Blog Trolling

When this comment was posted in response to one of my posts, I found it somewhat enigmatic:

Technicalities aside, the idea of three Persons in fellowship with one another certainly does create a pronounced monotheism in the mind. I do appreciate, though, your call to end the name-calling that this issue engenders. God bless.

My post was specifically about the ”fundamentalist” label, and had little to do with the doctrine of the Trinity, so I wasn’t entirely sure what the author was getting at.  A quick click on his username, however, took me to a page all about questions that are allegedly “devastating” to the prevailing Christology of the orthodox Christianity.  I’m seeing more and more of these pop out of the woodwork lately, and watching the general reaction to them has been almost as interesting as the blogs themselves.

Recently, there’s been a lot of reaction to a new blog whose authors claim to be former ministers who have since turned to atheism, some of whom are still ministering.  I won’t hotlink to it, for reasons I’ll mention shortly, but it’s at debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com if you’d like to cut n’ paste that into your browser.  Regardless, as you look at some of these new blogs, you find that they are little more than surface-level half-hearted attacks at orthodox Christianity that have been reasonably discussed and dealt with over, and over, and over, and over again.  One wonders if there’s a special television station that shows “Sesame Street” and “Blues Clues” for atheists.  “Can you find the difference in the two accounts of Paul’s encounter with Jesus?  What’s that?  A clue??  Oh boy!”

Regardless, one asks the question, “Why do they want to debunk Christianity anyway?”  Now there are some atheists out there who are active in the “free-thought” movement who sincerely believe they are freeing peoples minds, but I don’t believe that these folks are that deep in their intentions.  No, I believe these surface-level attacks that are popping out of the woodwork are just another lovely example of “blog trolling.”

The tradition of “trolling” is hardly new, and one could trace it back to the very dawn of man.  The serpent in the Garden was likely the first troll.  Michael Servetus was most certainly a troll.  The modern definition, however, applies specifically to the internet being born on Usenet newsgroups.  Basically, an individual (or “troll”) would post a message on a newsgroup like alt.fan.feminism about how a woman’s place is in the kitchen, and anxiously wait for a reaction and the game IS ON!  The term “trolling” is a bit of wordplay, referring to the fishing practise of passively dragging a baited line behind your boat, and waiting for a bite, in addition to the obvious reference to Shrek’s near kinsman.  Originally, trolling was just the hobby of individuals with sadly empty lives who enjoyed the attention.  It was a simple joy for the emotionally needy.

Today, however, trolling means so much more.  Sure, there’s still the simple pastime of Joe Jerkweed posting “The Stones suck!” on a Mick Jagger fansite, which is a tradition with a long, dignified history that can be traced back to prehistoric times, but is much more familiar within the context of a broken scrawl on a public washroom stall.  Trolling today isn’t just a hobby – it can quickly become a career.  With keyword-advertising programs like Google adsense paying substantial sums for niche-markets driven by search and content keywords, there is money to be made.  How much money you make, however, is very much hinged on two key, but related, connecting points. 

Firstly is the the obvious one: traffic.  You need to have people actually visiting your site and clicking on things.  Hopefully, somewhere in their browsing, they’ll take a peek at one of your sponsors and you make a fifty cents or more.  Acquiring internet traffic is challenging today, because most browsing depends on keyword searching.  If I want to know about euthanasia method suitable for hamsters, I might look up “hamster euthanasia” or “stumpy-tailed gerbil death” or some other strange string.  In fact, now that I’ve posted that, who knows?  I might end up being a prominent search result for that phrase (which is… er… disturbing), thereby attracting traffic to my site.

Competing for a prominent listing with Google or other search engines (but lets face it, Google owns keyword searching at the moment) is a tough game to play.  Google’s ranking algorithm still is the best of all the indexing search engines (as opposed to directory engines such as Yahoo), partially due to the fact that their algorithm depends on the second of the two hinge-factors I mentioned.  A web site about “domestic rodent mercy-killing” can have lots of content, well maintained pages, and all the freebies you can eat, but it won’t make a lick of difference if nobody considers the site of interest.  As a blogger and site admin, I will often link to sites I consider reasonably good sources of information.  I may, for example, link to the University of Iowa’s official animal research guidelines for euthanizing rodents as I’m discussing the matter, or I may just link the word “hamster” to the Wikipedia entry for definition purposes.  Now both of those sites have become more closely associated with those search strings, since I’ve contextually linked to them.  Getting people to link to your site as authoritative is no easy task, but there is another way.

What if I could have people link to my site as being authoritatively wrong?  What if people linked to my site because they were using me as an example of someone who was stark, raving mad?  Timecube.com for example receives links from just about every online news organization at one point or another, but generally it’s in the context of what happens when someone eats too many mothballs in one sitting.  Unfortunately, it requires just as much work to be considered authoritatively wrong on a subject as it does to be authoritatively right.  Unless, that is, I can get people to link to my site in some other way.

Enter the blog troller.  Most comment sections on blogs allow you to hotlink back to your own website, and the more controversial and contrary your comments, the more likely someone will be to check out your blog.  If I were to go to, say, Baruchito’s Homecage, which is the cute little blog written from a hamster’s perspective, and posted a comment talking about the best way to kill a hamster, I would probably get a very negative response – but it would definitely be a response (Especially since poor Baruchito, the page’s namesake, passed away in January).  With a little time, dedication, and a lot of vicious insensitivity, I would soon have hamster lovers and haters alike bashing away at my page to either rebuke or support me.  Meanwhile, I’m off nurturing another blog on euthanizing rabbits.  While I’m getting that project moving along, I’m checking back on my hamster site often enough to post and comment, and ensure the fire is burning nice and hot.

With a little free time, and a lot of attitude, I can have a large chunk of traffic heading to my blog.  Like poured concrete, I allow the discussion to lay the framework to be indexed by search engines, and cross-linked by other sites for a couple of months.  Now that the keyword foundation has set, and my page and comments have been indexed and cached by Google, all I need to do now is slap up a few Adsense spots and watch the dollars multiply.  Amazingly, I’m now making money thanks to the reaction of the very people I offended the most.

So, as I come across blogs with anonymous authors, and purely confrontational content with little or no depth to any of their posts, I am reminded of the spam I get on a daily basis.  Instead of preying on greed or low self-esteem, this new generation of spammer is preying on one’s sense of honour, or in the case of anti-Christian blog-trolling, the desire to defend the faith.  Since I have far better things to do that deal with every blog that pops out of the woodwork, and would only further support the dissemination of their wonky ideas (as well as increase their income), I’m going to be much more selective with whom I respond to these days.  I would advise my siblings to be equally cautious.

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