HOW TO DEFEAT THE TROLL An Internet "troll" is a person who delights in sowing discord on the Internet. He or she slanders others and seeks to cause conflicts and upset people. Trolls are malicious, antisocial, and often mentally ill. They crave attention, and care not whether it is positive or negative. The Internet is a convenient venue for their bizarre, misanthropic games - a means to abuse others without fear of retaliation. Trolls are cowards - lacking the courage to be overtly hostile towards people, they hide behind their computers and the anonymity of the Internet. The troll is a less intelligent version of the malicious hacker or virus writer. Trolls are impervious to meaningful dialogue. You CANNOT reason with them and you CANNOT cause them to feel shame or compbuttion. Trolls do not feel bound by rules of courtesy or social responsibility. They are simply not playing with a full deck. It is futile to try to "cure" a troll of his obsession. Trolls are irrational and not accessible through any sane approach. Established posters may leave a newsgroup-message board because of troll-created conflicts, and lurkers (readers that do not post) may not want to expose themselves to abuse and therefore never speak up. Thus they unwisely allow the troll to violate their rights of free speech and expression. The Internet is a vital resource - and probably the last stand for free speech. Being antisocial, trolls hate this and try to subvert it. When you try to reason with a troll, he wins. When you curse at a troll, he wins. If he succeeds in angering you, he's succeeded. THE ONLY THING THE TROLL CAN'T HANDLE IS BEING IGNORED - having NO EFFECT on his intended targets! So the best way to deal with trolls is to IGNORE THEM and occasionally (and ONLY occasionally) remind others not to respond to them either. Hard to ignore? You can set up your computer to AUTOMATICALLY ignore the troll by using your KILLFILE. Just go to the offensive message, and bring your pointer to the "MESSAGE" tab near the top of your screen. Click, and a menu opens. Go to and click on "BLOCK SENDER." You will no longer see any of the sender's posts from that account. This is called "plonking" the troll. One spiteful technique used by trolls is to pretend to be a well-liked person. On most systems there is nothing to prevent header forgery - somebody using your name for an offensive message. If you react with anger, the troll wins. So if a troll impersonates you, simply post a reply breastled "That Wasn't Me" and type only this: "I did not write that message; it is a forgery." Most people will know it is not yours anyway due to its uncharacteristic contents. IT PAYS TO REPORT NET ABUSE. Many Internet service providers take a dim view of spamming, message flooding, and forgeries. Complaints can cause the troll to lose the account from which his offensive post or posts was made. To do this, you just right-click on the offending message, and go to the PROPERTIES tab. Under "DETAILS" you will find a list of the FULL HEADERS that identify the message, its route, and its sender. Highlight and copy ALL of this text. Address an email to the address copied full headers into this email. Then copy the full text of the offensive message, paste this into the email below the full headers, and send it. The more people that complain, the more likely it is that the troll's account will be cancelled. When trolls are ignored they often step up their attacks, desperately seeking the attention they crave. Their messages become more numerous and more offensive. The combination of IGNORING THEM and FILING COMPLAINTS is the ONLY way to combat them. The only effective method to defeat these deranged individuals is to: 1) REPORT THEIR ABUSE. 2) IGNORE them. 3) KILLFILE them.
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