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Internet Trolls · Why We Do What We Do

0:03
You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we do
0:16
what we do. I am your antagonistic host, Abraham, and I am
0:20
your anonymous host shame, which I just I think undid by not anonymity just
0:24
then, But it doesn't matter. I guess that was called an oxymorn Ah.
0:31
Yes, I love language. Indeed, welcome to our podcast Where Psychology
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Podcast. If you're joining us for the first time, we tackle all the
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psychology things. We break them down through a scientific lens and we try to
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understand why we do those things. Or sometimes we talk about history or animals
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and all kinds of fun stuff. But if you're joining us and it is
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on the day that this publishes, which just just happens to be November first,
0:54
I mean it was scheduled that way, so it's not that much of
0:56
a coincidence. But I would like to wish you all a happy National Author's
1:00
Day. Hey, that's that's for me, Happy happy Meetday. It doesn't
1:04
specify what type of author, so it could be both of us since we
1:07
both authored things. That's a good point we do. Yeah, it's National
1:11
Cook for your Pet's Day, which sounds so wholesome. It does. It's
1:14
also World Vegan Day, which I feel like, I feel like there's multiple
1:18
of those throughout the year, and I am here for it. Yeah,
1:21
I fully support that. That feels nice. It's All Saints Day as well,
1:26
which you know, for I guess people who like Boondock Saints, that's
1:29
probably what it is. Yeah. It is Extra Mile Day, so you
1:32
finish that marathon and just you have one more mile to go. Sorry,
1:34
yeah, twenty seven point two. It's also National Brush Day, so make
1:40
sure you brush your teeth. This one I think is a little contentious,
1:42
but I actually stand by it, which is National Calzone Day. I have
1:46
always liked cal zones, may largely because it's you know, when you eat
1:49
pizza, you tend to like roll it into like a sort of taco shape
1:53
anyway, and the cal zones just like prepackaged taco shape pizza. So it's
1:57
good. I mean there's some people that were like, I will never I
2:00
will never fold my pizza, so, like, you know, you're gonna
2:02
you're to upset that that demographic in our listeners. Sorry, everyone, but
2:07
you know I I support it too. I like colzones. Caw zones are
2:09
great. It's national Cinnamon Day, which is perfect for November. I feel
2:14
like this whole week is dedicated to a few things, and one of those
2:17
is that is Medical Surgical Nurses Week. So thank you surgical nurses. We
2:22
appreciate you, and yes to you, we do. It's also National fig
2:27
Week, which is a lot of fun for people to debate whether figs are
2:30
vegan or not. So on World Vegan Day, please uh debate that.
2:36
Yeah, that is a that is a fun one. You'd think that they
2:38
are, but actually they basically only only live you know what. Let's save
2:42
this for like a mini or something. But I know that it has to
2:44
do with bugs, that they're necessary for them. It is relevant to Shane.
2:50
It is you all nurses and associates a week. Yes, thank you
2:53
for picking me up off the floor when I passed out after my procedure recently.
2:58
Yeah, they were so one. So that was based on the fact
3:00
that we're talking about urology. Maybe I don't know, Yeah, or not,
3:04
send your guesses in that's fine. Yeah, there you go comment that's
3:07
even more post somewhere. Do that. Yeah, it's American Diabetes Month because
3:13
November also celebrates months like other months, so it should be more maybe awareness.
3:16
I feel like, also it makes sense that it's just American Diabetes Month
3:20
and not International Diabetes Month. Right, yeah, almost an American invention.
3:24
Not quite hot like so close. It is also Epilepsy Awareness Month, very
3:30
important one. I've definitely known several people with epilepsy and it is a that
3:36
is a a tough medical condition to contend with. So yes, we support
3:39
you, Yes absolutely. It's also aviation History Month, so all you Amelia
3:45
Earhart fanatics, this is the month to celebrate. Indeed, also again in
3:50
relation to Shane sort of is manate Awareness Month. Not that Shane is a
3:53
manatee, but he lives near the manatees. I was going to go I
3:57
was going to say that, I was okay, no, but manity are
4:00
wonderful and if you ever get a chance to see them, this is the
4:01
month to start seeing them. I live in an area where about half an
4:05
hour west of me, there's a spring that they all come and they hang
4:10
out in. So you can see hundreds of manities kind of just like hanging
4:13
out with their babies and stuff, and it's a beautiful thing. I love
4:15
it. That sounds amazing and I would love to see that and now all
4:18
of you are well prepared for if you go out to trivia tonight and one
4:21
of the questions happens to be about what day, week or month it is
4:25
as far as holidays, you are fully loaded. And if that's all you
4:29
wanted out of this episode, then congratulations. But if you'd like to stick
4:31
around, we are going to try and keep you involved here by talking about
4:36
cal zones, by talking about fast cars, by talking about weather, all
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the maybe talking about politics something like that. Just kidding, We're not doing
4:45
any of that. I'm trying to bait you a little bit because we're talking
4:48
about trolls. Ah, Yes, our favorite anonymous Internet users, these people
4:55
that piss us off and then run away and then we have to deal with
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the aftermath of that emotional right. Indeed, and actually I had a bit
5:01
of an interest, so I kind of I subverted my own expectations here.
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But so let's jump into that. So first we'll take a step back.
5:09
In June twenty twenty three, as part of the Investing in America Tour,
5:14
as part of a press release statement, thing President Joe Biden stated that high
5:18
speed internet is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. And pledged to
5:23
build infrastructure to have high speed internet to all homes in the United States by
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twenty thirty. That sounds so wholesome. Now, a significant amount of human
5:31
discourse now takes place via online platforms such as text messages, email, and
5:36
social media. So maybe internet is not good for everyone. So yeah,
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Internet's here is a place where discourse takes place a lot. And I don't
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think that anyone really predicted with complete accuracy how conversations would change when they moved
5:54
online and were separated from in person interactions that we really evolved to have with
6:00
one another. Right. While many predicted that the boon of worldwide Internet connection
6:04
would spur unprecedented levels of knowledge gains and improvements in our discourse, with some
6:10
going so far as to predict that this wealth of knowledge could make it impossible
6:13
for anyone to lie, which is just so naive. That's cute. That
6:18
is adorably wrong, adorably wrong. Others predicted the Internet would be fat and
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that quickly flopped, which also adorably wrong. Yes, and still few imagined
6:30
a dark future where streamlined and simplified communication would lead to decreased social well being.
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Most accurate of all three of those definitely. So, yeah, everyone
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was a little bit right, except the person who thought line would be impossible.
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They were not. They were not right. The yen had a yang.
