I’ve been on a mini quest to try and get my Twitter account banned without doing anything strictly against the ToS and my first idea was to start messing with people who say something completely untrue, then refuse to back down under any circumstances. But that got me thinking, is it okay? I’m not outright insulting/cyber bullying them, more just arguing with them with a little bit of sarcasm.
Like with many weapons and tactics of manipulation, it depends on the circumstances. Using it for offense and defense are fairly different, for instance. It’s essentially a form of cyberbullying though, and one should certainly be aware of that if they choose to partake.
Frankly though, I personally think trolls trolling trolls is a time-honored tradition of the internet since at very least the early days of the first big chat rooms. This frankly is not yet a world where one can necessarily exist free from digital violence, so having some personal skills for identifying and dealing with trolling can be helpful. And there’s really only one way to get them.
If you’re gonna troll, that’s a good place to do it. Everyone else is. Except the small handful of poor journalists (or interns) who still have to monitor it for actual news anyway. Poor fools.