The Light Under the Bridge: Deconstructing the Art of Online Trolling Culture

I was surfing the web online recently and encountered an article about a new Nintendo app called Miitomo. It looked like a friendly app where you create a custom “Mii” avatar and socialize with friends to your heart’s content. Perfectly tame, right? I even started going on the app, and started enjoying it fully, designing my Mii to be a little version of myself.

I started sarcastically answering the many questions that the app asked. “How would you define yourself?”, they ask. I reply, “In a dictionary”. Looking back on it, why was that my answer? I could have given a real inspirational message, but instead I outsmarted the question and my readers. Pondering that, I then went on Twitter to see what everyone else was saying about the new app, and was surprised at my findings. There lied provocative images, like the Miis performing oral sex or the Miis saying dirty sayings, all for the internet’s enjoyment.

What the hell? Why was this happening? What were these users trying to achieve by creating these images?

I realized soon after that my witty response and these provocative images were more similar than I originally thought. Whether tame or aggressive, both instances from this Miitomo experience showed how powerful trolling culture has become in our society, and how the art of trolling has become ingrained in the way we communicate and express ourselves online.

Trolling is defined as “deliberately trying to distress someone online…usually…anonymously” (Nicol 3). There are many forms of trolling, some that are tame and hilarious and meant to just get a rise out of the audience while others that are more abusive and could actually lead to hardcore cyberbullying. Trolling varies in different types of media, from the Miitomo oral sex pictures to edging someone on with words in an open forum. No wonder what kind of media, each type expresses trolling in one way or another.

The art of trolling has developed over time, and has a very sufficient history to digest. The term can be brought all the way back to the early 1990s. Back then, it was specifically a disruptive and annoying activity that users did on discussion boards. According to Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of writing, “The de facto understanding of the activity was something like the definition of sexual harassment. If a target walked away feeling trolled, then trolling had indeed been afoot” (Phillips). It was all about the action taken place and how it impacted the person on the receiving end. If the person on the receiving end did not feel “trolled”, then the troll failed at their mission. Trolling at this point in time was still rather new and was seen as a taboo in many locations. It was a crime against traditional interaction on the internet, and that was scary to think about when everyone was still trying to figure the internet out.

By the 2000s, the term “troll” had become more popularized by anonymous users on 4chan, an imageboard website created in 2003. Trolling became a part of someone’s identity, something that people desired to be. Soon, a subculture was adopted, with a set of ethics, language, and way of being. Along with that, the online craze starting making trolling more mainstream and more accepted for all Internet users to take part in. It became a subset of the meme culture, where images and videos were created to get a small rise out of those that viewed them.

Rickrolling, one of the most popular Internet memes, was popularized in 2008 as a form of trolling, where one would provide a link for something that seems important, but it is really just the YouTube link to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”, a famous one-hit-wonder that went viral after this craze.

These memes started to give trolling a sense of power that was not that dangerous, more for laughing pleasures. Some media outlets now praise trolling and its efforts, while some still consider it a form of cyberbullying. Today, there are still distinct forms of trolling, either for the wow factor or the lolz. By investigating the different forms, types, and ways of trolling throughout time, one can really understand why users do it, and why this form of expression can actually produce a smarter and more involved member of the online community.

When going about trolling, there are multiple steps to fully succeed. The first two important concepts are baiting and biting, much like a fish does when it sees an attractive hook. Christopher Hopkinson states in Trolling in Online Discussions: From Provocation to Community-Building, “The opening move in a trolling attack is the initial provocation. The troll makes his/her first move by posting a provocative message, which acts as ‘bait’” (Hopkinson 13). This bait is usually a surprising or non-traditional post that impacts the people around them and hopes for a rise out of its reading audience.

My post on Miitomo about defining myself in the dictionary would be the bait in this respect; I am awaiting to see the reactions to my incredulous post. Same goes for the scandalous pictures online, or any outlandish post that is meant to create a rise out of its audience. If the audience reacts in a substantial way and responds to your bait, they, like the fish, have bitten it hook, line, and sinker.

This then may result in “flaming”, otherwise known as “a chain of mutually antagonistic responses which frequently escalate in intensity to become a ‘flame war’” (15). If the trolling is taken in a negative way, both the troll and the receiver often result in a long argument created by the receiver of why the content that the troll let out does not sit well with them. It is them up to the troll to defend themselves and to keep trolling until the receiver eventually gives up.