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Along with the expansiveness of knowledge and the ability to communicate quickly at these
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tremendous distances at tremendous speeds, there grew a bizarre and dangerous group of ministers
7:00
of chaos, and that is Internet trolls. Ah. Yes, So it's
7:04
worth unpacking what a troll is in the context of this episode. So trolls
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are people who make comments deliberately to antagonize, offend, or cause trouble.
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And this also refers to activities that are meant to stifle others, often for
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a financial gain. We're gonna probably spend more time talking about the former or
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not so much the latter. Yeah, exactly, mostly that although and you
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hear troll and you know, there's a great joke in that movie Free Guy
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where he says he's like, trolls are real, and you might be thinking
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of the commonly associated legendary Scandinavian cryptids that live under bridges, or are these
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giants that sort of live subtraneanly and come out or whatever I mean they torment
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passers by. The term troll as it has been applied to Internet behavior seems
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to have sprung into existence as early as nineteen ninety two, possibly even well
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before that. At most likely originates from a sort of fisherman's slang or fisherman's
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term called trolling, which referred to the practice of dragging a line behind a
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boat with some amount of bait on it to try and catch something. See
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what would bite as it's dragging that, And so you can imagine, like,
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we'll talk about trolling as we go, but that's pretty much exactly what
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is happening metaphorically speaking online, although the coincidental reference to the smelly, stupid,
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unlovable cryptids is still an apt one for the obnoxious behavior of trolls one
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hundred percent. Interneturals essentially throughout provocative posts to try to lure somebody into reacting
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to them, even though they might do it for a joke. What they
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do is they try to, like ultimately, try to get a reaction out
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of people, and usually only the troll is amused by the reaction from others.
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If you really want to see a lot of examples on this Reddit is
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a really great place for that. If you see people who are downvoted to
8:52
hell, that's because they are people who have probably you know, commented in
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some troll faction and they get a lot of reactions to it, and they're
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probably laughing about how much they get downloaded. Yeah, YouTube comments are notoriously
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a place where trolls like to live. Often social media posts and groups and
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all that people will infiltrate and do their trolling. Those are common places.
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You'll find troll where there's blood in the water, You'll find sharks where there's
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feces in the water, it's because a troll has been there. Yeah,
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absolutely, they love doing that sort of thing. Now, before social media,
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trolls mostly made their homes and sort of online forums and chat rooms,
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sometimes only in the few comments sections, if and where those existed. And
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I was kind of thinking about this, like, I don't know if you
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ever used this, do you remember like AOL Messenger and like MSN Messenger and
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like those sorts of things where all you needed was a username and you could
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like reach out to actually anyone if you have their username, you can message
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them directly. They could still block you, right, But that was like
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you'd have this like little web client that it almost looked like if you took
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like Facebook Chat and made it its own separate entity on your screen. It
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was like that basically. Yeah, and you just anyone could just show up
10:05
all of a sudden in your feed unless you had blocked them, And yeah,
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that was a wild time in the Internet. And then like the primary
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way that you'd interact with people besides those messengers is you'd go to these forums
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where people would just type back and forth to each other. Mm hmmm.
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Yes. For clarity's sake, I imagine that most of our listeners probably fall
10:22
in that demographic where they know what an AOL chat room is. Fair enough,
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that's a good point. But for those folks to have it, I
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mean, like I've tried to explain what aim is to my daughter and she's
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just like, you mean, text messaging, and I was like, kind
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of but not really like that, like it's similar, but also like you
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could put in a way message that was your favorite death cap for CUTI lyric,
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sure, and you could make somebody guess whether or not it was about
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them or not, you know, And that was the invention of vague book,
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which is really fun. So yeah, a different time, for sure.
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But because of that, it did definitely facilitate the ability to sort of
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pop into areas where you could post antagonistic things quickly get in and out out
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of there, or you could linger around and just kind of ruffle people up
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for a while. Uh huh. That is the thing that people did definitely
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experience. I had with a few places online. So me too, me
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too, for sure. Yeah, for the folks that we're talking about,
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it's quote unquote fun for them right right. This deliberately antagonistic behavior is not
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new to human beings, Like it didn't show up in the Internet. People
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were not, like you know, always nice and kind to each other right
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before the Internet showed up. So it's not al Gore's fault that this antagonistic
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behavior has showed up. But you know, the inventor of the Internet,
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if you all didn't know that, people have likely been finding ways and reasons
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to get a rise out of one another for as long as language has been
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around. And we're going to share a couple examples of that too. Yeah,
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And I mean, obviously you can imagine we don't have record of all
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of the things people have ever done throughout history to kind of prank one another
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and push each other's buttons. But a couple of sort of standout more trolley
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like things that we can talk about. It took different forms before you had
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Internet. Sometimes trolls would harass wealthy businessmen into falling for stupid pranks where they'd
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actually meet with them face to face and they'd sort of trick them into doing
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something. In the nineteen fifties, to friends Jim Coyle and Mause Sharp would
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go into businesses and they would tape record as they started with these sort of
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small transactions that were legitimate. It seemed like legitimate transactions, and they gradually
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sort of expanded them into absurdity. So for example, they went into a
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print shop and they were going to order some print for this shop to do,
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and they kept on expanding it until they got to the point where they
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were asking the proprietor to print on the roof of the house before the owner
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was so fed up with them that he kicked them out. And also one
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time they nearly convinced the Navy seal to rob a bank. I think it
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was meant to be with them. By just examples of ways that they sort
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of were trolling, just trying to get people to it was like pranks,
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but they were just trying to get people to do stupid things, right,
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and they were kind of upping the ante to also it sounds like to like
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irritate them. Yeah, like they would probably stop once they realized this is
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the threshold. Like, you know, oh, I can get you to
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print on the side of a house, but on a roof that is too
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much. That's kind of funny though to think about, like you know,
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to put that order in. I mean that in itself is funny. It's
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obviously not funny that like people were upset about that or is a waste of
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time, you know, I mean that's on the other side of that,
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it's a business owner. It's probably pretty frustrating. Yeah. Now, sometimes
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trolls were making performative satire that catches a lot of attention. So Alan Abel
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was able to get on the Today Show as a representative of a fake organization
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called the Society for Indecency to Make It Animals, which had the goal of
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clothing every animal planet. Yeah, it's a pretty good one. And like
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they had flyers like pictures of horses wearing shorts, horse shorts and like that
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sort of thing. Yeah, and this one was it was deliberately meant to
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make fun of this sort of I don't know, I guess this this culture
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around thing is like decency and propriety and you know that sort of thing.
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And I do get that. Yeah, some trolls try to draw attention to
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causes that they care about by pretending to be the enemy of that cause.
