I know trolls are referred to constantly but what exactly are we talking abt? Some random person making up stories? Someone stirring the pot? Who are these people? On ybm yest some "troll" confessed to a fake hit and run and only admitted it when her post was reported. I'm so confused who are these people ?????
People who are mean or rude or deceitful on the internet for no purpose other than their own amusement (or occasionally because they are being paid to do so by geopolitical interests).
I don't think there's a clear definition that people are going to agree on. I think of it as when people are being fake/deceitful for a purpose that is not genuine. So it's one thing to be anonymous because you are writing about something personal or because you just don't want to be identified; that's normal and probably applies to most people who are on any kind of message board. But it's another thing to pretend to be different people for some other underlying agenda/amusement. When someone starts a post and then responds to it pretending to be different people, I view that as trolling. It seems to be very common, though, so I think when you're on any message board (unless it's like Facebook where you can see each individual person with a picture), you have to assume that any number of replies could be fake or trolls and so you take them with a heavy grain of salt.
Yea, I guess I really don't get how that's amusing to anyone ??? I mean who has that time or is so easily amused.
@Anonymouse Some of the really extreme stuff I don't understand either-- fake hit and run sounds crazy and maybe a desperate plea for attention or excitement, I don't know. But there is a lot of light trolling because people want to make their viewpoint seem more popular than it is, or they want to attract attention to a post/idea, or on this site, they want to obscure their identity. For example, with some of the popular schools and most desired schools like Hunter or Dalton, I think you see some genuine parents who are annoyed and then also some genuine third parties chiming in, but then there are also people with an axe to grind/an agenda to promote chiming in on both sides. Like saying that you think Dalton sucks because of the way they handled Covid (but you actually applied and got rejected/bad feedback and so now you kind of want to stick it to the school), I don't view that as capital T trolling, but it's not completely genuine either. And sometimes people are just mistaken too. Like there are some responses about Riverdale on this site recently that are pretty off/wrong. So you just have to take it all with a grain of salt.
Mom always said don't go on YBM.
LOL