Karma whoring
Slashdot trolling phenomena make up a large subset of the bizarre and complex Slashdot subculture found on the popular Slashdot technology website. They are a mixture of juvenilia, sarcasm, deliberately bad jokes, tasteless nonsense and highly developed and artistic attempts to provoke outraged responses from other forum users, amuse them, or challenge their thinking. Slashdot trolling is a subset and a microcosm of Internet trolling in general.
This is a list of some of the trolls that may be encountered when browsing Slashdot comments. Some of these behaviours are usually considered to be more offensive or insightful than others. On Slashdot, many of these phenomena have become the object of parody.
Links to example troll comments are provided for each category listed here at the bottom of the article.
Disruptive Trolls
Crapflooding
Crapflooding consists of multiple copies of the same message posted many times with slight variations in order to avoid being filtered. Scripted crapflooding attacks, in which the process of posting is automated, can be very effective. See also lameness filter.
Page widening/lengthening
The original page widening posts were simple messages consisting of one long stream of characters with no spaces. This caused browsers to render a very wide page with horizontal scroll bars, making it nearly impossible to read the comments page. Slashdot began inserting spaces into any long run of characters to prevent this and so began the evolutionary battle between Slashcode and the page widening trolls. Newer and more inventive ways of causing page widening were discovered, with the use of blockquote tags and the "." character to cause extreme widening on Internet Explorer. These methods were also eventually closed off by the Slashdot editors. Improvements in browser software have also closed many of the loopholes used to widen pages.
Offensive Trolls
Shock sites and shock content
A popular technique amongst Slashdot trolls is to post links to "shock sites" in order to annoy and offend other readers by tricking them into following the links. This is often accomplished by posting the link under the guise of being another link to the article or a rebuttal to the article.
A variation on this theme is for a troll to accuse a legitimate link or comment as being a link or reference to a shock site. In some cases this can have the desired effect of a genuinely insightful comment being moderated downward. Another technique is to embed a shock site link in a comment that otherwise appears relevant to the discussion, in the hope that unwitting moderators will mod up the post. The Holy Grail of this type of troll may be to slip a story submission containing a "shock site" link past the Slashdot editors. This situation occurred in July, 2003 when a disgruntled webmaster configured his server to redirect to a shock site when the HTTP referrer was Slashdot.
One particular "shock site" which is overwhelmingly preferred to others is Goatse.cx. This has spawned a large number of other references such as ASCII art of its signature image (hello.jpg) within a square border, and with a derogatory word written inside the anus of the man in the picture.
As a result of this trolling technique, the Slashdot team introduced a feature which appends the domain name a link points to immediately behind that link in every comment to make disguising links more difficult. (e.g. "Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]") When this was implemented, people used mirrors and CGI redirection scripts run by Yahoo!, Slashdot or other servers to circumvent this measure.
'Penis bird' trolls and related trolls were a common variant, where an ASCII art representation of some offensive image, often related to shock sites (in this case a crude ASCII representation of a bird perched on an erect penis) is posted in the body, with a nonsensical or provocative subject line. A link to the original image of the penis bird is given below.
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is one of the most versatile and popular trolling devices utilised. In its simplest form it may be used on its own in the form of a homophobic insult or as a feature of a pornographic troll featuring common Slashdot topics and celebrities. Goatse.cx (see above "shock site" section) also takes advantage of homophobia.
Racism
Racism is another ploy, sometimes used for effect in conjunction with homosexuality which usually causes offense to individuals unfamiliar with it. At its crudest it simply takes the form of repeated racial insults.
Other Trolls
Whenever a new story is posted on Slashdot, comments may be added discussing it and there is often competition between Slashdotters to be the first to post such a comment. Some first posters try to make a short insightful comment to avoid being moderated down. The more immature first posts often consist of a subject saying "first post!" or "FP" and have no body. Trolls may also post "first post" messages a ridiculously long time after the original story has been submitted as a parody of the first post. There are many other variants of the first post, usually misspellings to avoid the lameness filter: "Frist psot!". A successful 'First Post' on Slashdot, using some pre-specified text, is one of the membership criteria for some troll organizations (e.g. the GNAA, see below).
Stephen King is dead
This needs little explanation. This troll merely posts a hoax comment stating that they have just heard a bulletin on the radio which reports that Stephen King has been found dead in his Maine home with no explanatory details.
The canonical text of the troll is as follows:
- Subject: Sad news ... Stephen King, dead at 54
- I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
This joke has also been used to recognize actual celebrity deaths. The format has also been used outside of Slashdot, usually on other message boards, to announce or memorialize actual deaths.
Movie spoiler
This is a subtler troll than most. It consists, for the most part, of a genuinely insightful comment split into several paragraphs, with the middle or penultimate paragraph containing one or more movie spoilers.
Get Some PRIORITIES!
The "Get Some PRIORITIES!" troll began to appear after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks. A classic offtopic troll, it employs highly hyperbolic language to criticize the other posters and Slashdot in general for discussing trivialiaties like new gadgets or changes in U.S. copyright law in the wake of such a horrific event.
