Dealing with Trolls 101
Being a streamer can be a great hobby or even a career if you’re dedicated enough, but as with all things, there will always be some bad that comes with the good. For the bulk of streamers, this bad comes in the form of “Trolls”. It’s rare that you’ll find someone who doesn’t know what a troll is, in today’s fast-paced net-driven society, yet for clarification, “to troll” or the act of “trolling” is defined by Dictionary.com as;
to post inflammatory or inappropriate messages or comments on (the Internet, especially a message board) for the purpose of upsetting other users and provoking a response.
With the freedom and anonymity that the internet brings, deciding to be a troll is easy, all you need is the internet and a device that connects to it. Bam! If you lack enough moral sense and take pleasure in upsetting others, you’re a troll!
Okay, that’s actually not fair, some trolls are harmless and don’t do it maliciously, so we should probably get into explaining the different type of trolls. Who knew trolling could be so tedious?! From my experience, I have seen the following types of trolls lurking the internet;
The Professional Troll
Can you believe it? Well you should, because there are actually people paid to troll in this world! They can range from people hired to target a specific website, to political trolls; whose only purpose is to cause conflict and disparage their targeted party. Their objective; Troll and get paid.
The “For Fun” Troll
Trolling is literally this person’s hobby. Browsing their comment history will unveil a manifold of their triumphs and failures to provoke the masses. They may not believe anything they say to get a rise from the public, they just enjoy causing chaos. Their objective; laugh in the face of pandemonium.
The Victim Troll
Personally, this is my least favourite type of troll (yes, I actually have a favourite). They literally suck any fun and good times being had, by taking every opportunity to twist your words/actions into an attack on them. Their objective; use absurd claims and reasoning, so you’ll defend yourself until you snap.
The Survey Troll
(My favourite troll.) This type of troll doesn’t usually go above and beyond with their attempts to cause a rise. They pick controversial topics and use mild insults or edgy humour; simply to see your reactions. They are surveying your response: Will you freak out? Will you laugh? Commonly, they’re looking for you to joke along with them. For someone who understands their humour. Their objective; meet new people with similar “edgelord” personalities, while getting a few laughs along the way.
I’m sure there’s more out there, but these are the 4 most common troll types that come to mind.
Next, I’d like to help you identify these trolls, by calling out a few different tactics they use when attempting to get a rise. A few are pretty obvious but some I think are pretty creative.
Insults
This is what a large majority of people think of when they think “Troll”. Typically using nasty words and slurs to try and make you feel your lowest or angry.
Slurs/Profanity
This tactic is to use the most nauseatingly offensive slurs, phrases or words possible. They may not even be directed at anyone; the point is, is that they’re making people read the obscene language.
Knows-It-All
Everything they say is in a matter-of-fact tone. They correct every spelling and grammatical error. When you’re wrong or have missed the smallest insignificant detail, they use this as an opportunity to pounce with all the facts and call you a moron. While knowledge and sharing it is great, this tactic takes it to a whole new level.
Victim Card
Ah, the favourite tactic of the Victim Troll. Any joke that could be considered the slightest bit edgy; any comment on a controversial subject, they will use against you, claiming they or someone they know, is a victim of whatever the controversial topic is.
Master Debating
Debating is great, I love it. But every debate gets to a point where all parties have shared their arguments and it’s no longer productive. Normal debating ends here, but this tactic is to keep the fires fueled by attacking the arguments made or the person who made them. If the tactic succeeds, the debate is now a flame war.
Left Fielder
This tactic is the least offensive of the bunch; the idea is simply to come out of left field as often as possible. Sometimes it’s changing the topic during a deep conversation; sometimes it’s just blurting random words and phrases. The objective is to catch everyone off guard and annoy until yelled at or kicked from the stream.
Downers
I’m not referring to Eminem’s blue and yellow purple pills. Whether or not these people are genuine, they share things that are typically way too intimate to be shared in a public chat room. They either want everyone to feel bad for them or for everyone to feel bad in general. Often enough they can cause a whole chatroom to become one big depressive mess, which just isn’t a good environment to be streaming in.
Spammers
It really goes without saying, but this tactic is to flood the chat with nonsense, which could be links, profanity/insults, song lyrics, random words, etc. The point is to keep anyone from getting a word in edgewise and/or be downright annoying.
Alright, so we’ve identified four different types of trolls and a handful of different tactics they use, but what can we, as streamers, do to defend ourselves against trolls? In my mind there are 3 main strategies all streamers should practice, to ensure they are properly armed against trolls.
Having Thick Skin
It’s not a joke or meant to offend when people say you need to have thick skin to be a streamer. It’s not meant to infer that being affected by trolls, means you don’t have what it takes to be a streamer either. Having or obtaining “thick skin” is a matter of practice and perseverance. You have to train yourself to be able to deflect their words/actions and remind yourself that they don’t matter when you feel yourself getting upset. Unfortunately, one of the only ways to train yourself is through experiencing the trolls first hand. If you’ve been blessed with having naturally thick skin, congrats, you’re already one step ahead of the troll.
Give Them A Twist
Trolling is about getting a reaction or response from the target, more specifically, a negative one. If possible, use their trolling to your advantage and show everyone how awesome you are with your own brand of justice. Not giving AF. This could be done with witty comebacks, you could turn your chat onto the troll and troll them back, even giving them what they want in tenfold, by dramatically overreacting to their trolling, can be a great way to defuse the troll. The point is to show them that you’re not going to take them seriously, once they realize this, they usually get bored and move along to their next target.
A Solid Mod Team
Unless you’re a brand new streamer, you probably have a few viewers who come around often. Recruit them to your personal mod squad. The best defence is to have a good team of mods that know your general chat rules. Your mods can save you from a lot of grief by removing trolls from your stream before you even have a chance to see what they’ve said.
I truly believe that if you can master these three strategies, you can survive even the most malicious attacks from trolls. On Plexstorm we hope to help you get through it with grace and style. While the current moderation tools are somewhat limited, they should, hopefully, be enough to get you through the worst of trolls.
Let me tell you about the tools, you currently have to work with on Plexstorm. Clicking any message you’ve received in chat, will pop up the moderator tools. I’ll explain each option for you;
- Delete Message — pretty self-explanatory, deletes the message that’s been selected.
- Mute — removes the user from the stream & chat for the rest of the stream.
- Ban user from stream — also self-explanatory, bans the user from the stream completely, forever. gone, poof!
- Promote — promotes the user to a stream moderator. Use this, get that mod team on guard for thee.
Along with these tools, I also recommend you join the community Discord server. We have a channel in our Support category set up for you to use;
- #need-a-mod — this channel is for requesting regular mods for your stream and to request urgent assistance to your stream from the community and site mods.;
In the future, we plan on having more features to aid you in your battle against trolls; like purging messages and chat timeouts. But for now, the basics are there and I encourage you to familiarize yourself with them before you need to use them.
I hope you found this post helpful. Let me know in the comments if you’ve experienced any of these types of trolls and/or their tactics before. What other kinds of trolls/tactics have you seen? Also if you have any other helpful advice to other streamers for dealing trolls, leave us your wisdom.
