The Martialist: The Magazine For Those Who Fight Unfairly

Understanding Trolling: Online Interaction, Pax Baculum, and The Martialist

By Phil Elmore

Since I began my informal hobby as an "Antrollpologist," I've written multiple articles on the topic of trolls and online profiling. I first started arguing online -- and encountering trolls while doing it -- in the old Usenet days, when I used my university's VAX system to access newsgroups like alt.magick and rec.guns. I hate to think just how many hundreds or thousands of hours I wasted debating anonymous people from around the world, arguing politics, religion, and martial topics. This was how I spent most of my time online before I started my first website under my real name (the success of which I would later leverage in starting The Martialist. My troll guide, the first versions of which were posted to an online forum, has since become one of the more frequently cited guides to online disruptors, though it is rivaled by the Flame Warriors site and a few others.

One constant among the many online discussion forums at which I've spent my time over the years is that few if any of them are moderated to standards high enough to suit me. At one end of the spectrum are the free-for-alls that quickly become vulgar pits of trolling, libel, and pointless bickering. At the other are sites dominated by in-crowds who police the ideology of those posting, repudiating and ejecting any who dare to challenge the party line from within their ranks. In the middle one finds any number of sites that are okay, but whose moderators are either too strict or too inattentive (or simply inconsistent in their application of the forum's rules). There are also sites that have gone the legalistic, "by the book" root, attempting to codify their guidelines and going way overboard about it. These become so burdened by complex rules, covering every possible permutation of human interaction, that neither the members nor the moderators can keep track of them all -- with the result that participants are always violating some rule or other, whether they know it or not.

It's extremely difficult to be a moderator or an administrator of an online community. If your site is anything but the smallest of cliques, the membership will come into conflict with each other and with the Powers That Are. I've spoken to moderators who held considerable power at high-traffic sites. I've been among them, in fact. I've also chatted plenty with people who run their own sites -- and I've run and do oversee discussion sites of my own. What all these forums have in common is that any time a moderator makes an administrative decision of any kind, someone will and does complain. I know that whenever I shut down a contentious discussion at Pax Baculum, the official discussion forum of The Martialist, it's rare that I don't receive multiple private messages and e-mails. The messages run the gamut from attaboys and congratulations to the prediction of dire consequences, up to and including mass desertion and the collapse of the forum. Most of the messages advising me of what to do to run the forum properly conflict with one another, too. it is quite literally impossible to please everyone -- and it is very likely my administrative decisions will displease almost all concerned.

It is with this in mind, therefore, that I make any decision regarding an online discussion. My own forum has relatively few rules, but chief among them is no trolling. What is amusing and frequently amazing, however, are the number of people who seem to think their own acts of trolling should be tolerated for the sake of "free speech," through simple hypocrisy, as dictated by their personal prejudices and agendas, or simply out of some sense of entitlement. It is almost universally the case that trolls don't believe themselves to be trolling. I've spoken with notorious disruptors who have been banned from nine of every ten sites where they've participated, who've had the gall to say, "I've never trolled a discussion in my life" (or words to that effect). I've argued with people so insecure in their own beliefs that they took any forceful statement of opposing opinion as a personal affront, shrieking over and over again, "But that's just your opinion" (as if every opinion an individual mutters must be prefaced as such, lest he or she upset the weak-minded). I've tried and failed to debate individuals seething with hatred to such a degree that no rational discussion with them was possible -- because such people cannot discuss anything in good faith and will hear only what they wish to hear, ignoring anything that refutes their ill-conceived notions.

All the trolls with whom I've dealt shared another quality in common. They were all deeply offended at having been identified as trolls and treated accordingly, mischaracterizing the moderation of Pax Baculum and other Martialist-related boards as some act of selective enforcement, injustice, or even fear. "You delete any opinion with which you disagree" is one frequently hurled accusation. "You ignore anything you can't address" is another. "You're afraid to engage in any debate you can't control" is a third.

Such accusations are simply the bleating of those who cannot engage in rational discourse. Every forum at which I have some control is moderated to this end. Intellectual dishonesty and unprovoked personal attacks are not tolerated at my forums. Reason is highly prized. Ideologies are not policed, either. I am always happy to play host to guests who disagree with me, because conversations in which everyone agrees are more boring than listening to the proverbial minister preach to his nodding and equally proverbial choir members. I hold my forum membership to high standards -- standards to which I adhere myself. There is one major caveat, however.

I am frequently bemused at the tendency of some individuals online to make sweeping generalizations or accusations, often as one-liners. Much of the time I will respond to these with sweeping counter-generalizations or accusations of my own. It is usually at this point that some well-meaning soul (or some ill-meaning troll) will pipe up demanding substantiation. Why these demands are so seldom made of the original poster is something I've given up wondering. It seems only those willing to stand up loudly and strongly for what they believe, rationally and logically, can expect to be held to this standard of substantive discourse. There are exceptions, but this is far too often the case in discussion sites dominated by subjectivists and left-leaning ideologues (who form the plurality of popular culture in North America). I digress, however, if only by omission. The caveat to which I referred is this: I will not waste my time offering substantive, rational debate to someone who is neither interested in nor prepared to offer the same.

