Sun Tzu and The Art of Troll Baiting
Arguments with internet trolls are the modern gladiator fights.
Written while listening to Electric Talons of the Thunderhawk by Valley of the Sun
Invisible lines lie in places on the internet where we’ve lain them, lines cutting between acceptable behavior and cause for sparring. Sometimes, some aggressive commentator crosses that invisible line and you just know people with your opinions will rally to stand up for the goodness of humanity. Whether they “win” or “lose” ends up less exciting than the prospect of a good old slugger-fest. Better and better with more and more casualties.
We like our excitement, right?
Speaking as a collateral victim and rare active participant in that kind of conflict, I say bullshit.
Here’s the thing, we all want to be right. That’s the truth. More’n that, when it comes down to our honest core, we all think that we are right. Secretly, we know we’re right, know in the sense that we believe that our beliefs are most correct, and the only reason we’re keeping it to ourselves, most of the time is common courtesy. Shy people are only refraining from screaming at you how wrong you are because they’ve decided that being quiet keeps them happy. On the other side, we equate aggressive personalities with opinionated ones simply for volume control reasons.
We all know that we are right.
So sometimes we fight.
I’m always nervous of sparking conflicts. The psychological tricks the internet plays multiply the assertiveness in all of us. Feels like any little thing I might say might start fights.
Or, you know, I might just start the fights for kicks.
It’s tempting, right? Lord, it’s tangibly tempting to rise to every fight. This is your shot, right? This is your chance to speak your mind without all those noisy people interrupting. You can speak your piece. You can finally bring the world around to your side. You and your perfectly designed words. You will end all conflicts, teach the masses, and bring everyone around to your side.
Right?
Sun Tzu says…
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
If my blogging philosophies came from one of the more happy-go-lucky, cheerful idea mongers, like Siddhartha or Lao Tzu, then this quote would suggest avoiding conflict altogether. At the spark of any aggression, keep your peace. That would be the lesson from Buddha or Jesus or someone.
But my troll baiting philosophy comes from someone who preaches drawing and quartering to solve certain problems. So put on your active solutions garters. We are not passive warriors here.
Now, saying that, it’s important to know what you want to either do or get out of it if you argue with people on the internet.
When Sun Tzu said it, he meant you ought to win a fight by non-violent means. If you can win a fight by negotiation or intimidation or guile, then those are cheaper and easier and therefore better than fighting.
Best case scenario, in Sun Tzu’s mind, is to win by reputation. Sun Tzu walks into the village, and they yield mastery of it over to him just because he’s Sun Tzu. That’s the ideal scenario.
In the case of dealing with internet trolls it’s a little different, but not too different.
But to do it, you have to decide what “winning” means.
Sun Tzu says…
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
Whenever he’d get into a fight, Sun Tzu would ask, “What’s at stake here? What’s my stake in this fight? Also, what’s theirs?”
I can just imagine him at a bar, in full General of the Chinese Military regalia, sucking down his microbrew and drowning his sorrows. Then some drunk guy runs into him and tells him, “Hey, man, I don’t like your mustache.”
Sun Tzu would look around at the guy and spend a couple seconds deciding what, if any, gain either of them would have in getting into a fight. If he was in the habit of taking his own advice, he’d think it through before doing anything.
It ain’t a zen thing. It’s a costs and benefits analysis. What do I have to gain by engaging? What do I risk losing?
To answer questions about costs and benefits, you have to know what you want to get out of it. That requires some preparation. What lines do you want to hold? What do you want to defend? What are your beliefs?
Since I can’t speak knowledgeably on the subject of what motivates other people, I’ll tell you one of the lines I try to hold.
- The sanctity of language.
I’ve spent most of my life determining what I mean by that. In my mind, there are definite parameters for abuse of language. I’ll let a lot of grammatical errors slide, and I won’t jump down your throat for many spelling errors. Cuss all you want — more is better, in as many languages and with as much culture and history as you can muster. Sarcasm is fine, insults hardly rankle. Oppose my opinions, rail against my religion, defame my counter-cultures — so long as you’re honest, dignified, and your opinions are well-founded, I will respect your words.
The moment that I sense you ignoring the purpose of language, as I see it, that’s when I’ll come get you.
(More on the sanctity of language in the next episode.)
That could be seen as a little unfair, I will admit, since I don’t regularly publicize what I mean by “the sanctity of language” or “the purpose of language.”
(Except that I do.)
However…
Sun Tzu says…
All warfare is based on deception.
Beginning from a place where you know better what you care about than your trolls do — what you care about, that is — gives you a sound position to make your stand. It’s awfully difficult to hit an invisible target. If what you’re defending is personal to you, it has invisible elements.
