Quote from: EPLDCC on December 17, 2015, 04:27:15 AM

Some Notes on the Recent Trolling:

Clearly, over the past few days we have experienced a problem with trolling in the DGB discussion. I would like to commend our community on the efforts to remain polite and professional. It is a testament to the quality of the DigiByte community. My praise extends to the whole community but I want to specifically praise 24hralttrade and bitkapp.

During the past couple of days, 24alttrade received personal attacks that were irrelevant and unnecessary. Instead of feeling hurt, or responding in anger, he offered the attacker a discount coupon to his web store. And, earlier today bitkapp announced the release of the updated digistats website. Many community members voiced their support and praise. One of the people trolling the discussion attempted to reply for bitkapp. Instead of anger, bitkapp dealt with the situation professionally and politely.

Both 24hralttrade and bitkapp deserve credit and recognition for their work and dedication to DGB.

I have written that we encourage diverse discussion and constructive criticism. I will always support criticism or relevant objections. And, I hope that members of our community always feel free and open to discuss any topic, problem, or idea.

As a result of the recent trolling, I did some research, read a couple of books and a handful of articles. If any of you are interested in further reading, I would suggest the books, Reading the Comments, by Joseph M. Reagle; or This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, by Whitney Phillips.

Understanding Trolling:

We must begin with the fact that trolling is a social behavior. There are two types of trolling. The first type is general (non-specific) trolling. The second type is targeted trolling (which is a form of cyberbullying). Both types of trolling come from people feeling angry or marginalized. People who troll discussions feel a general sense of low self-esteem or anger at what they perceive is loss of value or relevance. They feel a loss of control over cultural or social trends, they struggle with understanding relevance in their lives, and they feel that their voice is marginalized in social or cultural conversations.

Often regular members of a discussion interpret trolling as immature ranting, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. That is a mistake. Trolling is not a temper tantrum. Children throw temper tantrums because they cannot control their emotions. Trolling is a planned and deliberate activity. In many ways, trolling is the opposite of a temper tantrum. People who engage in trolling attempt to find members of a community to exploit. They hunt. They plan. They fantasize about the power reversal. As a result of their fantasy, they take pleasure in the process of causing other people to get angry or hurt.

People who troll discussions do it as a revenge fantasy. While there are many individual examples of trolling, their objectives are usually categorized into three groups: (1) to exploit and feed on fear felt by others, (2) to feel a sense of power over the respected members of a community, and (3) to undermine honesty and integrity of communication.

When we deal with people who troll our discussion, we need to always remember that people who engage in trolling are living out their fantasy. They derive pleasure from the activity of making people angry, scared, or hurt. They often construct elaborate plans and processes for the fantasy by creating multiple user accounts, and they work to manipulate and distort the conversation because it makes them feel powerful. Trolling gives these people feelings of power and control.

People who engage in trolling objectify the social and cultural norms of a conversation. They feel pleasure from the activity of disrupting those social constructions. They view themselves as activists. They feel a deep psychological need to correct, undermine, or control the power of socially constructed norms and behaviors.

The behavior of trolling is, however, largely self-indulgence; the people who engage in trolling do not feel obligated to social constraints or conduct; they do not feel a sense of responsibility to a community; and, they do not want to hold themselves accountable for their behavior. Instead, they project responsibility for their behavior onto the social and cultural values they are disrupting. Put another way, people troll discussions because they believe the community deserves to get trolled. They blame the people they are trying to hurt. They think things like: it is your fault that I am doing this ... you deserve to be hurt. They view their actions as reflecting the emptiness of culture and social conversation. In fact, their actions and trolling behaviors come from their inability to contribute productively to communities or social conversations.

How to Deal with Trolls in our Discussion:

First:

Do not give them the pleasure or power of their fantasy. Trolling is an effort to enact a fantasy - and if we take away the pleasure, the fantasy falls apart. We can ignore them. Or, when we respond, we can remain calm and professional. Remember, their fantasy is a revenge fantasy. And, remember, there are two types of behaviors, general and targeted trolling. Over the past few days we have experienced targeted trolling.

The people, whoever they are, that are trolling our discussion are specifically targeting DGB. They feel angry at DGB and they are working to troll the discussion to enact a revenge fantasy. They are trying to prove that DGB is empty and valueless. That is their fantasy. However, because DGB is neither of those things, we dont need to worry. They dont have any power to undermine our community, or development, or ideas. Its that simple.

Second:

Never respond cruelly or dismissively. Remember that people who troll our conversations believe that they are activists. They believe that they are pulling back the curtain to reveal the ugly emptiness behind a facade. Responding cruelly or dismissively to their posts renews their belief that they need to continue trolling.

Third:

Maintain a perspective based on good-faith and accountability. We all know when we are replying to posts that are obvious trolling. It is easy to fall into a mindset where we feel like our responses are just tit-for-tat. We should respond to trolls in good-faith. We should hold ourselves, and hold them, accountable for our facts, opinions, etc.. Put simply, we should respond with value, responsibility and accountability. Remember, they are not throwing a temper tantrum. They are hunting. They are hunting because they want to bring down the current power of the conversation. Winston Churchill once said that when eagles are silent, parrots jabber. Dont parrot them. Be honest, funny, engaging, professional, and responsible. As a community, we already are these things - so basically - we just need to keep being ourselves.

Note: Ive pre-written a response to the people who are trolling our discussion and might consider replying to this post. I wont reply other than as follows:

I understand that some people lost money during the recent DGB pump. DGB didnt have anything to do with your loss, but I understand that you blame the DGB community, and the DGB developers.

The holidays is the worst time of year to lose money in investments. There are extra expenses, family obligations, spare time to worry, less time working to earn money, etc.. I acknowledge that you are angry and I acknowledge that you blame DGB for the loss.

However, your sense of loss cannot undermine our community. You do not have the power to undermine our community. Our work developing, promoting, and contributing to DigiByte and the community is valuable. theres nothing you can do that can take away that value.

We would like it if you would join our community as a productive member of the conversation. We appreciate constructive ideas. We value diversity of opinion. We have a growing and important worldwide community and we want everyone to be a productive part of that community.

There is so much that we can accomplish together, and we look forward to the coming years of building and shaping the strengths of DigiByte services, and community.

Very nice post. I'd just like to add that my reading on what's going on here on this thread with the massive trolling we've been seeing has much more to do with their anger and frustration with the increasing failure of pump and dump in general than it has to do with DGB's price fluctuations. It's reached the point where they're actively trying to "recruit" for the extremely thinly traded coins (the only place the manipulators have a chance as I've mentioned before). Every cloud has a silver lining, and in the case of the pump and dump trollers' attacking one of the very few legitimate coins like DigiByte, and the silver linings we are clearly witnessing are the death pains of the cryptocurrency scammers, which is one of the best things that could ever happen in order to take crypto to the masses. DigiByte is one of the very few legit cryptos actually implimenting crypto as conceived and thus reaching widely distributed decentralized status, and that - along with their increasing failures - is why they hate us. We should rejoice at their presence! They are heralding our current and future success!