets doxxed, they gain free sympathy. Why would others turn on you just from you getting doxxed?
[deleted] 3y ago
[--removed--]
Initial-Glove 3y ago
Shocked when we saw who it was easily a 9. Tall, thin, blonde. All her friends were 9s too. Approaching the wall, fiancee dumped her. No baby, back home living with dad. Mountains of debt.
[deleted] 3y ago
[--removed--]