In my capacity as a moderator and as an administrator of discussion sites, I have never edited, deleted, or locked a discussion topic simply because I disagreed with the idea being expressed. When someone presents me with a reasonable and opposing opinion, I am delighted -- because I enjoy a good rational debate and I am happy to formulate a counter-argument in order to present what I know to be true. I am never threatened or offended by someone whose opinion differs -- because I know he is wrong and I am happy to tolerate him, entertaining the notion that perhaps someday I will convince him (or he will provide me with an argument persuasive enough to prompt me to reevaluate what I believe). I have, however, gleefully ridiculed the ridiculous. I have excoriated. I have repudiated. I have denounced. I have dominated many discussions simply be being good at arguing. I have needed no special power to "control" such conversations -- and I have been, I admit, secretly pleased when the weak-minded have complained that they could not win an argument with me.

I do not tolerate trolling, to be sure. When people enter those areas where I do have power, pursuing their personal agendas, interested only in proving to the world how much smarter they are than me or my forum members, I have summarily shown them the door. I have no interest in arguing with people who cannot argue in good faith. I have, accordingly, been as guilty as anyone else of dismissing foolish conversations with pithy one-liners and sneering, contemptuous condemnations. This is simply the result of hours spent tilting at windmills, believing that irrational people can be persuaded by rational debate. I learned long ago that this is not so. Making the attempt simply wastes time I could spend doing more productive things.

I wish I had a dollar for every time some troll started mewling plaintively that I was rudely refusing to be persuaded by his brilliant insight. I wish I had another dollar for every time such a person demanded that I respond rationally and substantively to an obvious rhetorical trick, a transparent debate-club tactic, or an intellectually dishonest ploy. I'm sorry, folks, but I don't respond to leading questions. I don't accept false premises. I don't dignify, with a considered response, questions modeled after the old saw, "When did you stop beating your wife?" I don't respond with reasoned rebuttals to vulgar personal attacks, to barely disguised threats, or to thinly veiled potshots . I give as good as I get and I've seen most of it before. You quite literally cannot out-argue with me. I know that sounds arrogant, but it's true; I can count on one hand those whom I have truly feared when it came to online debates in the past, those whose prowess in the war of words I truly respect. You aren't one of them.

If you've ever walked into a discussion at one of my sites with a chip on your shoulder, if I've ever moderated your involvement at one of my boards, if I've ever deleted your post, locked your thread, or shown you the virtual door, I've got news for you -- it wasn't because of the great and abiding skill with which you constructed an impregnable argument that I could not refute. It wasn't because I feared the terrible light of your incisive criticism on the darkness of my soul. It wasn't because of the extensive knowledge and understanding you offered, with which I simply could not cope. No, it was because you couldn't abide by the simplest of rules. You couldn't offer a reasoned, civil, substantive debate. You couldn't make your points and disagree as an adult among other adults. You were, in fact, trolling, either as an isolated case or as part of some repeated if not ingrained and habitual pattern of behavior. If I've ever placed you on ignore, dismissed something you said, or otherwise failed to address a question you asked, it wasn't because I couldn't answer your question -- it was because your question wasn't worth entertaining. This could be because the query failed on its own merits. It might also be that you simply aren't worth the time and energy required to argue with you.

I've posted a standing literary challenge at Pax Baculum. To date, no one has managed a substantive critique of my work. Plenty of people have written, publicly and privately, to complain about things I've written in The Martialist or at Pax Baculum or in my books, but only rarely have these missives addressed the content of that work. (On those rare occasions when the arguments offered consisted of something other than personal attacks, irrelevant complaints, or indignant protests over the fact that I dared to write what I wrote in the first place, they have been easily refuted as either ignorant of the subject matter or as mischaracterizations -- deliberate or otherwise -- of the work cited.)

With few exceptions, those who disagree with what I've written (those who take the time to say so publicly and angrily) are simply furious beacause they are impotent to do anything about what I've written. They lack the ability or the inclination to fight me on my own ground, honestly and without rancor, so they instead lash out. There's one notorious troll whose vast knowledge of the martial arts is limited to creating well drawn, poorly scripted, and mildly libelous cartoons in which he depicts famous martial arts figures farting and defrauding their students. There's another who took the time to write a stinging "critique" of one of my books that sounded like the ravings of a lovesick stalker. There's still another who's signed up for my discussion forum multiple times under so many different identities that one in every five trolls based in the UK and posting at Pax Baculum are almost assuredly the same person.

Through it all, the one thing missing has been rational discourse. This is the standard to which I hold myself and others. You may not like it. You may not believe it. You may complain, loudly and with vigor, that it just isn't fair. You may substitue conviction for fact and volume for veracity.

You will still be a troll.