This is something I’ve been pondering for quite a while, and now is as good a time as any to write it all down.
I’ve been around the Internet a long time and I’ve seen..well, just about everything (and a lot of things I never wanted to see, but that’s life in general). In the early 2000s, I started hanging around political blogs and while I don’t remember saying all that much, I felt like I could if I needed to. Since then, however, it seems that online discussions have been steadily increasingly dominated by those who are extroverted and spontaneous; they don’t have to think about what they’re going to say for very long, so they can post rapidly and can steer a conversation completely away from anything I might have wanted to say because I’m thinking/analyzing what I want to say and how I want to say it. In real life conversations, I usually can at least get a few words in, but online moves a lot faster (especially now). so for the most part..I have no choice but to stay silent. Not because I don’t have something to say, but usually because, by the time I say it, the moment that it would have been relevant has long since passed.
So what does this have to do with concern trolling? That’s the other main factor in why I don’t say all that much..they have continually driven me up the wall with their maddening, illogical behavior from the time I first saw that style of posting and I was glad to see the term defined, that I wasn’t the only one noticing it. Only recently has it become more of a mainstream-ish term; Urban Dictionary has a good definition and it’s almost always associated with politics but I’ve seen it in sports and entertainment postings almost as much. In those cases, though, most moderators don’t know how to handle it (since it doesn’t look like the direct “LOL LOL YOU SUCK YOU’RE A LOSER” crap that is easily dealt with) and if looked at strictly literally, just seems like someone saying their opinion..but that’s part of what makes it so insidious.
Here’s an example from sports..a team is going through a tough stretch and fans are commiserating in a forum. A couple of trolls arrive:
- Direct troll: HA HA HA HA LOSERS YOU SUCK MY TEAM OWNS YOU CRY SOME MORE YOU (insert whatever term for “wimps”)
- Concern troll: This is going to keep happening unless we stop going to games. If you want to keep watching, though…
Notice how the direct troll is just that; all the subtlety of a club to the head. The concern troll, though, uses a rapier. While this is a very superficial example, note how the concern troll says “We” (implying that they’re a fellow fan..but it quickly turns to “you” at the end), gives ‘advice’ that’s mostly useless (in my opinion, it most often comes down to ownership and what they’re willing to do to win more than anything the fanbase does or doesn’t do, though a troll will take all of the credit regardless) and then ends with an incomplete sentence (very common in this style of trolling) that implies that:
- If only you didn’t support them, they’d have to get better to bring you back as a fan. (?!) (Cubs fans have heard this for decades).
- You’re wasting your time watching a losing team, even if you enjoy the game.
- It’s your fault the team sucks.
Also notice how the concern troll sets it up so that, if attendance does go down but the team starts winning, they will take credit. If any other combination happens, they can just keep repeating this line and always be ‘right’. If anyone calls them out on this, they play the victim/run to the moderator and start passively-aggressively complaining to them (the same way a coach or manager ‘works’ the officials).
One thing that I want to emphasize is that it’s easy to confuse a concern troll with someone throwing out a negative hot take, as the verbiage can be quite similar. The key difference is that the concern troll comes back day after day, week after week and keeps saying the same things (and same types of thing).. For example, former Cub Jon Jay recently signed with the Royals..as much I personally liked having him on the team, I recognized that there was really no room for him on the 2018 roster and I’m glad he was able to get a new contract. If you went by some of the reactions on Twitter, though, you would think the Cubs were making a horrible blunder by letting him go. While I disagree with such overly emotional handwringing, it’s most likely not going to come up all that often over the course of the season. A concern troll, though, would take this point and run with it every time the team lost (along with any other signing or trade they did or didn’t make, such as also not bringing back Jake Arrieta) to the point that one is dreading losses not because of the loss itself, but because of all the bile that will inevitably be vomited, disrupting any rational conversation.
Granted, I’m the sort that is always analyzing what people are saying/trying to read between the lines even if there’s no actual insinuation in a comment whatsoever. Trolls of all kinds are just throwing spaghetti against the wall and then laughing at any and all reaction to it. I’m not saying anything, but I’m getting caught up in trying to figure out why they threw the spaghetti the way they did and what they’re implying and what their posting patterns reveal and why they’re saying the things they do…so in essence, they’re trolling me but they don’t even realize it.
