Trolls

[Throwingshade]

I know there was a thread about this just a couple of weeks, but just want to remind us all to think before investing time and emotion - and most importantly personal information and experiences - on threads in Relationships. Especially if it's something triggering for you.

This board is being infiltrated by trolls at the moment.

If the OP is over egged, if the OP is too 'bad' to be true, if it reads like a soap opera with convenient updates every couple of hours to keep people entertained, then it's likely not true!

Oh no, if you want men posting check out the 'Sex' topic.

Seems to be full of 'Richard123' types with helpful advice about 'us men' and pervs who bump threads wanting updates on people's sex lives. It's pretty bleurgh tbh.

And it's great that HQ want us to 'report, report, report' but I did just that on a thread the other day where no less than three brand new male posters of the 'Richard123' type all joined that day and congregated on the same thread - about sex, naturally - and seemed to be competing to see who could be the most vile about how they described women. No other posts, nothing from them since. What did I get from HQ? 'We see no reason to be suspicious'.

Of course, it was a massive co-incidence. Cos it's not like we have history with F4J or other MRA sites trolling us and bragging about it, do we?

My trolldar is utterly crap. I was completely taken in by the station poo troll and the one that I think turned out to be the Boxroom troll.

Saying that, I still think that if MNHQ have reason to believe it's a troll then they should zap the thread.

It's better to err on the side of caution imo. Sure you get the odd genuine poster who is wrongly branded a troll but it's better to delete those and have only a couple of people hurt then it is to let the trolls run free and have loads more people hurt.

If someone is genuine and has been branded a troll then they can get in touch with HQ off board.

When I was wrongly accused of being a troll and had my thread zapped and my account suspended, I simply e-mailed HQ and sent some proof that I was who I was claiming to be and what I was posting about was true. They got back to me quickly, apologised and reinstated my account within half an hour.

That said, sending proof would only be possible if you could prove your story is true iyswim.

Newyear Ah so they clearly make mistakes then?! Maybe itś at the discression and down to the judgment of the MN Mod then....I´m guessing there´s a lot of mods on such a busy thread. What a cool job tho, just reading MN all day lol!

Symphony Station poo troll?? LMFAO... OMG WTF?

I meant on such a busy site

IMO the relationships topic should have a warning that people shouldn't over invest. Because people are over invested on relationships, on account of the fact that most of them are projecting their own lives on to the OP.

And there is an incredibly unhealthy balance of need to know and need to make the op do as they say. So if someone doesn't come back then the thread is bumped for updates, if the op doesn't conform to what they're being told then they're met with increasingly aggressive responses. Both of which are prime ground for trolling...

I don't assume every man is a troll because there are many men on here who give good advice and just join in with chats the same as the women on here do. Unfortunately, more often than not, the men who post on relationships as a first post with an obvious agenda are going to be trolls, mostly.

It is sad for the men on here, but then trolls are sad for all of us, but especially the genuine person with a real problem to discuss. Trolls make cynics of us all.

Why do people over invest? Assuming someone is genuine, surely it's up to them whether or not they want to update?

IMO because a lot of people have a rescuer complex and want to be the one who made the difference.

Over the years I've been astounded at the levels that people have claimed they want to go to, to e.g. Offer a (first time) poster a bed for the night - in the middle of the night, to give out their phone number, and I even saw one once where a poster was being spied on by her DH and a poster posted that she wished she could hire a private investigator to find out where the op lived so she could go and take her away from the situation.

There are some genuine people out there who have helped others, however there are far more who end up making it all about them even though the emphasis seems to be on the poster...

I don't know why they do it NewYear. It makes me wince a bit to see a highly suspicious thread crowded with well meaning platitudes from a whole bunch of posters. It seems like we are reading totally different threads. People need to question things more in order to protect themselves, but maybe they don't care if it's real or not. They don't have to do all their questioning on the site, just in their heads would do.

wannBe yes exactly, I´ve noticed this too on this board. That´s why I´m backing off now cos I can see how easily one can get sucked in. Before the whole Hazz debacle I hadn´t even heard about trolls on MN so it never even crossed my mind that it would be false.

