To ask how you spot a Mumsnet troll?

[tiredandunoriginal]

two troll posts tonight! i’ve not been on MN that long and have only seen a couple. i was wondering how you can tell if a mumsnetter is a troll, if there are any giveaways? as well as any stories that stick in your head?

bored in the bath and could do with a laugh

I used to over-invest in various longrunning troll sagas, providing hopefully helpful feedback, support and advice on their various parking/neighbour/step-child threads, thinking they must be true because why on earth would anyone make this stuff up and waste the time and goodwill of MN-ers (especially considering once you've been trolled you're likely to be more reluctant to help genuine posters). Three trolls in a row convinced me to be more careful.

And now, I wish I didn't, but I see/suspect trolls everywhere. Including you, OP. I am really sorry but you're ticking a few boxes - new poster, bored in the bath, asking how we spot trolls... So you can be a better troll?

The last troll post I posted on had lied about having a dead husband/father to her kids which I thought was really beyond the pale. For those of us who suffer the pain of death of a loved one, it makes you question everything when people make this stuff up for their own entertainment.

please don't be a troll, OP.

OTOH. I dp love a really good and entertaining immediately obvious troll thread for the delicious MN replies.

People who post about an embarrassing event and invite others to share their stories are often trolls. A long running saga thread that takes very frequent updates is often suspicious. On the other hand, some troll threads are of the "wind them up and let them go" variety, where they post something outrageous or controversial and then never come back. When you've been on here a few months you'll notice certain themes and specific types of situation keep cropping up in threads that end up deleted.

There was a great one about a poster’s MIL who made the entire family visit a relative’s grave every week, and the OP was pregnant and the MIL was talking about the baby joining these grave visits because it was important baby grew up knowing its (dead) cousin or uncle or whichever relative it was.

It was like the start of a Sophie Hannah novel.

I think I miss most of them and you can never know for sure but, but a few things stick in my mind:

• someone asking about how many pieces of underwear they should have in their wardrobe and what number the average woman had because they needed to buy it all new. Cue posters describing all their underwear.

• about 3 different threads from a teenage girl who was pregnant. All saying the same thing. Hoping that was a troll tbh as poor kid if not.

• someone drip feeding about their daughter being pregnant and waiting for ages then going 'going to wait for a test' then a day later 'she's gone to sleep, will buy a test soon' and just stringing everyone along.

When people dripfeed a lot.

Twins op. There's always twins

@agonyauntie2020 i’m not a troll haha but i don’t know how i’d prove that. i’m also not a new poster, i changed my username because i had written outing things about my MIL under a previous name.

and never answer any questions

I am yet to see a twin post! i’ve only seen the two this evening which sparked this conversation as i genuinely am in the bath (didn’t sleep last night, majorly regret it, relaxing while DP puts 4 month old to bed )

@tiredandunoriginal

"I've not been on mumsnet that long"

vs

"I"m also not a new poster, I changed my username because..."

(I know these aren't mutually exclusive but still, things troll often say are one of these two things). I'm not saying you are, but perhaps I'm answering your question of "how can you tell?" It's not always easy but your topic and these two statements ring a bell for those of us who are of the fool me once mindset.

There has been a sad decline in the quality of trolling here in recent years. oh there really has. IMO it’s because the site is much bigger now, so it’s a lot harder to get everyone on board, iyswim.

Also, trolls often played the long game. A lot were here for months or even years before being outed.

And this is controversial but it used to be that trolls only ended up being found out when someone called them out on the actual thread or started a thread about them. People would report but MN didn’t do anything about them for a long time, so users felt compelled to voice their suspicions, and they were almost always right.

Now you’re more likely to be banned for troll hunting than trolling, although I do note that MN often take the threads down with “we’re taking a look behind the scenes,” which I’m guessing means they think it’s a troll but can’t definitively prove it so they’ll take the thread down anyway.

