trolls and stalkers

[xela]

I just sent a "please don't feed the troll" zephyr to a friend, and it occurred to me that that rule reminded me of a thread in siderea's LJ a few weeks ago, that linked to an article about dealing with stalkers. A stalker (paraphrasing from memory¹) gets positive re-enforcement from any contact with the victim — and depriving them of all such contact is necessary if not always sufficient to getting rid of them. A troll gets positive re-enforcement from any response — and not responding to them is necessary if not sufficient to getting rid of them.

Do people think this is more than a superficial analogy? Is the troll a species of stalker?

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¹ I wrote the post before looking up the URLs: I had entirely forgotten that the title of the article.

Comments

[siderea]

My answer to that is very complicated. The short version is: no in some ways, yes in other ways, and for the vast majority of people, probably following the same protocols with trolls as with stalkers is a good idea. Perhaps I will write more whem I'm at a keyboard.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

in a very minor way, yes -- I think the threshold for trolls is less -- normally they post, if someone replies they post to that, and the cycle goes on. maybe they might post 2 or 3 in a row citing some forgotten points, but basically if nobody responds to replies, it stops. Most of the time, the troll replies once to each reply, then stops.

With trolls, the idea is "if you don't write back then you agree with me and I win". With stalkers, the idea is "if you *ever* show the slightest interest, I win"....so the timeframe and volume of stalking events vs. timeframe and volume of troll events is not proportional. A stalker prods and pokes way more than a troll, on purpose, and there is no Godwin's law.

[dcltdw]

Is the troll a species of stalker?

I'm not sure this answers the question, but I'll throw it out here anyways. :) A troll is looking for attention; a stalker is looking for control.

So a troll is a subset of a stalker? A troll is a nihilistic stalker? Both seem like unnecessarily florid descriptions. :)

[pwaa.livejournal.com]

I think trolls and stalkers are slightly different. Stalkers focus on *one* victim and trolls look to make trouble wherever they go and don't really care who they're attacking. I've been accused of being a troll for wanting to actually debate interesting issues (it's sad when the people you're trying to debate with don't have the mental capacity to do so; they dissolve into personal insults and you get accused of being the troll...*cough*).

Trolls are generally just annoying; stalkers are actually dangerous. I recently had a stalker who posted my name, address, and pictures of me along with links to porn and a slew of personal insults. We also believe that when I complain about the posts (as I have a few times), all the website does is forward the complaint to the stalker (which of course reinforces the behavior) who takes it down and then replaces it, either immediately or a short while later, with something even more disgusting. Oh, and one of the things the stalker posted was that *I* was the stalker and everyone should be afraid of me - and some people actually believed it and decided to make an organized (and horrible) online attack on my wedding day for "retribution" for what *I* had done to the stalker... I was so pissed...am still so pissed...