YHBT. YHL. (FOAD./HAND.)
Often, someone who is either new to Slashdot or just not aware of trolling (typically somebody that only reads with a +3 threshold) will post a response to a previous comment that is obviously a trolling attempt. In response to such a comment, someone may post "YHBT.", "YHBT YHL FOAD.", or "YHBT YHL HAND.". These intentionally-cryptic acronyms stand for the following:
- YHBT = "You Have Been Trolled" (see Internet troll)
- YHL = "You Have Lost"
- FOAD = "Fuck Off And Die"
- HAND = "Have A Nice Day"
The acronym HAND is more popular than FOAD.
Offtopic stories and nonsense
Usually used in conjunction with a crapflood, some trolls write or copy offtopic stories into their comments. Many involve gratuitous and homoerotic sex scenes with the names of Slashdot's editors or other open source celebrities substituted for the characters in the original story. Other stories generally have no set topic and are usually nonsensical and surreal as well as offensive. Some trolls go one step further, and post comments that are completely incoherent on any level. Occasionally, trolls may post Base64 encoded images and comments, which appear nonsensical until decoded, whereupon they appear merely offensive (most of the time).
Reigniting flamewars
Popular on software and development articles, this troll tries to explain why a particular operating system, programming language or other concept is inferior to others, in a way intended to annoy, intending to start a flamewar. This type of troll will either make an outlandish and obvious claim or subtly use a valid criticism of something in an aggravating fashion.
For example:
These types of post, usually moderated down as flamebait, sometimes cause a flamewar to begin amongst those who reply and thus the troll gets his 'bite' (See You Have Been Trolled et al.).
Article text trolls (aka copy and paste trolls)
Considered by many to be an effective satirisation of those who post comments consisting of a linked article's text (invariably reputedly in case of the Slashdot effect) for positive moderation, these are arguably some of the most creative and entertaining found on Slashdot. These trolls consist of the linked article's text, copied into a comment, usually accompanied by a subject line indicating that the site has been slashdotted. One or more words, phrases, or paragraphs are covertly inserted or modified to form a subversive or offensive message not present in the original article. These can be in the form of film or book spoilers, words changed to produce sexual innuendoes, amongst other things. Often moderators will 'mod-up' an article or post based on its title and the overall appearance of the text without reading it - the aim of the troll is to make a comment which contains a subtle modification to be modded up as +5 Informative or +5 Insightful.
Article text troll-on-trolls
When an article text troll is spotted, it usually generates a series of 'TROLL - MOD PARENT DOWN' type comments, and posts pointing out where the troll differs from the original article. An interesting phenomenon is that some of these posts point out changes that are not present in the parent (troll) post, introducing this 'Troll-on-Troll' phenomenon.
A variant is to post rebuttals of the 'Mod Parent Down' comments, claiming that the post identifying the troll, is, in fact a troll, attempting to denigrate a legitimate post.
Web vendor referral trolls
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and some other WWW vendors have a system whereby a user can post links on their (or others) websites, and gain a small commission per person following the link. These trolls post what appear to be discussion, with links to source material, but are really elaborate advertisements.
Signature Trolls
Signature trolls are a very effective method of trolling. Commonly used in reviews of software. A Post with informative information is posted, once moderated up the user changes his post signature to include an extra link. A post on Slashdot can't be edited, but signatures can. With careful wording, the signature can seamlessly blend in with the post. The extra link usally links to a shock site. To make things worse, if the signature link is found, the poster can change it back, causing accusations to be moderated down for being "false". These kinds of trolls often get a lot of "bites", because once a post is highly moderated the link that has been inserted will be followed a lot.
Recurring, off-topic jokes
There are a number of recurring, off-topic jokes that are seen on the site. See Slashdot subculture.
Troll organisations
Periodically, individual trolls will come together and form organised groups. They will usually post common variations of popular Slashdot trolls with their organisation's name attached in some way. While somewhat uncommon, these organisations can become quite famous among Slashdot regulars; the most prominent of these being the Cabal of Logged in Trolls (or 'CLIT'), the 'GNAA' and 'Trollkore'. The various groups often fight it out in a battle of slander and competition to achieve first post.
In summer of 2003 the most self-aggrandising troll organization was the "Gay Niggers Association of America", which had commenced operations some six months previously in January 2003. It boasts its own logo and IRC channel, and encourages people to join by first watching a 1992 Danish low-budget movie Gayniggers from Outer Space, followed by a successful achievement of 'First Post' using the GNAA trolling text, or to register their support by upwardly moderating "GNAA" comments.
Related articles
External Links
- Shock sites and shock content - Warning - these links are potentially offensive
- Racism
- Trollkore
- GNAA
- Crapflooding
- Page widening/lengthening
- Article text trolls
- Web vendor referral trolls
- Signature trolls
- Miscellaneous
- Yoda Doll
- Combining the above techniques
- Troll organisations
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