WhatOnEarth67 was my old username. previous thread about MIL: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3976510-His-family-hate-me-I-can-t-do-this

I don’t agree that talking about warning signs gives trolls an easier way to troll. MN isn’t the only place where there are trolls, it’s not hard to find out how to if you want to.

sorry, meant to tag @agonyauntie2020

When a story goes wayyyyy too fast.

In the space of an hour they'll have had a row with the neighbours, had the police round, installed CCTV, gone to court and had a triumphant glass of wine.

@Pinkyyy

When a story goes wayyyyy too fast.

In the space of an hour they'll have had a row with the neighbours, had the police round, installed CCTV, gone to court and had a triumphant glass of wine.

Got a job offer for a six-figure salary on a Sunday morning...

There seems to have been a lot of teenage sex threads lately. I have been wondering about them.

Posting from the back of an ambulance while being blue lighted to a&e urgently is usually suspect as if you're that bloody ill you're in the ambulance charging through the rush hour traffic to save your life you're not fit enough to get your phone out get on the net and post on here!

As for memorable trolls, I remember the one fleeing from abroad as well, she was in Japan IIRC and posters came together to get her a house, money, clothes for her kids, it played out over a couple of weeks, And if I remember rightly it was the poster’s own mother who outed her to one of the posters who was on board with helping.

There was a troll (and for the life of me I can’t remember her name) who was going through a divorce, then found out she was pregnant with twins, communicating regularly with other mums who had lost a baby, then she sent a message to another poster saying that she was rushed to hospital with a bleed, and then that she’d lost the babies. Came back posting in the night completely incoherent compared to how she wrote before, and saying that she was broken and didn’t want to live. People were offering help money, emotional support, some of the posters who had had stillborns offered her their time and their help. The threads went on for pages and pages and over the course of a few days. but she’d spent weeks building her persona.

Then someone started another thread saying that although she knew she might be flamed she felt she should warn people that they can’t always be sure that someone is who they say they are and for posters to be careful. Because the site was much smaller then everyone knew who she was referring to, and while some came on to give support, a lot of others said they’d been suspicious. The threads were taken down, and then the poster started claiming through others that she’d been told to provide all her personal details as proof she wasn’t a troll.

She kept in touch with a couple of posters, and then it turned out she’d trolled over on one of the baby loss forums, complete with pictures of her dead babies which turned out had been lifted from the internet when another post searched them. So she was officially confirmed as a troll then.

Nicknacky
Rightly or wrongly, I tend to take the approach of reply in good faith if someone seeks advice and report/ignore if someone is clearly trying to encourage people to share personal stories.
The furry pervs seem to always want other posters to share stories about their chosen topic.

A classic rule of thumb is :

A genuine poster will back away and become overwhelmed and concerned about being outed if a thread takes on a life of its own.

A troll will carry it on over multiple threads with multiple "new incidents" and a full cast of characters.

For me, I find troll threads usually involve complex and upsetting situations which have posters begging for updates and offering their best advice. But then their situation is somehow resolved within a week when usually it would take months or years to resolve in real life. Like they're trying out the plot of a novel.

The other giveaway would be posts that encourage sharing stories about bodily functions, sex, usually some sad perv.

You can just tell

Don't be tempted to accuse them on the thread. Usually if I suspect a troll and want to see how it pans out I reply as if I have believed it (as you never know, it could be true) and wait and see. It's not nice to be accused of being a troll on a thread, I have been with the result that now I don't post anything personal on here (or anywhere). MNHQ take a dim view of it.

Oxymoron username and incredibly rude attitude

Well I don't think you can spot a troll.

I made a thread not long ago and some people just couldn't believe what I was telling them- which is really frustrating.

I mean, I guess some obvious stuff would be someone posting inappropriate pictures on Mumsnet- saw this a few years ago.

But other than that, its not easy. Some peoples lives are unbelievable. That doesn't mean it's not true.

I am also new to Mumsnet, only a couple of months (not a troll lol) and have never been on any other forums, etc and although I've heard of the term troll I wouldn't know how to spot them. This thread is great! So far I think 2 of the threads I was commenting on have been closed due to them being reported and I've just felt so stupid being sucked in to someone's rubbish. Why do people do it?