Trolling Around The Internet

There’s a pretty lengthy recent history of mainstream media outlets covering shit like 4Chan and Anonymous heavily, the idea being that if you write about people on the internet on the internet, said internet people will read it on the internet, and somehow the media industry will be saved. It’s fine as churnalism, but it has a major damaging effect: it makes trolling look complicated. It paints it as some sort of arcane art that the man in the street can’t learn, can’t master, can’t control, something that must be learn via years spent toiling at the coalface of lolicon Rapidshares, seated at the knee of Paedobear and that picture of the female golfer licking the glass dildo.

That’s a real shame. It’s deprivation. Anyone who has ever whiled away an evening drunkenly telling strangers at the bar “Look, I dunno, tell me if I’m wrong, but I just don’t see what Dennis Bergkamp did that Nikola Kalinic doesn’t do better” should understand the joys of taking deliberately contrary opinions to vex others. And thanks to the internet, you can now do this to thousands of strangers at once without the threat of getting an empty bottle of Asahi upside your skull. You can rub sand in vaginae across 15 time zones without leaving your seat.

And I’m not talking about posting pictures of dead babies or going “lol rape” over and over again either, I’m talking something a little more thoughtful. Us left-footers invented the concept of “Devil’s Advocacy”, and if I have to make one concession to the faith I was raised with, talking shit to strangers for no real reason except to increase delusions of my own intelligence is the one I’ll opt for. Heck, I got my first ever permaban about 10 or so days after we first got the internet in our family house, a 14-year-old me getting banhammered for trying to talk about the rugged machismo of Ivan Zamorano on a forum dedicated to fey post-Britpop T.Rex tribute act Placebo. Since then, I’ve had former Radio 1 DJs phone up my place of work asking my bosses to fire me for making a light-hearted quip about him obtaining his career after sucking Paul Gambaccini’s dick, had a mediocre skinny jeans rapper occasionally beloved of the broadsheet press write a mixtape track threatening to “fist me” after some light-hearted blog-based race-baiting, and had former NME hack and formerly passable TV writer David Quantick spend three days pursuing me alternately over Twitter and Facebook after his butt got a little hurt over a discussion of whether or not his dead mate would have been a fan about jokes about his death. Something to tell the grandkids about, for sure.

Anyway, as you may have gathered from the words herein so far, it’s highly likely that I’m going to kill my’sen over the next six months due to the tragic futility of my existence. Therefore, there’s gonna be a 14 stone gap in the market for a good online troll. I wanna pass on a few of my secrets to you so you can slot right in there, continue my good work without recourse to a Rick Astley Youtube or an animated gif of an anus distending.

Trolling and Wimmin’s Rights

OK, the #1 mistake that any trainee troll makes is trying to go ham on anything feminist. Feminist blogs, feminist forums, lone feminists in the wild… I get the appeal. In the trainee troll (TT)’s mind’s eye, all they need to do is toss out a few sub-Tucker Max (if such a thing is even possible) zingers and the resulting melee will look like one of the chase scenes in Benny Hill after the short fat dude gooses a nurse. This will never, ever happen. Feminist bloggers in particular have more weedcarriers than Nicky Barnes, and they’re very capable of circling the wagons whenever shots are fired. Thus, in reality, any run-in you attempt on these places will have an end result similar to that one Royal Rumble when Bushwhacker Luke got tossed out of the ring within three seconds.

No, the key here is to play them at their own game. Second wave feminists were straight-up trolls, which is why cats like Susan Faludi and Ariel Levy still get dragged out of whatever branch of The Big Yellow Storage Company they’re kept in every now and then to write “What you think is WRONG, the opposite is in fact TRUE” shit for broadsheet pullouts.

So if you must get a rise out of women on the internet, stay clear of any cracks about “rape culture” (Smiley’s less famous brother) and stick to fat [via it being a feminist issue].

“Real women have curves” is one of the all-time great troll lines, a piece of inanely retarded rhetoric that implies that any woman who has a body type slenderer than that of, say, Paul Sorvino or the late John Tenta is somehow a traitor to the feminist cause. This line of attack works especially well on the kind of broad who has ever referred to anorexia as “being a little rexy”.

If anyone responds to this with “actually I work hard for my body”, “I’ve ran 16 marathons for charity” or “I burn a lot of calories in my day job of maintaining world peace”, just hit back with “Real men like tits” and post a “deal_with_it” gif. If the gif’s sunglasses land on Nigella Lawson’s breasts, all the better.

Trolling and Mental Health

Remember that every male on the internet has Asperger’s Syndrome, so you won’t get any traction trolling on that front.

One of the all-time classic Twitter accounts is @whitegrlproblem, but even they could save themselves a lot of time and effort if they just posted the phrase “bipolar disorder” once a day. People with severe psychological traumas tend to be, unsurprisingly, a little brittle. Indeed, trolling the bipolar is like shoving a lightbulb in a microwave: all you really need is the slightest spark before they get set off into something truly spectacular.