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So, for example, Joe Orton authored pieces to create platforms in support of
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LGBT issues in the nineteen sixties, obviously just called gay back then, they
14:16
didn't have the whole acronym. He belonged to that community, and he would
14:18
write plays and pieces and books and things of that nature that were meant to
14:22
elevate voices of that community. And then after he did that, under just
14:28
dozens of pseudonyms, he would write inflammatory criticisms of his own work that he
14:33
would submit to major outlets as someone else he would write to, like a
14:35
newspaper or an editor or even you know, radio show, and he just
14:39
criticized the life out of his own work. And it's presumably what he was
14:45
doing was by creating a sort of buzz around this because of the criticism and
14:50
controversy he was drumming up attention for people to then go check it out by
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his books. He is play et cetera. Right, you know, he
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sort of believed in his issue, but was making it. You know,
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he was sort of trolling people to get them to sort of pay attention to
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what he was talking about. You know that we're going to talk about kind
15:05
of trolls for good later, but as we kind of explore all this and
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kind of talk about this, it is worth mentioning that there is another kind
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of troll, and that is advertisers. Okay, we're back. Let's talk
15:22
about how to be and how not to be a troll. So this is
15:26
sort of looking out for trolling behavior online because we've described, as we said,
15:31
the point of a troll, or the activity of a troll is almost
15:35
certainly and under most circumstances, to simply antagonize people. And as we've also
15:41
alluded to, that can be somewhat complex, which we'll get into that.
15:43
But today trolls are recognizable by their largely bad faith interactions with people online,
15:50
and so'll you can recognize trolling because it includes, but is not limited to,
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this whole list of things we're going to read through this. Again,
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this is a incomplete list of trolling behaviors. There is responding to people in
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a purely critical and negative way, asking the same questions several times, using
16:07
slightly different language, and ignoring other people while just posting continuously about whatever they're
16:14
posting about and just not reacting to other people's reactions to them. Right,
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You might also find that trolls will use dismissive and condescending language. They'll use
16:22
logical fallacies in their argument, or you'll see sometimes like what about isms within
16:26
that too that have nothing to shore with the arguments. Absolutely, you'll see
16:30
posting and using insulting and inflammatory language, and you'll also see folks ignoring FAQs
16:36
and asking questions about the information in the faus, which just seems like just
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super irritable, like irritating on my end. Yeah, yeah, that is
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definitely the point. They'll also often post random, unrelated gifts or gifts depending
16:48
on what side of that arguing you're on, and memes. They'll also post
16:52
off topic remarks in specific like topic specific spaces, so someone's talking about like
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Harry Potter, they may comment and be posting all about one piece or something.
17:03
You know, let's go it's popular right now. They'll also bring back
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so again going back to the antagonistic thing. They might like go through an
17:12
old conversation and try and resurrect and bring back old previously controversial topics that were
17:18
in that forum conversation or message thread to sort of re establish the controversy that
17:26
was once there, right right. Absolutely, they'll also change tactics and misdirect
17:30
when confronted, so like when they get called out or something like that,
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they will change right away to something else that will just be equalities irritating,
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and they'll try to get attention by any means possible. And that's what we
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talked about is like you know, name calling, which name calling is pretty
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blunt, but a lot of times they'll be a little bit more subtle and
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they'll just try to like like kind of poke in prod until somebody reacts a
17:51
certain way. Yeah, Feigning ignorance is a very common one. Like someone
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might post about their favorite pizza topping and then they'll say what's pizza hu and
18:00
post other non sequiturs like just trying to get a rise, Well, what's
18:03
your definition of pizza? Yeah? Exactly. So many and maybe most trolls
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know that they're being trolls, but actually anyone can be a troll and sometimes
18:14
not even recognize their behavior as being trolling. I'll say for myself, like
18:18
and reading through these and understanding this, I have been trolly at points in
18:22
my life. I definitely try to avoid ever doing this, but you can
18:26
sort of imagine how given the circumstance where you see someone who you're upset about
18:30
their message, or you don't like what they're saying, or you just don't
18:33
like this group of people maybe personally, and then sort of trying to be
18:37
like, I'm just gonna I'm wanna ruffle some feathers in here. I'm gonna
18:40
go in and I'm just gonna try and stir the pot because I don't like
18:44
what's happening over here. Sure, or you know, I have some personal
18:47
vendetta against someone who's in this group or something of that nature, and so
18:49
you can kind of imagine how what sort of leads to that kind of behavior.
18:55
I really try to not do this ever, and I think I'm very
18:57
successful because it's really it's pretty easy to not be a troll. Yeah,
19:00
but I think at points in my life when I was you know, a
19:03
little more hot headed. I was more likely to troll people if I was
19:07
pissed off by them for some imagined or perceived or even real offense. Yeah,
19:11
I mean I'm the same way, Like I try, I really try
19:15
to avoid I tend to be a pretty sarcastic person as a general rule,
19:18
Like that's just like like when anybody ever talks to me, like I very
19:22
rarely take anything seriously, and I am pretty sarcastic. But what I have
19:26
learned is like on the Internet, where like people are more anonymous or you
19:30
can kind of like be a keyboard warrior, Like I have found that my
19:33
emotional response will be to be trolly to somebody who's just being a jerk,
19:37
Like I will respond to them and try to get them pissed off because they're
19:40
pissing other people off. But what I have found is like, and it
19:41
rarely makes me feel any better about it, Like it causes me stress because
19:45
then I'm like, now I've actively caught myself into a conflict that I did
19:49
not want to be in in the first place. So what I've learned is
19:52
like trolling for me never feels good in that space, Like it's like kind
19:56
of like welcoming conflict. And I'm not like a conference person on that front,
20:02
you know, Yeah, exactly, I completely agree. Yeah, it's
20:04
like it feels gross, it feels wrong, it feels unpleasant. It's not
20:08
not a place I generally find myself wanting to be. And I actually have
20:11
a hard time imagining most people walk away from that feeling really good about it,
20:15
except in and where they find a community of people who reward that kind
20:19
of behavior. And we will talk a little bit more about that in a
20:23
bit. Yes, one of the important things to understand here is just the
20:26
key ingredient and trolling. The primary motive in a lot of these is to
20:32
disrupt conversation, right, and so we've sort of talked about sort of how
20:34
to recognize trolling, but so we'll elaborate that a little bit more so to
20:37
disrupt conversation you, as we mentioned, a very common tactic is to just
20:42
post off topic messages to do in several areas. Oftentimes they'll just copypaste the
20:47
same message in different places because it doesn't matter what the topic is supposed to
20:51
be. They'll just be posting the same thing. But it's knowing it's likely
20:55
to get someone to call them out. And again, the whole point then
20:57
is they get a reaction from it, and then the happy like they they're
21:02
just towing the bait behind the boat, trying to get people to buy at
21:04
the bait, and whatever someone bites, then it's a victory for them.
21:08
Right, going back to the fishermen description of what trolling is, right,
21:11
Yeah, exactly when they do bite, that's exactly what they're trying to do.
