How to Take Down a Troll
Take away their lifeblood
It wasn’t protests, riots, or a cogent argument that took down Breitbart Troll Milo Yiannopoulos. Rather, it was a well-placed hit job.
To see how this hit job worked, it helps to first understand how Milo thrived. Ryan Holiday has written extensively on how trolls manipulate the media by using the same strategy that he used to promote the material of Tucker Max (remember him?). A strategy he recently summed up:
“…[L]et’s say [Milo] can acquire massive amounts of negative publicity by pissing off people in the media… If a CNN story reaches 100,000 people, that’s 90,000 people all patting themselves on the back for how smart and decent they are. They’re just missing the fact that the 10,000 new people that just heard about Milo for the first time. The same goes for when you angrily share on Facebook some godawful thing one of these people has said. The vast majority of your friends rush to agree, but your younger cousin has a dark switch in his brain go on for the first time.”
Garnering outrage does nothing but provide free advertising to attract more supporters. Although most people might hate what Milo says, a few may love it. Trolls, in other words, offer the fish bait in order to attract bottom feeders. Bottom feeders are their lifeblood.
A few of counter-strategies may drain the troll of their lifeblood. First is to willfully ignore the troll. An attention-starved troll cannot thrive because bottom feeders won’t know they exist. But when anybody with a camera and a keyboard can draw attention to an issue that is sure to draw outrage (and clicks), the cold shoulder is probably unsustainable.
Similarly, you could try to ban the troll from speaking. But look at what this did in Milo’s case. It allowed him to take the claim of being a “free speech advocate” straight onto Bill Maher, thereby gaining even more publicity.
Rather than engaging the troll, a better strategy may be to engage with the bottom feeders. If they can be convinced that Milo is repulsive, he will lose his lifeblood and disappear. But our attempts to persuade others are often misguided.
Our political ideologies shape what we find persuasive. Liberals are generally more persuaded by arguments that emphasize themes of fairness and equal opportunity. Conservatives are generally more persuaded by arguments that emphasize themes of hard work and patriotism.
If someone wants to persuade their ideological counterpart to change their views on an issue, they should emphasize themes that their counterpart finds persuasive. But one recent experiment shows that people more often stress the themes that they, not their counterparts, find persuasive. Liberals craft arguments that emphasize themes of fairness; conservatives craft arguments that emphasize themes of hard work. Neither put themselves in their counterpart’s shoes. Neither are at all persuaded.
The same holds true for how pundits, professors, and students tried to take on Milo. They lambasted his harassment, his sexism, his hypocrisy. Those attacking Milo, no doubt, found their arguments persuasive. But Milo’s fans didn’t. People already knew the obvious; pointing it out isn’t going to change their views.
What took down Milo wasn’t some well-crafted open letter, but a five-minute video clip of Milo justifying pedophilia. Among the outraged were members of Breitbart — the outlet of among his most provocative statements — who threatened to quit if Milo wasn’t disciplined. An openly gay man defending pedophilia is evidently too much even for the bottom feeders.
The clip engaged Milo’s lifeblood, not Milo directly, and it may have destroyed his career. If those formerly amused by his provocations now find him abhorrent, he will have lost all demand for his antics. He now has nowhere to turn simply because everybody else already hates him. Recall the initial business model.
The lesson in troll takedown, then, is to engage the bottom feeders rather than the troll. But people who find trolls amusing and those who find trolls despicable won’t be persuaded by the same arguments. Those trying to take down a troll need to understand what makes their fans — the troll’s lifeblood — tick, and then act accordingly.
This may require engaging with diverse ideological viewpoints, something we tend to avoid. But without understanding the other side, efforts at persuasion are likely to be worse than fruitless — they may backfire.
What About Trump?
A similar dynamic played out in the 2016 US presidential election. Those opposed to Trump frequently lashed against his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim comments. But do you think his supporters actually cared about these remarks?
The Muslim ban, for example, remains quite popular among his supporters. What seemed to mark the death knell was a tape openly admitting to sexual assault. Droves of his supporters then fled.
Although most of these supporters limped back, the supply of presidential candidates is much smaller than the supply of media trolls. During the general election, the only real option, other than Trump, was Hillary Clinton. The potential supply of media trolls isn’t nearly as tight. With millions of bloggers, those upset with Milo can easily find a new provocateur. If the Billy Bush tape had come early in the primary, Trump may not have survived. Admissions of sexual assault may have been unbearable even for his most ardent supporters.