And I hear my “empathize with the reader” voice pointing out that not everyone considers themselves a Paladin of the Secret Order of the Sacred Word. Some people have more public or political crusades they’re in.
To which I say, yeah. And I support all of you. I share many beliefs I’ve watched argued on the interwebz. I nod along, I take notes, I broaden my mind. You guys have all the good feels I can muster.
This will get fuzzy and new agey for a second, because the thing is that we’re all in it — whatever conflict we’re in, on whatever side we’re defending — for personal reasons, and nobody else knows those reasons, not completely. Even if we’ve told a hundred people or a million people, it’s still our secret. No matter how many people you describe your feelings to, there will still be feelings that you can’t describe. That’s how feelings work. There will still be bone-deep, personal things that no one will ever understand or know.
That can be your island. Your firm ground where you can make your stand. That is your last deception, the invisible thing that no troll can ever truly land jibes on.
Understanding precisely what that thing is, deep and indescribable as it is, gives you immortality. If you strike out into the world with the firm intent and purpose to defend that invisible thing, that thing that you have hidden from all the world, then you cast your enemies off balance. They will see you fighting with all your all to protect this thing, and they will never see the thing, and no matter what they do they will not be able to do anything to that one thing. Thus, even if they think they’ve beaten you, you know there is an inch of you left standing that they will never reach.
By the same sentiment, if you’re defending a secret that’s still secret, then your attackers won’t quite know which of their attacks have the most potency. There’s strength in that too. Perhaps they think they’re getting at you by insulting your ethics, when you’re really angry that they spelled it “Neetchian” and you could care less that they’re making fun of you for having opinions about the ubermensch.
It also gives you powers because it hides your goals, which means that they won’t know where to set up their best defenses.
Warfare is based on deception, Sun Tzu says. You should hide many things in warfare. Hide your abilities. Hide your strength. But, especially, hide your goals, and hide your reasons for getting into the fight.
Because winning and obliterating aren’t the same thing.
Okay, fuzzy section over. I’ve made my “feelsy” point as well as I can. Having come to “know thyself,” as that other guy has it, you must also do your best to know your enemy.
Sun Tzu says…
Balk the enemy’s power; force him to reveal himself.
Such a good word. Balk. One of those words that you can really shout, loud and firm. Unfortunately, not that great for insults or tirades.
It means to hesitate and be unwilling to accept what you see. I’ve learned, in my dealings with trolls, that it’s a mos’ relevant thing to do. In my adventures defending language, more than once I’ve come up against people with more education than I have. I’ve gotten used to the whole “foot in mouth” pose.
I’ve grown a little older and a little, tiny bit better at knowing what I’m talking about. These days, I stand up to defend the abuse of language less frequently than I used to. When I do, I’m careful to know, as well as possible, who I’m up against.
I have it easy. Not because I’m clever or anything, but because the internet is full of words. Words are what I defend. Whether they mean to or not, people interacting with the internet tell me things about their entree into the battlefield where I’d be willing to meet them.
Other people defend different areas — they stand in different arenas. Recognize your ground. Hold it.
Sun Tzu says…
Those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.
For those moments when trolls are determined to pick a fight, you’ll have no problem getting into one with them. Sun Tzu would only advise that you make a point of keeping the fight on your terms.
In practice, how this might look:
Some dude writes a big, long tirade, and you don’t agree with it. Your first instinct might be to just rail on the guy. Why not? Ain’t no downside to an internet rant, right?
Maybe. If you just need to let off some steam, whatever, just go for it however it appeals to you.
It behooveth the self-aware reactor on the internet to pause at this point in their experience and decide what they’d like to accomplish. If the history, thus far, of the internet is any evidence then the internet is full of reasonable-minded individuals who have been waiting for that one well-reasoned argument to change their minds and teach them how to be a person, and you’re just the person to do it.
Ha.
Moving back to reality.
What the internet really teaches us is that the loudest people are not interested in trusting you, on most subjects, most of the time. And if the loud, annoying troll proves anything it’s the power of specialization. He’s become that loud, annoying troll, and you remember him, because he’s best at it. He is, in fact, better at it than you are, and, relevant side note, better at it than you probably want to be.
Attempting to out-rant him will get you nowhere. It’s gotten nobody anywhere. It will never get anyone anywhere.
Which does not mean you can’t outwit him.