But then I´m not a longtimer here and we have to remember there´s lots of others fairly new and not clued up just like me. So it´s newbies that are more likely to feed a troll thread. So I do agree the board should carry a warning.

If people just comment on threads it might be a troll, I used to dismiss these people as being cynical, impatient and scathing. But I for one had no idea trolling was such a popular pastime on MN

It´s a horrible thought that people just come on here and piss well meaning people around for sport. Sad bastards

What happened to the hazz thread in the end? I didn't see the deletion message.

I joined MN after a painful divorce, not seeking advice or sympathy, but to observe the boards, & try to fathom out what or how to proceed in life, after divorce. I never found the answer to my quest, but have acknowledged that we are all different in our thoughts & actions in life. I consider myself a feminist supporter, equality for all women, in everything.
The advice in general, from the genuine caring MN members is refreshing to read, considering the wide & vast subjects they cover, & I hope my little contributions to posts is accepted as an equal, rather than, ignore him, he's a man . There does seem to be a lot of anger on the boards towards male posters of late.

You could be right about the newbies Moomin.

I frequently come across threads in relationships with almost no regular posters, but a whole phalanx of names I don't recognise are replying. It's usually a suspect thread too, but it feels a bit patronising to tell all those posters that they are being taken for a ride.

Moomin you will be a longtimer one day, I can tell.

I hate those pages of posts saying, "I hope you're alright OP", what's the point?

But then I do wonder if it's comforting for a genuine poster with a problem to come back and see the evidence that lots of people are interested, so I'm not sure.

The slightly aggressive tone used occasionally is horrible though, as if the OP owes the reader something. They don't.

That comment was tongue in cheek as the pp was making an inflamatory comment to get a response. A little too subtle, I think. I had to read it at least twice. grin

Ahhhhhh

flatbellyfella, you're a regular sensible poster, one of us in fact.

Moomin the poo troll was someone at a train station, possibly Victoria, who had supposedly had a poo accident and was posting increasingly frantic messages from the public loo. One mumsnetter got her Dsis to take a change of clothes, making her late back from lunch, and there was no one there. Lots of us posted on it and it was horrible for the poor woman who was trying to find this person who was in distress. This was quite a few years ago now iirc.

OMG well like people have said previously, why the feck would somebody's first thought be to post on MN?? God they must've been having a right laugh at mumsnetters with that one!

The thing is that stupid posters who fall for the poo troll type posts are almost as responsible for the fact that people start those kinds of threads in the first place.

I mean picture the scene. You're at the station and you've had an accident and you're thus stuck in a toilet because you're too embarrassed to come out and be seen. So what do you do? A, log into MN, do a namechange because you don't want to be outed, or even better, start a new account because you've never posted there before and you think that possibly someone might ... Um, what exactly?

And then someone rings their sister and says "oh, sister darling, could you be a love, there's this complete stranger I've never met, I don't know her name and had never heard of her before, but she's posting on this parenting site I go on that she's stuck in a toilet on Victoria station. Could you take her some spare clothes?" And sister says "oh yes, of course. Poor woman, I'll pop down there right now, work will just have to understand." .

Actually on reflection I wonder if that poster made up the scenario of having sent her sister down there to prove it was a troll without having to actually cry troll on the thread. Because surely no-one is that gullible.

There is an interesting question of ethics though as the condition know as Münchhausen by proxy now has a new category - (who knew!)
"Münchhausen by internet"
and allowing them to continue to post is enabling them to perpetuate acts which are essentially self harming.
Since being "educated" on this I'm a lot - a whole lot - less happy about the whole "harmless but someone might benefit from the advice" approach.

I did say my trolldar was crap

People are that gullible. If there weren't gullible people in the world then no one would fall for online/telephone scams or dodgy links in emails or send money to men in Nigeria masquerading as US soldiers.

flatbelly

It's purely because most of the 'male' posters turn out to be fake.