21:15
They may also appear to be posting a question in earnest but actually using
21:18
it as a jumping off point to get people engaged and then foment out.
21:22
This might be posting questions to a video about the science of climate change,
21:26
appearing to engage in thoughtful inquiry and when it was really meant to confuse,
21:30
obuscate, and break down the conversation into meaningless sidebars and rants. So it
21:34
might start off as like seeming genuine and really turn into kind of like snowball.
21:40
You go, you can see it kind of happen. When it does,
21:44
you go, oh, okay, I see where you're going. Where
21:45
this conversation that you kind of have to stop it right there. We're gonna
21:48
head, We're gonna ahead and end this conversation at this moment, you know,
21:51
right, Yeah, you also see, just as we mentioned, they
21:55
just go in guns blazing. It's just throw in flammatory, insulting statements and
21:59
language around and particularly to a group of supporting people, such as if you
22:03
were to go post to a bunch of Trump supporters about how much Trump sucks,
22:07
or go post to a bunch of Biden supporters how much Biden sucks,
22:10
or do both of those things. Because again, a troll often has no
22:12
allegiance, they're just trying to start the pot. That would be a thing
22:15
that they often do is just find those spaces where they can antagonize people very
22:19
easily because they're already primed for it. And you'll see some folks will use
22:23
multiple logins with different names to support one of the other's posts, or even
22:27
work with other trolls to do this. I saw this happen with a kid
22:32
that I grew up with who recently got arrested for a hate crime, and
22:36
he was posting under different kind of neo Nazi names that he had created and
22:41
was like supporting and liking his stuff under like Jewish Coalition posts and stuff like
22:45
that. Right, you could see it was very clearly him supporting himself in
22:49
this space. Yeah, it was really frustrating to watch, and then Facebook
22:52
wouldn't do anything about it. The whole idea is it sort of makes the
22:56
trolls posts look more credible because it's getting support from another person's posting, which
23:02
happens to be the same person. They might actually recruit someone different, but
23:06
they can also very easily do it themselves. And your example is a really
23:08
good one, right, And I think like the other thing too, is
23:11
if they were like a troll technique might be to someone who goes and posts
23:15
about like climate change denial, then they log in with a different account and
23:18
they post as a person who supports climate change, saying like, oh,
23:22
you know, you're making some really good arguments. I'm not sure how to
23:25
even argue against that. Yeah, exactly, it looks like discourse is happening,
23:29
but it's not. They're just you know, being pot stirers, as
23:33
they say, right. And another thing that they might do is they might
23:34
go and just try and pit two communities against each other. They might already
23:37
have some kind of beef between each other, but they also might just try
23:41
and create drama just for the sake of creating drama, and I've definitely known
23:45
some people who like to do that right. And then in online gaming communities,
23:48
people will troll others by joining groups and turning against their team, sabotaging
23:52
missions, or just running around hurling insults at other players. My brother was
23:56
this person for a long time. My dad refuses to play video games with
24:00
my brother because of this exact thing. Like my dad used to have this
24:03
like NASCAR racing game and my brother would be like, yeah, I'll race
24:06
with you, and then they would start the race and my brother would immediately
24:08
turn around and go the wrong way and wreck all the cars on the track,
24:11
and my dad was like, I'm not playing anymore. Like it was
24:12
my dad, my brother would absolutely do that because it would get my dad
24:15
all riled up. I definitely ran into a lot of these I'm dating myself
24:19
right now, but back when, like the early Halo games were coming out
24:22
with our online player modes, because the first one didn't have that, but
24:26
like two and three, I think everything after one did. And I'd play
24:30
in these these online forums and there was a lot of people who like their
24:36
only job was to go in and just make the game miserable for other people,
24:38
and I always really enjoyed the game, So I found that very frustrating.
24:41
So I was never troll on games like that, right right, I
24:45
might often not be as good as the other players, but I was not
24:48
doing it on purpose. I just wasn't as good as they were. I
24:51
just wasn't as good. That's all, exactly, Okay. If you are
24:56
current losing some of those strategies, you are being a troll. Talk to
24:59
your doctor about making better life choices. Also, get a doctor and probably
25:03
a therapist, and probably a life and probably like a partner who likes you.
25:08
Yeah, maybe some friends, yeah, exactly, some some real friends
25:12
who are like you see face to face and you share values with. Maybe
25:17
what do they say? Now, what do the kids say, go touch
25:19
grass? Go do that? Like, go touch grass, that'll make you
25:22
feel better? Is that what they say? That's like a thing now,
25:25
Like it's basically instead of saying like go outside, like, they just say
25:27
go touch grass. Okay, And that's probably outdated by now, like because
25:32
I am thirty seven years old, so like, I have no idea what
25:34
kids say anymore. I still think that people say no cap Yeah, if
25:37
they came up with that yesterday as outdated. Yeah, so it's not clear
25:41
to you by now. Trolling almost necessitates hiding behind anonymity, obscating or outright
25:47
lying about your identity and just kind of jumping in and stirring the pot.
25:51
And look, and a lot of times trolls will just jump in, stir
25:52
the pot and then leave and then let people kind of argue in the comments
25:56
and just kind of watch that unfold, like they'll maybe only post one or
25:59
two comments and ever come back to that. This ability to wear the screen
26:03
and a user name as a mask, a concealant, if you will,
26:07
allows them to run around sort of stirring up controversy and riling people up,
26:11
and they and doing so, also avoid any kind of responsibility or adverse consequences
26:15
for their actions. And that's kind of the whole point, is the fact
26:18
that they get to get away with it, if you will, and not
26:23
ever have to face any real issues, although there have in cases where they
26:27
were facing real issues, which will come up in a moment here. Right.
26:32
So trolls sometimes confusingly fight in earnest to protect their trolling behavior by citing
26:37
free speech and will retreat to online cesspools that specifically welcome trols. Where trolls
26:41
will they might brag about their exploits and even compete with one another to see
26:45
how quickly they can get banned or how long they control community before getting banned.
26:49
So like sometimes they'll just go just to kind of get that badge of
26:52
honor of being banned from certain forums or from certain platforms. Yeah, and
26:56
when trolls are banned from spaces, again going back to this free speech thing,
27:02
they might protest that their speeches being violated, their free speeches being abused,
27:07
and they don't get to have free speech. But this of course ignores
27:10
the fact that moderators have the freedom and the right to expel people from their
27:15
spaces, and they often have specific policies around this. So if you're saying
27:18
that you have the right to take away the right of moderators to do this,
27:22
that would actually be a violation of their free speech. Also, by
27:26
the way, we talked about this, and I think in our freedom episode,
27:30
the idea of free speech is something that is guaranteed by the United States
27:34
government with respect to freedom from prosecution by the government and law enforcement for engaging
27:41
in free speech activities. So it's a nonsense claim to use in an Internet
27:47
forum that is usually privately run by some group of people who get to make
27:51
whatever decisions they want about how that platform operates. So you do not have
27:56
protected speech everywhere in the United States. You only have it with respect to
28:00
government things, and even then it is not one protected because like hate speech
28:07
is not considered protected by free speech laws. So exactly as a thing you
28:11
have a right to offend to some degree, you don't have a right to
28:14
incite riots. You don't have a right to like hate speech and stuff like
28:17
that. So like people forget that, like freedom of speech is still limited.