As aforementioned, I saw a lot of this in Cubs forums for a long time..it reached a crescendo in the lead up to the 2016 World Series Championship but thankfully has considerably diminished since. (Now, it’s mostly “Why’d it take so long to win a title?” along with other trite nonsense). One thing that I’ve seen in common with just about every type of troll is that nothing that either you as a person or that your favorite team/show/hobby/etc. do or don’t do will ever be good enough for them. Say the Cubs win the 2018 World Series..winning two out of three possible titles is a tremendous accomplishment for any team, but they’d just say “Should have been three in a row” or “A truly great team would have been undefeated in the postseason!” (Unfortunately, there are sports columnists in Chicago who write like this all the time and get paid for it). Trolls treat any loss or negative occurrence like the harbinger of imminent doom, the collapse of the franchise, etc. Any win is just met with indifference or “Well, that’s what they should be doing.”
Fortunately, one saving grace is that winning will (somewhat) silence a lot of this noise. Granted, the fans don’t have much to do with it, but the outcomes of games, series, and seasons are unambiguous, indisputable facts. When it comes to the entertainment blogs/forums I read, though, there’s no completely clear metrics for ‘success’ or ‘failure’ (other than a show being canceled before it can come to a planned end or a movie bombing horribly, but at that point, there are other things to discuss). Thus, going back to the previous paragraph, a concern troll can constantly move the goalposts even more maliciously and continually claim that the show/fandom/franchise/etc. is on the brink of collapse but could be saved ‘if only’ the fans did X, Y, and Z..
An example would be a case where a fandom drama bomb has just exploded and people are freaking out left and right. The concern troll makes things worse by saying something like “Hey, we need to cut this out or the (company that owns the property) is going to do something to the fandom to avoid bad press. We’d better behave ourselves in the future or else….” Then the troll just sits back and laughs as people freak out even more and start finger pointing and blaming each other over something that’s extremely unlikely to ever happen (especially after a fandom reaches a certain point..how can a production company and/or their corporate parent suddenly eradicate something that’s more of a collective idea than a formal organization, anyway?) And since there’s always going to be drama whenever a certain number of individuals associate and form relationships with each other, the concern troll can keep doing this ad infinitium. Again, if they’re called out on it, they can always say they didn’t ‘directly’ threaten anyone and mutter an insincere apology if they happen to anger anyone who could potentially ban them..then go right back at it the next time something negative occurs.
Now, here’s where the whole illogical nature of these activities actively drives me up the wall and back down again. I could see where a sports troll might have no other choice than to do what they do as there’s not all that many options (around 30 teams per league, usually 4-6 overall at the most wherever one may live) for the highest level of professional sports; they can’t get their fix any other way. That does not excuse their conduct and I try hard not to let any long standing, bitter rivalries (that very frequently fuel pointless arguments, online and off) get in the way of enjoying the experience of watching and following sports. But when it comes to entertainment..there are so, so many options (and probably literally something for everyone to really enjoy, as elusive as it might be for some) and ways of being entertained right now that I cannot comprehend at all why someone would waste their time throwing vitriol at fans of a property that they either hate or are rather indifferent to. And it’s not just a few posts every now and again; they usually post at a considerably higher rate than most genuine fans and for sometimes years at a time..why?
Me being me, I get caught up in the patterns of their posts, trying to find some kind of meaning in it..and aside from reasonable suspicions that some of them are using scripts to automate their trolling (how pathetic is that?) it honestly seems as if these individuals are perfectly content to spend their time sitting in the proverbial cheap seats while hurling invective and always being ‘right’..never taking a chance on doing anything creative, anything where anybody else could possibly tell them that they’re ‘doing it wrong’, ‘aren’t perfect’, ‘should stop embarrassing themselves..’ Thus, I think that they’re terrified of anyone else doing to them what they do to others..and would rather stay in a state of ‘perfection’ where no one can ever hurt them. I might be wrong, but that’s the most reasonable conclusion I can come to based on my personal experiences.
Ultimately, I have learned that trying to solve people like a puzzle is a path to madness..everyone has their reasons for what they do or don’t do..and they ultimately have to live with the consequences. I believe that we all are held to account for what we do at some point..by someone..or something. (Even if certain site owners/moderators are unfortunately hesitant to do so, but that’s a separate topic). For now, the only reliable way as a user to deal with individuals like this is to
- Block
- Ignore
- Report (if warranted)
- Move On
And hope that they find what they’re looking for.