From: deputydog23x@gmail.com   
      
   Internet Trolls Really Are Psychos    
      
      
   Roger Dooley    
   CONTRIBUTOR    
      
   I make marketing better with brain & behavior research    
      
   If you've ever managed an online community, a blog, or a brand's Facebook   
   page, you have encountered the dreaded "troll." These community members can be   
   provocative and rude, and are known for creating posts for the sole purpose of   
   agitating their fellow    
   members. Trolls add inflammatory comments not because they hope to inform or   
   convince others, but because they know they'll spark an avalanche of   
   negativity.    
      
   Left unchecked, trolls can destroy communities. Helpful members tire of the   
   conflict and eventually leave. Trolls present a challenge to community   
   managers not just because of their toxic behavior, but because they don't   
   always overtly break community    
   rules. Many people make comments that prove to be inflammatory, often   
   unintentionally. Trollish behavior is evident only after a pattern of such   
   comments emerges.    
      
   Conventional wisdom says that the    
   anonymity of the Internet lets people behave in ways they never would in real   
   life, or online if their identity was known. But, if you think that means that   
   trolls are normally nice people who only act out in their online persona,   
   think again. New    
   research shows that internet trolls are, in real life, narcissists,   
   psychopaths, and sadists.    
      
   OracleVoice    
   To Reap The Rewards Of Peer Reviews, Separate Fact From Friction    
   The paper's title, Trolls Just Want To Have Fun, is amusing, but the findings   
   are anything but funny. Canadian researchers surveyed more than a thousand   
   internet users about their commenting behavior. They then administered a   
   personality test designed to    
   measure, among other things, what's known as the Dark Tetrad. That's a measure   
   of negative traits: sadism, psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism.    
      
   The correlation between these negative traits and trollish behavior was   
   striking. No other kind of community participation showed such a relationship.    
      
   The research validates what most community managers have always believed:   
   trolls are awful people in real life, too.    
      
   These results may not be of much use in curbing trolls online, but it does   
   suggest that trying to stop the behavior by gentle coaching is doomed to fail   
   most of the time. That, too, won't surprise experienced community operators.   
   In my years of community    
   building, I've seen a few trolls that actually tried to mend their ways but   
   inevitably reverted to their old ways.    
      
   Since trolls actually derive pleasure from the suffering of others, engaging   
   with them at all can be counter-productive. Instead, follow the simple maxim   
   of experienced community leaders: "Don't feed the trolls."    
      
   Roger Dooley is the author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince   
   Consumers with Neuromarketing (Wiley, 2011). Find Roger on Twitter as   
   @rogerdooley and at his website, Neuromarketing.    
      
      
   http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2014/10/06/internet-trol   
   s-really-are-psychos/   
      
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