28:21
Yeah, and there's like libel and slander laws that prevent you from destroying
28:23
people's lives by saying whatever you want to and those are there for a good
28:27
reason. So I think the whole notion of trying to claim free speech is
28:33
a by itself kind of a trolley thing to do. Yeah, So anyway,
28:37
Yeah, we should probably pause for a moment and let the advertisers have
28:41
their way with our episode and and hopefully they're gentle, we'll be right back
28:52
and we're back. So we just talked about free speech. Advertisers had their
28:56
free speech on our platform. So you know, well, sure we gave
29:00
them that good grace and we assume that they probably promoted something nice, but
29:03
probably didn't. But this idea of free speech, and this is kind of
29:06
what we want to talk about. Where this goes wrong, especially in the
29:07
trolling world, you might start to see that this can quickly escalate from simply
29:11
being provocative into a full on crime. So, for instance, in Washington
29:15
State, someone posted to Craigslist that they were getting rid of all of their
29:18
possessions and people were welcome to come to their home and take whatever they wanted.
29:22
But the person did not actually live in that home and did not speak
29:26
for the owner, and the house ended up getting involuntarily looted by a ton
29:30
of people that is not protected by free speech. Yes, also extraordinarily illegal,
29:36
like, yes, you don't just get to do that sort of thing,
29:38
right, And this is one of those instances were the person who did
29:41
this ended up getting caught by police because again, was this moved into the
29:45
territory of criminal behavior very rapidly. Another type is cyberbolene. This is trolling
29:52
that involves harassing someone online, often in the form of posting insulting or defamatory
29:57
things about them. It can also extend into some pretty like I would consider
30:03
egregious violations by posting the private information such as their address, email, credit
30:08
cards, names that they might use, these names of people that they care
30:12
about, like a lot of like very nasty stuff that should not be made
30:18
publicly available. Docting is not protected by free speech. Yeah, I mean
30:22
that's essentially like that's important to know, but something that we do want to
30:26
unpack because we've been kind of talking about the dark side of trolling and like
30:30
what that looks like. It's definitely worth unpacking what we are describing as the
30:34
kind hearted troll. So the other side of trolling, it's not all disruption,
30:40
and not all disruption is necessarily bad. Sometimes on the Internet people will
30:42
call themselves disruptors for good. Yeah, I've heard that a couple of times.
30:47
Disruption is not always a bad thing. So consider a troll infiltrating a
30:49
hate group online like truth Social Parlor or Twitter or x or whatever, and
30:55
they go on to sow some discord and chaos to keep the group occupied with
30:59
fighting with each other or chasing down troll conversations rather than successfully organizing to do
31:03
horrible things like violently try to overthrow the government in an attempt to install an
31:07
autocracy. That's not so bad and arguably a good thing. Obviously, that
31:11
depends on which side you're on, but for me, that sounds like it's
31:12
pretty good. Yeah, the side of nonviolence is probably the right side to
31:17
beyond generally speaking, so I like that side, especially on World Vegan Day.
31:21
Right, also, consider a troll as a political dissident in an authoritarian
31:25
country, and that someone is then able to sort of provoke powerful people into
31:30
revealing their own corruption or their bigotry in a way that ultimately leads to some
31:34
loss of power for these harmful leaders. It's like the only way that this
31:38
person can safely defect from their authoritarian government is to sort of troll them online
31:45
and get them to incriminate themselves. And again, that would be I think
31:51
something that we'd probably considered generally in the positive direction. Right. One of
31:55
my favorite things there right now is I see there's this guy that's like linked
31:57
to Trump's, like some of his trials and stuff, And every time he
32:01
goes to do a public kind of announcement to the media or some kind of
32:05
media scram or something like that. There's this protester that shows up behind him
32:08
with signs. It just keeps blowing a whistle every time he tries to talk,
32:14
Like, every time he tries to talk, she just blows this whistle
32:15
really loud, and he gets so annoyed on camera, and it just kind
32:20
of exposes the kind of person he is every single time. It's just one
32:23
of my favorite things that I've ever seen. So that's that's pretty good.
32:27
It's some trolley disruptor for good. Yeah, it's very trolly, Like there's
32:30
she's there's no comments, it's just literally blowing whistle. A literal whistle blower,
32:35
a literal whistleblower. Now, consider a troll that, by getting people
32:38
distracted from their conversation, lowers the temperature of a group of groups who tend
32:43
to kind of whip themselves up into a frenzy in their little echo chambers.
32:46
But by being distracted, they lose focus of their primary rhetorical targets. So
32:51
essentially they kind of lose steam because they're focused on other things. That troll
32:54
kind of helps dissipate that frenzy exactly. Another one that is maybe a little
33:00
dated at this point is Anonymous, which was or maybe still is a group
33:05
of people who used some trolling strategies to expose some of the dark underbellies of
33:09
groups like Scientology. They actually that was one of their primary targets where they
33:14
would expose some of the things that they were doing in there. Some the
33:17
things that they ended up getting in trouble for the Scientologist did, or at
33:21
least it was brought to light and then faced a lot of public scrutiny at
33:23
the very least. Anonymous also antagonized the Westboro Baptist Church, and they actually
33:29
went after a number of like overtly homophobic groups and organizations. Yeah, and
33:34
they also trolled conspiracy theorists who picketed the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, as
33:39
well as like other people who were out there doing conspiracy things that were actually
33:44
causing harm to people. Right. So, at one in person protest,
33:46
someone wearing an Anonymous associated guy Fox mask was carrying a sign that said the
33:52
corrupt fear us, the honest support us, which you know, probably pissed
33:55
off a lot of people at that protest. Yeah. So and you can
33:59
sort of see than where they were trying to come from there. I wouldn't
34:01
say that Anonymous was a wholly good group and all of that, but I
34:06
think they did take on sort of causes that were ultimately I think things that
34:12
people saw as being sort of good. Sure, at least of the direction
34:15
that they went. There are people who are legitimately trying to engage whose behavior
34:20
may look like trolley. So this is actually again another side of there's sort
34:23
of some amount of innocence here for people who just aren't really familiar with how
34:28
to use the internet. They might be engaging or trying to engage while asking
34:32
and doing a lot of things that look antagonistics, such as asking questions to
34:36
which the answer seems very obvious to most and might even be readily available if
34:42
you know where to look, so obviously. You thinking about this, you
34:45
might consider someone who's like maybe older coming to mind, and they just don't
34:49
really get how to use a site and how to find the faques, how
34:52
to appropriately comment on things. But also you have people who are just maybe
34:57
very sheltered for some reason, they just didn't have an opportunity need to engage
35:00
with those and then they get to for the first time. You might have
35:02
people who speak a different language, who don't really understand what they're doing and
35:06
they're trying to communicate and there maybe again seem like they're being trolly. And
35:09
of course there are people who have some kind of diagnosis intellectual or mental disability
35:15
or something who don't really know how to engage with it, or even just
35:19
someone who, no matter how savvy you are, you might go into a
35:22
platform you're just not familiar with and you might do a bunch of dumb things
35:25
that you don't know that you're doing because you just aren't familiar with it yet.