They do this by acquiring multiple personas for self-defense and interactional goals. The first persona distributed is an exaggerated one for parodic reasons, where they adopt the expectations that the reactor has of them; according to Hopkinson, “This ‘heightened’ persona serves to increase the probability that [they] will ‘bite’” (17). The more biting, the more satisfied the troll is of their work. The second persona created is a sarcastic and ironic one, mocking their opponents with a “respect”, “admiration”, and “politeness” to ridicule them even further (17). The final persona displayed is a mask of naivety and innocence, where the troll deliberately pretends not to understand how the conversation is going. During this persona, they often ignore logical interpretations, and take everything literally; it’s been reported during this time that “trolls may interpret aggressive rhetorical questions as if they were genuine questions, and provide a pseudo-genuine answer” (17). This persona is used purposely to divert any of the anger or attention towards the troll, causing the opponent to be angry at themselves for even taking the bait of the conversation in the first place. By using these three different identities and becoming multifaceted, the troll’s view of genuine and ingenuine severely gets blurred, resulting in aggravating contradictions for the one getting trolled. If one were to follow these trolling strategies in depth, they would be the perfect mainstream troll.

John Oliver, English comedian and political analyst, has followed some of these strategies in his satiric news show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. In a specific episode of the show, Oliver talks about the current Internet and all the trollish behavior that occurs online.

In this segment in particular, Oliver embodies his own individual troll, rickrolling his entire viewing audience 17 seconds in. He originally sets it up by saying he has “heartbreaking footage” of her wounded soldier returning to his pregnant wife; this sentiment is his bait, setting up the audience to be trolled, as they are now invested in the next story to be told. Instead, he puts up “footage” of Rick Astley singing his famous song, with the audience screaming and laughing with horror, not knowing how to respond. He does this again multiple times within the presentation, still “getting them” when they least expect it. This presentation works because the trolling is in between actual information about the Internet, making the receivers think that the following video will be relevant to the piece. Instead, priceless reactions are spotted galore. Luckily, the audience here understands that Oliver’s trolling is all in good jest; in other situations, they could have done something completely different. The key here is understanding how context and intent are everything in regards to this form of expression, for they impact how the receiver reacts to the act.

The main part of this segment that opens our eyes about trolling is that there is a segment about trolling to begin with in this day in age. Back in the 90s or even early 2000s, this would be seen as ridiculous, with no merit whatsoever. Oliver would have been the one ridiculed instead, never to be taken respectfully as a political analyst ever again. However, the fact that Oliver can troll his audience while also giving relevant information about negative examples of trolling, like online harassment, gives credibility to trolling as a subculture. We can talk about trolling in all sets and ways, and that is a big accomplishment through our history.

Knowing the history and strategies of trolling helps you evaluate the pros and cons of trolling as a culture. There is an ever growing assumption that trolling is another word for cyberbullying, and is not a creative outlet for people online to show their sarcastic wits. In Sarah Nicol’s Australian Youth Studies, the author relates trolling to cyberbullying and how abusive the act can be. George Wright of the Sydney Morning Herald states, “Trolling is now the internet pastime of the bored, insecure and antisocial trying to bait members of the community into descending to their level — gutter boors. It is bullying and puerile name calling, pure and simple” (Nicol 3). This negative response is too simple and broad, giving trolls only one dimension of who they truly are. Yes, there are the insecure trolls that are doing it for the wrong reasons; however, there are the secure ones as well that know 100% what they are doing and performing it purely for their entertaining pleasure. It is important to not see any argument as black and white, like Wright does in this quote. Morality is very blurred, and with trolling, there is more than one sees at first glance.

Trolling, as it is mostly a social practice, has its constructive attributes that are never referenced as much. These constructive attributes can actually build communities up and strengthen existing ones. The troll and the receiver fighting back and forth are in a sense, as Hopkinson calls it, “partners in a tennis doubles match, both participating in the same rally” (Hopkinson 21). While the two appear to be at odds, they actually build a bond, being supportive of each other by assisting in the back and forth conversations. Hopkinson also believes that other people watching the troll and their opponent go back and forth can build a bond between bystander and participant. If the bystander supports what the troll is saying or what the opponent is saying, that can build community, as the bystander supports their fellow member like a cheerleader.

There is also a possibility of an us vs. them dynamic, where the group that thinks the same can rally together to combat the troll, the outsider of the group. Members of the group can “join forces and form ad hoc alliances, which ultimately help to cement the community’s internal bonds” (23). Without the troll, the inside group could live in harmony, but they would never have the chance to test their loyalty in an active situation, where they would create bigger bonds in the process. While trolls can be seen as destructive at first, their purpose in the online community is actually more helpful that you would think.

Trolling is a multifaceted concept with many ways to interpret and deconstruct it. It has started as a simply destructive task, related to cyberbullying, but over time it has morphed to actually being a fun artistic expression that can actually be beneficial for online dynamics. So, looking back at Miitomo, the users trolling the questions and images online are not in the wrong. They are really just contributing to the new and abundant trolling subculture that has been made mainstream recently. We could learn from their artistic expression, and use their talents to explore all of what the Internet has to offer. It is time to let our inner troll get out from under the bridge, and allow it to start surfing the waves into freedom.