Jan 18th 2011, 4:25:36
Dragonlance, they're not trying to achieve anything. They're literally exactly the same as the worst kind of internet troll. Hell, I think the term "troll" applies perfectly to what they do.
The entire appeal behind trolling is that it makes one feel powerful. Basically, if you can predict another person's response, you can make the claim (either to yourself or to someone else) that you "want" the person to react in the manner you expect them to. Then, when you provoke them, and they react in the manner you predicted, you suddenly have the feeling of having caused that to happen. In other words, you've taken "control" of their life -- and the more powerful that reaction, the more powerful the troll feels.
To take control of the life of another individual is the ultimate form of power.
What they fail to realize, however, is that you can't actually control something unless you can make them do whatever you want. If I can make a person sing, do gymnastics, be happy, be sad... and anything else I can think of -- that's when I actually have control. As soon as you realize that you want them to do something and can't make them, you're robbed of that feeling.
This is why it's so convenient for this group to be so ideologically pure. They can delude themselves into thinking that the reaction they're getting is the only one they could want. As a result, they never have to face the deflating fact that they can't actually make the person do anything else and, therefore, don't actually control that person.
In the case of internet trolls, this same phenomenon will usually take the form of "I'm helping him see the truth" or some such bullfluff.
There's no goal, they just want to feel powerful. But they have to lie to themselves to get that feeling, which ultimately only proves how powerless they are.
-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.