Sometimes I realise late that I'm interacting with a troll in an online forum, on Reddit or on a mailing list. For the type of trolls who delibertely try to
confuse and seem to be sincere on the surface while following the goal of inducing frustration or otherwise spreading negativity, I have to give to them, that makes
them good at what they are doing. But none the less it makes me feel bad all the more. Not much for wasting my time, but for being honest to them while they know
they aren't honest to me. I feel betrayed when I conversed more than one or two messages long with a troll.
And that's what happened to me again today. I gave them the benefit of the doubt even after I realised that they had been given many chances to see they made a
(simply and definitely provable) honest little mistake but didn't take a single of them, had not responded to a single direct question while constructing a kindly
phrased little unrelated allegation out of nothing instead. After a few more messages with no progress I had enough and started to type my response to inform them
that I'm not able (or willing? see next paragraph) to view their motivations as sincere. I felt a bit mad and that feeling became stronger the more I re-read what
they had posted. But I wanted to make my final response complete and correct, so it seemed necessary to invest this emotion. And I did intend to make this my last
post in the thread. I wanted them and maybe others who were still following the thread to know that I'm fooled no longer by this troll. I'm glad I realised that that
was still feeding the troll and refuted what I was trying to convey before I submitted my post. I did the right thing by not continuing to give them a fulfilment
of receiving any attention at all. But now this is an unclosed chapter in my mind. I'll call it unclosed memory so that I have a term (and category tag) in case I
want to refer to similar experiences on this blog in the future. I guess that's the reason I'm making this entry. I did it, dear reader! I got out when I finally did
realise what was going on.
I'm imposing this label "troll" on this person and even have a drawer in my mind for people who acted similarly in other threads that I've read in the past. But
the thing is - and that's probably a banale thing to say for anybody who has done some thinking about online trolls before - I couldn't prove that they are, even
given a perfect defitinion with clear criteria. I don't know their intentions. I want to feel a little bit proud for giving them the benefit of the doubt for longer
than apparently any other participant in the thread. I believe that it is ususally the right thing to do to not assume malicious intentions in somebody's actions
even after you had the realisation that that is a possibility. I want to be the person who assumes kindness or lack of knowledge before assuming bad intentions. But
I'm still often very naive (mostly the kind of naive that makes me tell strangers my weaknesses, like being naive), even though that has changed a bit in some
situations. But I always assumed I'm being made fun of or that people try to make me look like a fool rather soon. I think I can hardly know with sufficiant
certainty whether that's the case in situations like the one described above. So I will feel unsure whether I made the right decision. (Not that I suspect it
matters for this person's life in this case. But in principle.) Among the reasonable things to do with experiences like this I've marked "tell somebody about it"
and "discard the memories of it by not trying to bring it up again unless it severly impacts my life" as good options. I've dine the former by writing this here.
I'll go on to do the latter now.