Who's been called a troll at some point?

[JacksonPollocks]

Just wondering as many people I see claim to have been, is it that widespread?

There's some VERY funny stuff on this here thread that completely shows the wit and sharpness of mumsnet

I almost daren't say that I am laughing at some of the witty lyrics (but I am of course!) It definitely SHOULD go in Classics... because it IS a Classic (of its type).

I WAS a poster accused of being a Troll. I was called a pervert and a monster. I asked a delicate question and namechanged because I "know" people on here and don't necessarily want them knowing that I was "inept" in a certain area of childcare. I know this is an online "unreal" environment - I am not a sensitive, shrinking violet but, believe me, it felt like an assault being verbally abused online. I expended a lot of time physically and emotionally trying to defend myself. I don't know about any other mothers, but I live my life seeing a far more limited number of of people than I did pre-children. My opportunities to pour my heart out are restricted by having to sort my children's lives out on a day-to-day basis in all the their mundane detail. Even when I meet up with people that I have gelled with on a personal level, I rarely get the opportunity to discuss the dull stuff, or the awkward stuff, or the intimate stuff. Unfortunately I don't have any family nearby and rarely go out on nights that are wine-fuelled and carthartic and if I ever get the chance to have a wine-fuelled night I don't waste them on addressing the kind of issues that I feel that ought to be able to ask questions about on Mumsnet!

I KNOW some of the trolls are obvious. I grimaced throughout the Dizzymare stuff and from that thread alone know there are certain characteristics that define a "troll-ish" thread. I KNOW the feeling of satisfaction that comes from identifying that you have identified a troll and the obsessiveness that kicks in when you want a thread to be pulled and for your suspicions and your perceived cruellness to be vindicated.

I know that this post will be completely lost within all of the jokey-ness. But hey, just in case there is anyone out there still addressing the question posed by the OP, Yes, I have been called a troll. It felt shit.

I have a while ago and recently too

i had a totally heinus extended family situation happen that i didn't want anyone to know about a few years ago that involved sexual abuse - i think it was 5 or 6 years ago now.

i posted under a different name, and was called a troll and did not recieve one jot of help from mumsnet and i didn't feel able to post under my 'real' identity or even let slip who i was.

My thread disappeared, I assume it was deleted for trolling as I'd been called a journo and various other things. My op was naive but it was totally genuine.

I have not been called a troll under my usual posting name, nor under any namechanges for sensitive reasons.
But I did once namechange purely to start a slightly contentious thread - and was called a troll over that. It wasn't malicious trolling - it was meant to be humorous but some people thought I was a journo and others just thought "troll".

Custy - that's shit, so sorry that you got no help at all. :(

Custardo

Ria did you not get an explanation from MNHQ or did you not ask?

I didn't ask, was new to mn, but it disappeared within about 30 mins of the last comment, in fact I wrote a reply but when I hit post the thread was gone.

OMG, Trollvita is a work of epic genius. That HAS to go in classics. My day has been made.

i'm wondering when the troll-hunters who were expecting an apology from the people who said they were wrong are going to come and apologise to custy, cartblanche, ria et al. because they were wrong about those ones, and look at the damage that was done.

that's the point, i think. what is the fucking use of this place if someone in an unusually shit and vulnerable situation gets a kicking at what is likely to be the worst time of their lives? sorry, but to my mind it's worth treating a few emotional vampires with kid gloves to avoid that. sure, the people who get sucked in feel foolish, even manipulated (been there, felt that) but as i see it that's THEIR risk to take and not the right of some interfering busy-body who can't wait a few hours for HQ to investigate to blow the thread sky-high because of 'gut instinct'.

I wonder too Aitch but I also wonder whether they will ever realise that it isn't about being proven right or wrong about the status of a poster but that it is simply wrong to do it in the first place?

exactly. the risks are huge to the vulnerable person, not so much to the respondents, they should be the ones to take it on the chin.

someone on another thread, though, posted that she DID feel pleased to be right when she outed a troll, which i can totally see and (like you, iirc) absolutely applaud her for saying out loud. it is a thrill to be proved right, esp if one has taken a bit of a kicking for daring to speak out. but it doesn't make troll-hunting a valid sport, when the risk of damage is so great in the event that they are wrong.

yes I did.

excellent post by cartblanche.

Can't see an apology forthcoming tbh, but i think this needs to be a cultural mn movement, i think we must vow to take people to task and tell them to report or fuck off.

The lesson i learned was not to change my name to post anything. If i want sound advice i will get it becuase i am a regular poster and not becuase there is any benefit of the doubt.

Yes I have - twice.

However I was called a troll on another parenting website, as well as a paedo and a sicko when I asked a question about toilet training. I was truly baffled and I never went back!

agree, custy. the problem with the troll-hunters is that the MINUTE they raise their hands, however subtly they believe they are doing it, they hi-jack the thread and it's over for the OP, to all intents and purposes.

I have been called a troll, tbh still unsure why. It wasn't a long thread maybe a little inflammatory but the subject matter was true and I was genuinely upset by it. A few people defended me but the majority agreed I was a troll and gave me a good flaming.

I agree with you Custy, in theory, except that when I was new and relatively unknown, and I didn't have bonds with people on here, or a persona to protect, it was easy to say anything that showed I was vulnerable or less than capable or happy, or that sometimes I was capable of just not being very nice. Because we were all just word on a screen, including me. Anonymity is a wonderful thing.

But once I became established, and known as a person who is this, that, or the other, it became so much harder to admit weakness, or admit to shocking or embarrassing things, or ask for help, or to say 'I think this, and I don't give a shit if it is deemed unacceptable' - just as it is in real life.