It’s important, if you want to remain calm and make good points, to bring trolls into your arena, where you know all the traps and you know all the tricks. In practical terms, if you actually wish to engage with them, this might mean saying only small things to them for a while, things that neither commit you to much nor reveal much about your intentions nor interests. Things, though, placed in ways and just enticing enough that, if they’re interested in engaging, then they might. Do this for a while till he’s good and revealed himself to you.
For example, if I perceive a piece of dangerous propaganda, and it demonstrates some logical or rhetorical fallacy, I’ll point it out. I won’t dissect it. I’ll just point it out. If the troll wants to bite, then they will.
Then you can dice him, if you want.
Always ensuring that you keep your priorities sound. Remember to know yourself and what you truly wish to defend.
Sun Tzu says…
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
The place to win and lose victories on the internet is inside of you. That’s the truth. That’s the only material truth. The internet simulates intimacy in this strange way where sometimes we meet internet friends and sometimes we make internet enemies, and maybe they become real friends and real enemies. Until we’ve developed genuine rapport with them, none of us will change each others minds, for good or ill, about anything.
The internet allows greater boldness of expression, true, and it also makes us more stubborn.
Every irritating, trollish knucklehead you’ve ever seen on the internet will let every single counter-maneuver from any of us slide off him, probably smiling about it, until that one day when he discovers he’s made a real, emotional connection with somebody. Then, maybe, that one person says three words — “shame on you” — and that, more than the hundreds of words spilled over his trollishness before then, stabs him in the heart and changes his ways forever. For the true troll, none of the most keenly-witted or verbose rants will get to him.
Sometimes, though, we will find ourselves in those arguments with those strange, empathy-lacking creatures who seem to enjoy such childish glee from throwing internet tantrums. I hope that, long before we find ourselves in those arguments, we can get better as a species understanding our personal stake in this whole game.
(The whole game. Life and all of it.)
Do you know what you want to defend? I do. I will defend it, all of it, down to my marrow. I have no substant faith that I’ll convince very many people of the rightness of my cause, and the people who I’m sure I’ll have the least luck convincing are those trolls who most aggressively disagree with me.
Some people agree with me. Most of them are quiet about it. That’s good.
And, in vetting my ideas against illogical trolls, I can discern the strength of them.
Sun Tzu says…
All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
This applies to a lot of people, I imagine: such as it is, my “agenda” is bigger than I am. What I believe has been around before I could talk and it’ll outlive me whether I stand up for it or not. A lot of relevant issues have this quality, this “larger than one man” quality. It’s almost like the agendas have their own agendas. I might wish to stand up for the sanctity of language, but I won’t argue to return to the Middle English of Geoffrey Chaucer. I have a limited effect on the general abuse of language. For the most part, the language will do what it wants.
Which isn’t to say I should pack it in and ignore the arguments. I’ll join in where the reality of the argument seems to demand my particular touch, and I’ll bite anyone who deserves it.
And when I’ve made my point, I’ll step out.
I do, though, take a certain comfort knowing that the agenda is larger than I am. There are people in the world with more pull than I’ve got wielding their pull to have larger impact than I have. I agree with some of them. Others can suck a pinecone and welcome. My little voice, for now speaks in the corners and picks its battles rare and small.
Sun Tzu says…
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
Sun Tzu would say that it’s more important to know when you’ve won, than to know when it looks like you’ve won. There are differences. Trolls are easy to beat. If they’re throwing out names, repeating themselves, missing your point, or changing the subject, you’ve defeated them. You’ll never bring them around to your perspective. It’s failure to attempt that which you already know you’ll never achieve.
It’s wisdom to understand what victory looks like.
I must subdue my enemies without fighting. See, I brought back the quote from the beginning, ’cause I’m clever.
See, the side I’m fighting for is old as two lovers speaking sweet nothings under the moon. My side’s as old as haggling, as old as one person outwitting another, as old as stories. My side’s as old as language.
The abusers of language might never crumble where I strike them down, not me on a one-to-one level. So far, not often. But my side is huger than I am, and if I personally fail, my side survives me. There’s comfort in that.
The trolls will rarely cave to my arguments. Still, I can make good, strong arguments. I can rest at ease knowing I have brought the good bite, fraught the fair fright, shot the sound slight. When I face the great writer in the sky, I will stand before him and say, yes, I stood up for the goodness of words.
What are some of the causes you fight for? Ever found yourself applying ancient management philosophies to your daily life? Have you ever done a comparison of “kung fu movie philosophy” and real Chinese philosophy? It’s an odd overlap.
In a previous story, I claimed that I had a good argument for defining civilization as an organized panic about bears:
What I have here written about Sun Tzu and troll baiting is part of the argument.
Stay tuned for more.
p.s. Thanks, Kim.
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