35:29
And so those things can kind of look like trolling when they kind of
35:32
aren't being trolling, and there's like actual legitimate innocence there if you will just
35:37
naivety, right, So a thing to consider there and not go after those
35:40
people when that's you know, they're not actually engaging in bad faith, they
35:45
just don't know how to do it yet. I think maybe a hallmark or
35:49
an indicator that somebody is trolling is like a continued feigning of naivity. True,
35:53
Like I think it's like it's not like one question in that person going
35:55
okay, thank you, and that's it, right. That's not usually somebody
35:59
who's troll. Usually somebody who's trolling will continue to ask deeper and deeper questions
36:02
that are like seemingly naive but really just kind of egging you on. There's
36:07
also something to be said to about the difference between trolling and maybe like satire,
36:13
satire being a type of trolling that is supposed to kind of take aim
36:16
at something. And I think this is where we have to talk about a
36:20
modest proposal, or a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people from
36:24
being a burden to their parents or country and for making them beneficial to the
36:29
public. If you're not familiar with this bit of work, a modest proposal,
36:32
it's essentially just a pamphlet that tells people that, like, when you're
36:37
starving, you can eat your kids, you can sell them for food,
36:39
you can eat your kids. And it was really written as a satire to
36:44
the heartlessness of wealthy people toward poor people at this time. If you're not
36:47
familiar with it, you should go read it because there's a really great example
36:50
of like very straight based satire, so for people that it upsets, though
36:53
it could be considered trolling or might be targeted as trolling because it is trying
36:58
to antagonize, intentionally antagonize somebody, So by definition it is trolling, but
37:02
it is worth kind of unpacking satire versus trolling and what that looks like too.
37:07
Yeah, and a similar one we've talked about kind of at great length.
37:10
But what we'll do again is the whole birds aren't real conspiracy, which
37:15
was my favorite. Yeah, it was just just making fun of conspiracy theories.
37:20
It was making one of those completely ridiculous, easily falsifiable, and nevertheless
37:24
pushing for it as if it were a real conspiracy to sort of show the
37:28
silliness of conspiracies. And it did gain a little bit of legs itself.
37:34
Yeah, But anyway, for the most part, I think, you know,
37:36
most people knew that it was. They were sort of in on the
37:37
joke, and that was sort of another version of sort of satire and getting
37:42
in, you know, a rise out of people. You might even make
37:45
the case that the Flying Spaghetti Monster was kind of a similar I think idea
37:49
here, right, It was the idea of like satirizing religion generally speaking,
37:55
and pointing out the sort of hypocrisy of it and all of that. And
38:00
anyway, that's I think is sort of similar thing. Well, and when
38:04
you take those examples and you look at how they disrupt certain systems, Like
38:07
you know, if you look at birds aren't Real and you look at the
38:09
interviews of people like that go on to interview for the organization, and how
38:15
absurd and ridiculous those interviews are. What you start to find is that news
38:20
outlets and stuff will stop interviewing people who subscribe to a conspiracy theory because birds
38:25
aren't real. Folks make it so ridiculous to have them on sure, or
38:30
like the flying Spaghetti Monster, Like that's an example of like disruptors going in
38:34
and trolling lawmakers and really disrupting that system. So again, disruptors for good
38:39
and kind of trolling in that space can actually lead to certain outcomes. And
38:44
really the problem that we are trying to talk about here is when you have
38:46
somebody online in a comment section that's just trying to piss you off. Like
38:50
that's just a very different type of example. You know, Like there's almost
38:53
like a line between like trolling, satire and nonviolent protest right and like all
38:58
of those things look that can look very similar depending on how you define it
39:01
and what parts of it you look at Yeah, yeah, they'll often sort
39:06
of use the same toolbox, but to different ends, right, and for
39:09
different reasons, you know. And I think, as you said, the
39:13
major distinction is between people who are just trying to sow chaos for the sake
39:16
of sooy chaos. They don't really care who the target is, they don't
39:20
really care necessarily about a cause, They're just trying to get people riled up
39:23
because for them, they think it's funny, right, And actually that kind
39:28
of leads to sort of why why people troll? Right? In general?
39:31
As we have sort of alluded to, the goal is attention, attention,
39:35
and attention trolls just want people to respond, They want them to react,
39:39
they want them to engage. So that is the primary motivation for pretty much
39:45
all trolling behavior, right. I Mean, there are the obviously the more
39:47
complex cases we've discussed, but when you're talking about trolling in general, it's
39:52
attention, attention, attention, right, And sometimes it is a personal vendetta
39:55
against someone or a group of someone's, and the intention is to make them
40:00
angry as a form of retribution for some real or perceived slight or insult,
40:04
which there's lots of examples of that out there. And sometimes trolls have an
40:07
agenda or cause, such as disrupting the party of a political rival or an
40:12
opposed political figure, and there are plenty of examples of that as well.
40:15
Yeah, and sometimes it's just people who aren't very good at social skills who
40:19
find it amusing to get people all flustered. And that's kind of how they
40:22
have some amount of social interaction because they wouldn't have another platform where they would
40:27
sort of get to engage with people, and all of the sudden, they
40:29
really know is how to antagonize people, right, And sometimes the trolling itself
40:34
is the end goal. That's all they want is to just be trolls,
40:37
to be antagonistic, to get people fired up. That's just what they want.
40:39
So what does all this mean. Essentially means you'll hear the phrase don't
40:44
feed the trolls, and essentially this is true for any group that's trying to
40:47
like cause this kind of chaos. The most effective way to shut down a
40:52
troll is to starve them of their most precious commodity, which is attention,
40:54
and you should ignore them. That's why we don't hear a lot about groups
40:59
like the Westboro about this church as much as we used to. They used
41:01
to get a lot of news coverage, and now they don't get nearly as
41:05
much because what they were doing is they were protesting soldiers' funerals and the funerals
41:09
of LBGT folks. They were protesting those places just to get attention and drive
41:14
up donations to their church. You're not getting a lot of that anymore because
41:17
people have started to ignore them. Other recommendations for managing trolls include establishing a
41:22
policy for a site that can prevent or respond to trolling to eliminate it.