Being an established part of the MN community where people recognise you, just like they recognise you if you sit in their office, or live in their village, is a double edged sword. You get the kinship and the laughs and the familiarity, but you lose the anonymity and the ability to say anything without shame or a feeling of inferiority. You start to want to have that veneer of respectability or capability, just like in RL, and you don't want your own friends to judge you or feel sorry for you. that's why people name change.

I often worry that when people cry 'Troll' too quickly they are alientating someone who is actually one of us.

Well said FellatioNelson. I often think there is something skewed about the way I want to namechange so often. I put it down to the fact that I am basically a shy person who doesn't want a "reputation" or a mumsnet "persona". My first feeling when I met someone in real life who was a mumsnetter and who openly asked me "who I was on Mumsnet?" ie. what my name was - was a feeling of complete nakedness and vulnerability! I didn't want to reveal but couldn't NOT say and then I felt "fuck" how am I going to post now when I haven't got the anonymity! Now to some people that might seem evidence of a deeply deceptive person who has something to hide. But to me being on Mumsnet provides a refuge of anonymity that feels quite liberating.

Now I know that some people use that refuge as a means to make merry hell with the truth and the world. So the extreme of this feeling is making up your own life in order to extract the MAXIMUM pathos and drama that you can ie. dizzymare. So Trolls exploit it to the max. I also use the anonymity to maybe be brave enough to voice opinions that I just don't get the chance to anymore - NOT because they are socially unnacceptable or offensive but just because they are opinions that I never get a chance to voice because my conversations NEVER GET THAT DEEP anymore. I have conversations that glance across the surface of who I am - real engagement is a rare beast!

These are the facts of my own experience of being called a troll.

I was alluding to something "intimate" and female
My name was "new" and "unfamiliar" to a hardcore cadre of mumsnetters
I posted on a Friday nite
I provided "detail" that was interpreted as "titillation"

What I really want to get across to those that called troll is the following:

I remember choosing my words very carefully in order to not be interpreted as being a perv. Unfortunately this led to a concensus that my language was "odd" and not the "words of a normal mother"

My name, being new and unfamiliar, led to the automatic assumption that everyone who uses Mumsnet wants to have a penfriend. They want to make online chums, be "known", assume an identity and be recognisable. I DON"T. I like online forums because, by their very nature, they are anonymous. I don't exploit this in order to live out a completely alternative existence but Christ it is nice to just come on here and jettison a bit of my everyday life and be taken at face value!

I am very wordy in my postings because I am usually trying to explain and articulate something that I haven't actually articulated before.

Now, some of the best "troll hunters" are obviously VERY different beasts to me. I remember being quite gobsmacked at the amount of stuff people reveal on here. I remember thinking, my God, these people have had meetups, they don't want the anonymity! I remember concluding that people obviously want different things out of this Online community thing and was quite intrigued by it. There was a Q and A ages ago on a thread where someone said something along the lines of "which of these objects have I NOT inserted into my body" and I think the options were a range of vegetables and battery-powered household items. I remember thinking, Wow! that person views this forum in a COMPLETELY different way than I do. People joined in and it turned into a very frank discussion of sexual peccadiloes and disastrous couplings. The conversations were amongst people who obviously "knew" each other in an online sense. This had sometimes developed into a "real" friendship where they physically met each other too.

Now I am not critical of this - all I am trying to say is that I don't use Mumsnet in the same way. I think the pity is that the whole troll issue spoils the interplay between our two types of usage. There is a suspicion of people who don't want to use the internet as an extension of societal norms when it comes to friendship. My VERY best friend of 20+ years won't join Facebook because it is the "work of the devil" and I accept that. She's admitted to posting on Mumsnet a few times but I have NO IDEA who she is. I just think that there might be a greater suspicion amongst people who can't understand this type of engagement with Mumsnet.

As per usual, this is a very wordy post. Perhaps unintelligible to people who have punchier convos on mumsnet. I know for a fact that the person(s) who know me on Mumsnet will spot me a mile-off because of the sludginess of my writing but hey ho. I am on the verge of highlighting and deleting this all but I think I'll hit "post" I know when I wake up tomorrow morning I will feel DREADFUL that I might have revealed too much and exposed myself but WTF eh?

carteblanche - excellent post, you may be wordy but you write well! From one frequent namechanger to another, you have articulated why I namechange frequently. I do sometimes have a pang of wanting to 'belong' though, but the pros of being anon outweigh the positives of being recognised on here. If I have a laugh with someone or post knowledgeably about something, people sometimes post 'are you a namechanger?' as I show knowledge of MN slang or whatever. It's not like I have a regular persona to change from! People can judge my posts on their own merits. I admit that I do like seeing regular names though, makes it feel homely

i also get what fellatio is talking about... but then i would actually speak to RL pals about stuff probably more than i would on here, just because i don't have a particular bunch of chums on here. [lone wolf emoticon] it's a very good point that fellatio made about the fact that we could in fact be fucking over 'one of our own' with this troll-hunting. if that's the sort of thing that matters to you... and it seems to have been a motivating factor in the troll-hunting, then think on.

i'm kind of most astonished at the otherwise lovely bibbity's line, though, that someone posting on here should almost expect to be troll-hunted, that that's part of the risk they take in posting, and certainly shouldn't let it worry them. i can see what she means, but why should it be that way? surely the person to take the risk in posting should be the respondent to the OP, for they are not the ones in trouble. that seemed to me to be the attitude felt by those most affected by this recent troll, the women who had posted most and felt the most kinship. it's interesting that they wouldstill prefer for people to be given the benefit of the doubt, i reckon.

indeed, and in fact to add to that - the very reason i name changed is becuse i absolutely could not talk to anyone in real life about it.