Deleted thread - OP had an uneasy feeling about DH?

[laurenandsophie]

Hi everyone
There was a thread about a DP who'd become secretive with his phone and was doing a work training thing and wore a suit and tie, and ran to get there 45 mins early ... the thread now has been deleted. Does anyone know what happened? I'm worried it was the OP's worst case scenario or things went really bad.

Oh, how pathetic with all these sock-puppeting, creative writing posts etc. I feel so silly for investing my emotions into such threads.There is another thread here on MN where things have changed from one to another in a flash.

I have also started to be suspicious of those parents who claim they are extremely busy in their daily life: children, cats, dogs, a stressful job, home duties, lazy husband but yet have time to write pages and pages on MN. I guess it is a creative writing?

The most sophisticated case of troll I ever saw was on Reddit. Some individual or group had come up with a... hmm... generic comment/message that contained a mix of emotion, content and outrage. Then the designers used, I suspect, an intelligent agent (AI) to automatically parse messages throughout Reddit, looking for user comments that had key words in them related to the generic message. The agent would select to 'reply' to these with the generic comment. The amount of deep and heated real comment this generated was amazing. It passed virtually undetected by real world users.

Ophelia - are you serious that some Creative Writing courses encourage people to troll on forums? Do you mind me asking where you get that info? I teach CW and am horrified at that. I'd never encourage it. It's pathetic, disrespectful of other people, gives CW a really bad name and wastes time that would be better spent reading and developing serious work. I'm actually quite shocked to hear this suggested as though it were common knowledge.

Is there a reason why we cannot edit our posts? In case someone knows so I don't have to search MN? Thank you. I have used a Netmums a few times and editing a post isn't a problem.

notagiraffe, maybe the trolls experiment it on us, the readers. A good story should be believable and I guess, for some people, it is on of the ways to find out.

If I ever discovered one of my students doing that, they'd never do it again.

When I taught in a secondary school I used to do careers type interviews. One year 8 boy listed "trolling MN" as one of his hobbies. Not the first time that I heard a teenage boy admit to coming on here

I was amused and told some colleagues over lunch, two of them admitted to being MN trolls.

It is very common - even though I never spot them

usual we could do a rehash of Moldies -

If a troll comes on here and tells some made-up amusing anecdote, it's fairly harmless and if it gives people a laugh then no harm done. But when they tell tales of relationship problems which other people can relate to and get emotionally involved in trying to help, that's just downright weird and really quite unpleasant.

Do they do it to get people to say nice things to them, get some sympathy (even if it is for a situation that doesn't exist) or do they get a kick out of other people recalling and sharing their own traumas?

They're very odd people either way.

But how do you identify a troll if it seems genuine? And How does mumsnet verify and confirm it ?
(Not a troll looking for pointers, genuinely interested)

Also, every post I read now I'm thinking hmmm this could be bullshit, should I respond, whereas before I took them at face value, which is sad for the people who genuinely need help

I am guessing they use IP addresses to identify banned posters and also look for discrepancies in other posts - so if they post saying they've just been dumped by their boyfriend, then under a new name claim that their husband is cheating on them?

My DH has left me for our goldfish. Help me :(

Agree, Notagiraffe, I am astonished that a Creative writing teacher would encourage people to do that - It's certainly not widespread practice.
(It also would be an absolute waste of time to do so but hey)

Most trolls are twats - I think casting aspersions over writers (and indeed teenagers with 'is it school holidays' etc) without knowing its them, is unfair.

Is this the same for the person who was thinking of moving back to wales after her mil took her son everyday? Had my doubts about that one

Philoslothy - did your colleagues know what trolling means? Not lurking. They admitted to inventing stories to waste people's time and wind people up? How odd. And they were teachers?
I'm stunned. I always imagine trolls are men in their forties who still live with their mum, at a computer at 2pm in greying Y-fronts, having just got up, or students/pupils who are bored and want a laugh.
When I do spot trolls it's usually because the writing is so formulaically bad. So God help them if they are doing a CW degree!

Birdy no one has given any evidence that CW teachers do that. I wonder if it was a guess. Hope so. It's about the worst idea on how to improve your writing I've come across.

There are always tell tale signs. Asking please go gently as I'm new to this is one. Writing a huge long op then only returning sporadically to give short answers to specific questions while ignoring pages of 'omg! Wtf!' and refusing to engage.

Being non mn profile ie 'Hello, I'm a young lad' or 'hi, I'm a fourteen year old girl'.

Astonishing developments inadequately explained.

I'm always surprised how many people go for this stuff.

I know a couple of people who have admitted to reguarly trolling MN and other sites. They're both women and create rape or DV threads. They like the attention and feeling like people care about them.

I find that really unethical/ammoral - but worse than that, it's a really poor way of improving your writing.

birdy - well, quite. Unforgivably poor advice. Ew.

My general theory is 'real time updates' = troll.

Most people don't update forums (where it's usually there first post) in the midst of real-life crisises (sp?)

In the middle of a row about your DHs supposed infidelity are you really going to nip to the loo to update? Not likely.

Practical suggestions are often ignored. The op doesn't particularly engage with other posters, rather just a drip drip drip of information.

For me; and I know many will disagree but it's all the above - frequent updates but with limited info.

And MNetters becoming overly involved. The 'couldn't sleep thinking of you OP, any update OP? How are you? If you don't feel able to come back to the thread can you PM one of us so we know you're okay?' Etc etc. And if one post or the posters name becomes an 'in' joke or theme - so it becomes 'Rachel's' (for example) team, cheerleaders etc with everyone saying 'another cheerleader for Rachel, waving my pom poms' etc.

The Olivers army troll thread was cringy in how people seemed to make it part of their lives 'Olivers army reporting for duty!' etc.

The thing is, not counting the school boys (pranksterism is part and parcel of that age group), many adult trolls are as messed-up as the circumstances of the OPs they purport to be.

They may be lying, but there is a truth that is there all the same, and which betrays them: they are in a dysfunctional situation with no way out, and they can offload on those who believe them, and momentarily they feel better, because they are in control.

Trolling itself is a disguised call for help.