41:28
Hire someone to manage social media accounts. Become familiar with the site and forum
41:32
whatever you're using, so you know how it works ahead of time, so
41:35
you can be able to know what to look out for and how to respond
41:37
to it. Considered simply ignoring and not responding to provocative posts. And if
41:43
you are going to respond, there's sort of a kill them with kindness thing
41:46
here, which is do so with patients and poise and just don't get invested
41:50
emotionally. Then they do have the suggestion that when all else fails, you
41:52
control them back, which I feel like, going back to your example,
41:57
the Westboro Baptist Church, which I believe is already much more attention to this
42:00
episode than they really deserve. Right, They were kind of doing trolley things,
42:04
and Anonymous kind of trolled them back right successfully. I might add,
42:09
there is probably a place for that, And you know, there were counter
42:13
protests that would like troll them back. I believe the Foo fighters like set
42:16
up their instruments on the back of a flatbed truck and got in between the
42:22
West Bow folks and like the actual event they were protesting and just played music
42:25
at them until they dispersed. Wow. So, like, you know,
42:30
there's there's ways to kind of combat this. But I think one thing I
42:34
always kind of say too is like maybe approach with like the idea that somebody
42:37
is probably trying to do something in good faith. Because if you are like
42:40
kind of always approaching it with the assumption that somebody is trying to do something,
42:45
like you know, maybe that person is naive, then you start picking
42:47
up the pattern. Then you can starve them of the attention. Yea.
42:51
So that's kind of the thing here, Like you don't want to kick people
42:53
out of a group or kick people out of a conversation who are genuinely trying
42:58
to engage but they don't know how. But that is tough. Like you
43:00
have to be able to kind of know what the balance and the triggers are
43:04
and kind of see how much you know your own energy you're willing to put
43:07
into that conversation or like how much patience you have or that type of interaction.
43:12
Yeah, exactly, So yeah, I think that that sort of covers
43:15
it all really well. Is that like sort of how to manage how to
43:16
deal with trolls and also thinking about like there are also like you might actually
43:22
specifically choose to support trolls when they're out doing those sort of things that we
43:27
said, where they're going after scientologists or they're going after these authoritarian leaders and
43:34
that sort of thing, and we might look at that and be like,
43:36
all right, right, I'm not opposed necessarily, I'm not going to join
43:40
them, but I also won't fight them on it, right, might be
43:44
a position I would take at least. But anyway, speaking of not feeding
43:47
the trolls, I'm warning you now that you're about to have to listen to
43:51
ads and you can choose how you'd want to navigate that, but now you're
43:53
at least armed with information yeah, you're right back. If you're joining us
44:05
for the first time. One thing we do is we like to recommend some
44:07
things, and we're going to be doing that, but we also have a
44:09
couple of interesting tidbits to get through and then and of course our credits and
44:14
then all of those, so let's talk about those. One of the things
44:16
to talk about here is patent trolls. Ah. Yes, So patent trolls
44:21
are people or companies or other entities that specifically exploit loopholes in the patent system
44:25
to get money or stifle competition in the market or both. I mean,
44:30
one day, maybe we'll do a whole episode on corporate espionage and sabotage and
44:34
all that stuff, because that sounds like it probably is a little bit fun.
44:36
And also like the examples out there are pretty wild, but this sounds
44:38
like maybe a strategy that might be used in that space. It has come
44:43
up on the show multiple times, so there's probably room for it somewhere,
44:46
and i'd be I do like the idea of sort of walking through a couple
44:50
of case examples, if you will, to talk about corporate espionage, and
44:54
I don't know, just getting into it would be fun. Yeah, So
44:57
the way patent trolls work is what they might do is they might buy patents
45:00
specifically so that they can sue people for infringing on those patents, and then
45:04
they make money from the trial because they technically do have a legal claim to
45:07
that patent. And so they'll specifically buy existing patents, or they might even
45:13
file for their own patents. They might even file false like false paperwork essentially
45:16
for patents. They'll pursue infringement claims that they have no right to pursue,
45:22
and they're doing so just a stifle competition. It'll slow down people who are
45:25
out there trying to start up something. Or they might file or enforce a
45:30
patent that they have no intention of using again just to block people from using
45:35
it, or to again sue people who do try and use some version of
45:37
it for patent infringement. So that's sort of a thing that patent trolls do.
45:42
I mean, clearly, that is just not a great situation, right.
45:45
Patent trolls are gross. Like other trolls. You can imagine there might
45:49
be some setting where they can actually be doing some goods. It's just blocking
45:52
some pseudoscience from reaching store shelves. So there is kind of like this spectrum
45:57
where like it could work to benefit people, but most of the time people
46:01
who are trolling are not working to benefit people. And I think that's kind
46:06
of the ultimate hallmark, is that if it's not designed to move towards good,
46:10
then it's probably going to be some type of trolling. Any tool is
46:15
just a tool. It can be used for good, it can be used
46:16
for bad, it can be used for any sort of thing used for neutral,
46:20
right. And I think that the methods employed by trolls are tools,
46:25
and most of the time they're being applied to cause harm, to do things
46:30
that are not beneficial to anybody. But there are people who have turned those
46:34
tools around and use them for good. There are also times when sometimes the
46:37
tool is the problem. I think the messaging that is used on shows like
46:42
Joe Rogan is used on the sort of alt right conspiracy platforms, the tools
46:47
that they tend to use are the problem. Right, They're fear mongering hate
46:52
filled rhetoric. That is the problem. Like the reason they're successful is because
46:57
they frighten people into following them, and that method is the issue. Their
47:00
message is also a problem, but the tool is part of the issue here.
47:05
So anyway, I think in this case, and most tools are just
47:09
neutral, they're just they're tools that get used one way or another. And
47:13
you can make the case that like we can't just say no more trolling forever,
47:15
because trolling isn't always bad. Understanding why people do it is an important,
47:22
I think feature in understanding the circumstances under what you're likely to get trolling
47:25
that's harmful versus trolling that actually ends up having in that positive I think so
47:30
much of and probably like the end take on point that I would make here
47:32
is that so much of the existence of trolling relies on interaction. Yes,
47:37
and really truly that is the power of it. Like people don't just troll
47:42
because it like feels good, you know, like it feels good in terms
47:45
of like I do it like you know, kind of like when I bite
47:46
my nails, Like I don't bite my nails because it like because some people
47:50
react that bite my nails because it feels good. Right, And so the
47:53
idea of trolling is not like a sensory thing like it's very much so it
47:59
requires it requires a transaction with another person, like a social transaction. So
48:04
understanding that as like the core of trolling behavior. I engage in a social
48:09
interaction, somebody responds to my trolling behavior, and there's kind of a give
48:14
and take as that goes. If you can understand that, then you can
48:16
alter the course of that trolling behavior, at least in relation to you.
