To ask why do people engage with obvious trolls?

[GhostFromTheOtherSide]

I’m not talking people who start an emotive thread which could be real and which might relate to something in the posters’ own lives, but posters who are very obviously trolls.

e.g. That troll who keeps posting about the queen being a lizard and alien life and conspiracies etc, people engage with them and keep the conversation going. If people just didn’t engage they would disappear even if MN hadn’t got round to deleting their threads yet.

Post yesterday from the OP who claimed she had been offered an executive position abroad and her dh was being an arsehole to not want to go. Even if the thread had started out as semi plausible, as it went on it became so blatantly obvious that it was a troll, in fact I suspect the OP wanted to be recognised as a troll, but people were still engaging with her as if the thread was real.

So why?

Sometimes people here are really naive and don’t spot trolls, however obvious they seem to be. I’m always amazed that on obvious begging threads, there are still people insisting that the op is genuine, even after mnhq have taken the thread down.

The lizard queen poster is a troll?! 😮

😂😂😂

I might be engaging with one right now but if so, I've engaged with him twice and therefore given him the only two orgasms he will ever experience in his life. Might be enough to keep him off some other forum for the evening, so I consider it a form of civic service.

I was thinking the same thing on sunday morning when the 8 or 9 spam threads appeared.
Just report then move on. Trolls thrive on attention so dont give them any.

You assume you're right that troll hunters are right. There's just as often not.

Don’t get me started on the ones who say “I would rather give money to a troll than see someone who is genuine go without.”

This is precisely why begging trolls come here.

I didn't realise that the poster who wanted to take her children with her to a top job abroad was a troll!
I wondered where that thread went.

Sometimes it’s unsure.

But e.g. the Lizz are queen poster is 100% a troll. There is absolutely no doubt about that, they flood threads with troll posts, they essentially take over threads with them. And yet people still engage.

From the OP it could have been seen to be genuine, but the more people disagreed with her the more outrageous she got. Saying things like “she would be going regardless,” that he could keep his kid, that she’d be taking the kids away from him whether he liked it or not and that he was in a minimum wage so ha ha wouldn’t be able to afford to fight it anyway.

It was like troll top trumps.

But the thing is that if posters at least read the OP’s posts instead of just the OP then most would have got it and not kept posting.

Oh that one was obvious. Characters were totally 2D. What I couldn't understand was the point. Were they trying to say something about men who move for high paying jobs? And if so, what?

I found it odd that on the thread about not surviving on £65,000 a year where the OP was obviously not coming back people were still commenting.

I absolutely love the troll and made up threads! They are my favourite!!! I completely love seeing what will unfold, what will be said next, what will be added to the story. My absolute favourite Mumsnet post of the last 3 years was the recent Russian spy one, with the poster claiming her husband was a gangster! Hillarious! I honestly hadn't laughed so much in a long time.

My mum died last year and the year has been tough, so sometimes it's just really fun to come on here and have a good laugh!! I honestly hope the trolls and made up posts don't ever disappear. For me, they are the best!! 👍🤣🤣

People can't help it. There's something in the water that makes people feel the need to engage.....🤣
(Seriously that particular troll has some severe mental health issues and I hope they get some actual help)

I'm really bad at spotting them 😬

I've posted quite a few genuine threads that Mumsnet have taken down because people thought I made them up or was trolling! While there are loads of trolls and made up threads, sometimes people do actually have lives and beliefs that other people think can't possibly be true! 😉🤣 ! My life seems to be particularly unbelievable for some reason! :)

I was once accused of being a troll because I posted a link to a London flat I was thinking of buying (on Property) and people assumed it was a pisstake because it was so small 😭

Oh well, at least we know MN isn't London-centric!

I usually post....'Don't feed the troll' so others can see that it is in fact, someone trolling. I made a post up about the most amusing ones, and how they seem to be lacking imagination now, and what are the best ones people have heard........but it got taken down 😂😂 I think they thought I was trolling myself. Sometimes they are the best ones though, the obvious ones, I like the imagination. Obviously they get something out of it, and I don't feed into it, but love to read the response sometimes to see how far they're willing to take it.

It's amazing how people would actually believe some of the stories I read on here or just engage for fun.

I don't understand what motivates the trolls though? Is there usually an underlying mental health problem?

Begging threads: I can't believe anybody would send money to any random stranger.

I agree. I always think the same when people argue with people on Facebook eg racists. Three posts on Facebook isn’t going to convince 54 year old Steve that foreigners haven’t stolen our jobs, don’t get free houses and aren’t trying to cancel Christmas. Just keep scrolling!

I'm always amazed at how much variation there is when it comes to people's abilities to spot a troll. Some people are much, much more likely to spot them than others.

I'm often very surprised at the credulity of a lot of posters when they're responding to posts that seem (to me anyway) very obviously faked. It doesn't actually seem to be linked to intelligence, either - I often see posters who are are clearly perfectly intelligent women being taken in. Is it just connected to the way different people think, I wonder? Are some people just more inclined to question details while others are more inclined to see the bigger picture and engage on an emotional level? Are some people just naturally investigative while others are naturally responsive? I don't know.

I see the same thing on Facebook too - perfectly intelligent people sharing things that are obviously fake, like warnings that claim to be from a UK police force but are actually full of American terms that the British police don't use, or anecdotes that clearly don't stand up to any scrutiny.

In particular, I'm always really surprised when people don't notice when the poster is clearly someone with a fetish and start happily engaging with complete sincerity with a post like 'Do you ever remember being smacked by your teacher at school when you were a child and did they lift your skirt up to do it?'

Because they want to talk nonsense and find it fun? They want to escape the mundane for a while and literally talk crap??

Because it's what's called... light hearted?

This always surprises me as well. Does really piss me off when troll posts keep floating to the top of AIBU because people feed them. Like the prats who sometimes spend a happy hour resurrecting 20 posts from 2013 with advice for mums of now-ten-year-old newborns etc. These type of posts just need to be allowed to sink into obscurity.

Oh I liked the one of the queen being a lizard, I had heard of that conspiracy theory but had never ever seen a “believer”. It was highly entertaining, are you sure that was a troll or was it just some deranged gullible person?