I’ve always been a big fan of claiming that depression “isn’t a real illness”. Try contrast here: if you can argue that “are you really comparing feeling a little ;_; to having your legs blown off by a landmine?”, or you can talk about how your father came to this land on a boat with 50000 other people, didn’t speak a word of the language, and is now in permanent crippling back pain because of the work he did to put food on the table for this family, and “he didn’t have time to be depressed”, all the better. Anything tied in to laziness is a good look: people with bipolar disorder tend to do little constructive with their time other than expand their Livejournal userpic collection and download yet another live version of “A Forest”.

However, if you know your target too well to claim your father is the American Dream, then just point out that Blu Cantrell is bipolar and she recorded “Breathe” and what have you ever done?

Trolling and Politics

Don’t. Seriously, politics-based trolling is for people who have much sturdier constitutions than me, there’s only so many times you can hear people trot out the phrase “Lame Stream Media” before you want to tear your own kidneys out in despair. I mean, I’ve seen that video of the dude pulling shards of broken glass out of his arse, and that doesn’t make me feel anywhere near as seedy and dirty as the average comments box on Guido Fawkes.

If, for some god unknown reason, you must troll politically, why not try winding up Americans by suggesting “I dunno, I just don’t like Obama, he seems a little aloof. Bush seemed like the kind of guy you could have had a beer with”?

Alternatively, stick to Israel. For some reason, people on the internet really hate Israel, despite the fact that it’s been over a decade since Mossad brought the Twin Towers down. You can make hay of this anywhere where people are giving themselves “dap” for being “right on” for <3ing the Intifada. Or can actually spell “Intifada” without Googling.

All you need to do is paint Israel as the world’s most liberal nation. Make it sound like the land of milk and honey and breast cancer ribbons on every street corner, not so much a country as a collection of Mark Steel’s Sim City 2000 saved games. Then contrast it heavily with any given Arabic nation at any point.

So if anyone says anything positive about Palestine, respond with “Oh, so you want all homosexuals stoned to death then? Oh, you think rape should be legal within marriage?” and so on and so forth. If they respond “No, of course not,” then you can just double-up with a “Ah, so you only care about the rights of people in white countries”. In the industry, we call that a “twofer”.

Is Israel actually more accepting of gays/women/other wacky minorities than Arabic states? I have no fucking idea, neither do you, and neither does anyone who argues about politics on the internet. Take advantage of ignorance, it’s a troll’s guideline.

Trolling and Religion

Fresh for 2010, suckers. Ironically enough, arguing about religion on the internet is one of Dante’s seven upper circles of Hell.

The recent papal visit had a great trolling cheat code hidden within it. It’s tough to explain but easy to master, kind of a wind-up merchant take on Angry Birds. Basically, lot of British people think Benny XV’s a rum one. However, he’s also head of a foreign state. And Catholics have been traditionally treated pretty poorly in the UK, whether it was the Reformation, the Bloody Sunday Massacre, or Diversity beating Susan Boyle.

Therefore, you can now paint anyone who thinks that child molestation is a bad thing as some sort of John Bull-esque character intent on continuing the petty vendettas the British establishment has been intent on these past 600 years. “If you’re so concerned about Catholic children, why won’t YOU apologise for YOUR GOVERNMENT shooting Catholic schoolchildren in the face? Huh? Doesn’t seem like a ‘very strong’ moral stance you’re taking here.”

PRO-TIP: Stay away from talking shit about Islam. Not for reasons of safety, but if you carry on down that route you’re going to end up as Julie Birchill, and that’s not a strong look.

Trolling and Race

Oh man, this is trolling God mode. Firstly, forget shit like Stuff White People Like, Black People Love Us and any of those 5,000,000 shitty “here is something vaguely funny about race” Tumblrs set up by people who want a novelty gift book deal.

Secondly, remember that the race card is the royal flush of internet one-upmanship, but it only has 100% effectiveness if you’re black and you use it on white people. The other 10 tribes of Israel don’t really get to play in this ballpond, so you’ll have to find something else to do.

As a suggestion, why not respond to anything anyone says ever with “Yeah, white people are always doing that”. Doesn’t matter what they say they like or how devoid of racial connotations it is: gravlax, T-Mobile, the music of Judie Tzuke: all you need to do is say “No, it’s nothing really it’s just… bleh, I dunno. Doesn’t its fanbase strike you as stunningly white? Is that a little suspect to you?

And this can be used against anything to make people feel guilty, it can be used to talk about something that is 100% white, like the crowd at a Tim Minchin gig, through to stuff more racially diverse, like an EDF rally. And you can now imply that every single person in the UK is either a hideous bigot or an Uncle Tom without a shred of supporting evidence: Britain is still something like 91% white, nothing in this nation is “majority” black other than Xmas dinner round Chiwetel Ejiofor’s, which is more than 50% black. But again, your target doesn’t need to know this, because all white people are racist most guess the black population of the UK as something like 40%, rather than 9%. Like I say, this really is trolling God mode and can get a little tiresome with its permanent 100% effectiveness, but if nothing else is working… unleash the hounds.

DOM PASSANTINO