Trolls, Duals, Magog and Other Cyber Fauna

In early days a Troll was often a randy school boy looking for attention, thinking that he was safe.   He’d attack, he’d try to hack, and would ruin a lot of good sites.

As time passed the attention deprived created a powerful avatar and would roam sites to attack others.  Often he’d created two accounts, himself and a dual who would agree with him.

I met my first batch of Trolls at home, the second batch on Delphiforums.

There were female Trolls as well, who would ‘gang post’ a hapless woman who dared express a position anti their own.

Sickgrrl, Crazygirl, Sunnydae, were all one sick female.  I could tell by the syntax; that is how they wrote.  Their sentence structure, their misspellings or grammatical errors.

The easiest thing, of course, is to pack up and go, which many people did.  Delphiforums turned from the liveliest site on the ‘Net to an accidental visit.

On some sites, the Magog replaced Trolls.  This was a person whose reason for living was to destroy a site.

Logging on the Magog would post screen after screen of one letter or symbol, going on and on so that anyone who logged on would lose interest.

Triond Forum closed because of the Magog.

To protect yourself from attacks you don’t share very much of yourself and you don’t use your real name.  You create a persona, grant him/her an email address and if attacked, you leave.

If it is an article you’ve written followed by repulsive comments, remember, if it is a paying site, you get paid for views.  The more views the better.

A flame war brings in a lot of views.  Some may be anti-you, some may be pro.

Don’t remove attacks too soon.

For example, on Wikinut an item I wrote received a scathing attack from a guy who was running a Scam site..(which went down subsequently).

He attacked me, then one of his shills attacked me, then a normal person came on and posted, then I posted.

The Scammer came on posted again.  His Shill posted again. I deleted the first comments of the Scammer and the Shill, and went on to write something which did not directly address what they said.

They returned and wrote more stuff, I did my oblique answer and deleted their earlier posts.

The item had googals of views.  Hundreds of views.  Many adding to the flame war but more simply watching from the sidelines.

Because I had a few supporters on the site I didn’t need to create a Dual to defend me.

In some cases not answering a Troll ends his participation.

On one site I wrote something, Troll attacked.  I created a dual which answered my post, ignoring the Troll.  I responded to my dual.

The Troll posted again and my dual ignored him and responded to me.

The Troll stopped.

Before you enter cyberspace know the dangers, and how to protect yourself.