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Just something to read: Don't feed the trolls? It's not that simple
In many online circles, the most common piece of advice is “Don’t feed the troll(s),” which serves as both response to and apology for all kinds of online antagonism.
Under this logic, trolls are like great white sharks and their target’s reactions like chum: the more you throw, the more worked up the shark will get (and the more likely it is that other sharks will smell the blood in the water and come join the party). Stop throwing chum, and eventually the shark will lose interest and leave.
Initially, “Don’t feed the trolls” seems like a perfectly reasonable response to nasty online behavior. Despite its cursory appeal, however, the command raises more issues than it solves—and not just because it brings us right back to the problem of definitions.
First of all, “don’t feed the trolls” frames conversations about aggressive online behaviors solely in terms of the aggressor. Even if a person avoids feeding the trolls (and/or the person accused of trolling), he or she is still playing into the aggressor’s hands. It’s the aggressor’s game and the aggressor’s rules; the target (I prefer “target” over “victim,” since target establishes that a person has been singled out, but doesn’t imply helplessness) is little more than a plaything.
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