When is a troll not a troll?

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response [Wikipedia]

I picked up a troll on the original Flotsam and Jetsam after posting some random thoughts about Rankin-Bass Christmas specials last November. The post was picked up on a Rankin-Bass fan forum and someone took offence. Anonymous** told me I should be ashamed of myself; I more-or-less told them to cram it.

Then things got ugly.

Within a day, my blog posts were being filled with copy-and-paste obscenities and threatening language. I have a pretty good handle on expletives but this person was using combinations that had never occurred to me. For the first time in over five years since I’d been blogging, I was honestly concerned and upset. The troll was winning.

Anonymous has a Blogger profile which is attached to a couple of blogs. One of those blogs he boasts about all the pain he’s inflicted on other bloggers. There seems to be no reason for his anger.

When I checked the logs, though (just a basic free extremetracking account) realized the individual was far enough away not to pose an immediate threat I figured out to turn on comment moderation. Interestingly, this prompted an out-of-character post into the moderation pool by Anonymous, claiming that the copy-and-paste messages had not been from him but from “another anonymous poster” and almost begging me to leave the comments open. I double checked the logs and called bullshit. I did not post the moderated comment.

Unfortunately, Blogger only offers an all-or-nothing approach to comment moderation, something I had assumed was standard until I looked under the hood of WordPress. Within a month, my traffic started circling the drain as interaction plummeted.

Cautiously, just after New Year’s Day, I turned comment moderation off and within hours, there was a comment from Anonymous, claiming he was back, calling me names, and spouting ever more vitriol. I flipped the switch back and decided I would just have to live with crappy blog traffic. I didn’t think about it again until last weekend.

After attending WordCamp Victoria, I spent a lot of time considering what one presenter had said about moderating comments. I figured as it was now May, that maybe Anonymous would have moved on to tormenting someone else. I flipped the switch but also set the system to send an SMS message when a new comment was posted. I had just got off my morning bus on Thursday when my phone started pinging. By the time I got to my desk and logged in, there were 6 messages. I replied to a couple but Anonymous just kept copying and pasting the same words over and over.  I hoped he would get bored but after 14 messages I re-enabled comment moderation.

In the midst of the troll-storm, I reached out to friends on Twitter and Facebook for suggestions of how to deal with this person. One of my friends said, “That guy isn’t a troll — he’s a sociopath,” after which I took to calling him Mr. Sociopath instead of Anonymous. It made me feel better.

So did the troll win? He certainly succeeded in provoking an emotional response from me but this fight is not over.

When I got home later in the day, Mike was on the phone with Comcast customer relations. He’d taken on Mr. Sociopath in his own arena and later posted the results. This weekend, I will be putting together a package of everything I can find that refers to Mr. Sociopath and sending it to Comcast’s Legal Relations Team. We’ve also opened a file with the police department in his home town.

**In recent years, a group calling itself Anonymous and associated with 4chan has been in the news for its attacks on Scientology — attacks which moved out of cyberspace and into the real world. While Mr. Sociopath uses an icon in common with this group (the headless suit), I do not believe they are actually related.