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142 points mzs | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.204s | source
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neaden ◴[] No.19401182[source]
I think right now there are three main kinds of internet trolls in things like this. First would be the government sponsored ones who tend to post in unison or have some theme. These seem to mainly be Chinese and Russian. Second are the freelance trolls, people in it to make money by building an audience for advertisements. A lot of these people are in Macedonia where they can make relatively good money spreading false blogs on Facebook or something. Finally are the home grown true believers who are just posting their honest views in an abrasive, hostile, or threatening manner. I think the majority of trolls belong to the last group, but the first two have an outsized impact at creating new stories and coordinating messaging that is amplified by the third.
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tomatotomato37 ◴[] No.19401231[source]
If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fourth category; the people who post something inflammatory because everyone freaking out and arguing at each other is amusing to them
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neaden ◴[] No.19401278[source]
I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third. People "ironically" posting racism seem to all just be flat out racists now. As Kurt Vonnegut said “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
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1. unethical_ban ◴[] No.19402744[source]
Agreed. I was just stating this to some friends. I used to read the chans and their noxious crap, thinking it was funny anti-authority "rebellious" trolling.

Now you have people announcing their mass shooting on them, and hundreds of posts applauding it while talking about the Jewish conspiracies.

I think that when you troll and joke enough, if it ever was a joke, you can get sucked into it. Especially teenagers and others who are looking for certainty, or apply "logic" to some narrow ideology that finally "gets it."

So yeah, there is some "old school" trolling where people just like to see others get riled up, but that is far less than the first three.