48:20
Yeah, and I think that's an important thing to remember. I agree,
48:22
I do. I also I really like that you compare trolling to biting your
48:27
nails. It was the first thing I thought of because I was also biting
48:30
my nails just like a few minutes ago. So I was like, oh,
48:32
yeah, I'm doing this thing already, so that's great. I like
48:36
it. Yeah, awesome. Well, as I said, we have some
48:38
fun things to recommend that are completely unrelated to trolling. But before I do
48:43
that, I would like to ensure that I've pointed out that if you like
48:45
this episode and you would like to support us in some way, one way
48:49
that you can do that is by leaving us a rating and review, subscribing,
48:52
picking up some merch or of course, you can go over and join
48:54
us on Patreon with this wonderful group of people who for whom I mean,
48:58
we just rely on them to help us continue doing the thing. That we
49:00
do and we appreciate them and so we give them extra stuff and that includes
49:04
Mike, m Megan, Leyla, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua,
49:07
Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian and Ashley. Thank you all so
49:12
much. We appreciate you. You really do help us do the show.
49:15
Yes, and you too, Listener, I know there are lots of you
49:17
out there. You could have your name right in that group. And if
49:21
you don't want to have your name, you could give me something else to
49:22
read. And whatever it is, I will say it, although if it
49:25
is offensive, I will I will also beat whatever part of it is offensive,
49:30
because you know, we're trying to be a family friendly show here.
49:32
Yeah, if you put your name in his nickelback, we will definitely not
49:36
say that. Yeah, them fighting words around here, uh huh, we
49:40
had to probably beat that, Justin, Will you beat that now? I'm
49:43
just kidding, don't beat that. That's fine. Speaking of which, audio
49:47
engineering and production from Justin. Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. Thank
49:52
you so much for recording with me today. Shane, my co host and
49:55
other writing partner in crime on this show, of course, thank you all
50:00
of you for listening and joining us today, And if you would like to
50:04
reach out to us to talk to us about trolling, you can email us
50:07
directly, and if you haven't done that before, I mean you should give
50:08
it a shot. You can email us at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com.
50:13
You also reach out to us on the social media platforms. We're on the
50:15
normal ones than not crazy places. I mean, they're all a little bit
50:19
crazy, but you know the lesser crazy ones. Yeah, we're there and
50:22
we're happy to chat with you about those. And if you haven't following along,
50:27
we've been posting a lot more content to YouTube lately, so you can
50:30
sort of find some of our stuff there if you're interested, and that there's
50:32
an opportunity to leave more comments that are hopefully not trolley comments, although I've
50:37
been roped into a few of those and not too distant past. Anyway,
50:44
I think that's what I have to say before we get to recommendations. Is
50:46
there anything that I missed or that you'd like to add before we recommend some
50:49
things? No, I think that covers it. I think you nailed it.
50:52
Let's do it. Yeah, recommendations, I am recommending a TV series.
51:05
It's actually been out for a while now, I'm just a little late
51:07
to finishing it, which is often the case with me. If you've been
51:10
listening to this, you may have heard that this is on Netflix. It
51:14
is Guillamo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. It is an eight episode TV series.
51:21
Every episode is a standalone story. Most of them are based, if
51:25
not all of them are based on short stories. All of them are sort
51:30
of horror ish themed, so if you're in sort of a spooky mood post
51:34
Halloween, you might go check that out. They're very different, so some
51:37
of them are only like twenty five or thirty minutes long. Some of them
51:40
are well over an hour. You get a full span, just depending on
51:44
the complexity of the story. And I will warn a little bit there is
51:47
definitely some gross content in here, very little nudity, little bit of violence,
51:52
a lot of various types of gore and bodily fluids sure yuck, and
51:58
just monsters galore. So anyway, I've been really enjoying it. At this
52:01
point, I'm only one episode out from being done with it, but I've
52:04
so far been really impressed with the series, And so if you're into that
52:07
kind of thing, I recommend going and checking out Geramo del Toro's Cabinet of
52:10
Curiosities on Netflix. Yay, I love it. I love Ghermo del Toro
52:15
stuff like. He's the kind of like horror fan that I always really appreciate
52:19
because they just have such a sheep love for it, Like they're not doing
52:22
it for like gross out. They have like such a deep affinity for horror
52:28
in all its forms. Absolutely, but he does so much cosmic horror stuff.
52:30
It's so cool. All right. So my recommendation is a record that
52:34
just came out. By the time you hear this, it's been out for
52:36
a couple of weeks, but it's Blank on Ay Two's new album One More
52:38
Time. Now. I will say that I am an unabashed Blank one A
52:43
two fan, like from the time that I discovered them. I love every
52:46
one of their records. Every one of their records is good. They all
52:50
have their merits. Some are obviously better than others. So I will say
52:52
that I'm coming into this, I'm coming into this with a bias, but
52:57
I will say this is their reunion record with Tom. It's after Mark has
53:00
been diagnosed and treated for cancer and has come back from that it's after Travis
53:05
Barker has been in a plane crash and came back. Like, there's all
53:07
kinds of stuff that's happened to this band, these three guys, and so
53:10
this album comes out and it's very heartfelt. So it's a lot of fun.
53:15
It just sounds like they're just having a really good time on this record.
53:20
They're not writing music to be artsy, they're not writing music to be
53:22
like different or like try to do it. They're really just having a lot
53:27
of fun on it. And it feels like that throughout the entire album,
53:30
and I haven't stopped listening to it since it came out, so strong recommend
53:34
on that if you like Blankwent eighty two and you want to kind of like
53:36
get a feel for like maybe a little bit of old school Blank Win a
53:37
two. Yeah, well, and man, old Blankwin eighty two is old
53:42
school. So the first album came out in like nineteen ninety two maybe something
53:45
like that. Yeah, they've been a band for like thirty some years and
53:50
they have so they have so much music out. People don't realize how much
53:54
music they have out in that time. But I think this is one of
53:58
their best outings. I think it's great. Yeah, I love that.
54:00
And then obviously most people I think are familiar enough with Blankquinity two that we
54:04
don't need to specify this. But this is like very poppy. This is
54:07
most we recommend a lot of like metal and heavy music on here. Is
54:13
not that they're no, not even close. Very melodic, very poppy still
54:17
you know kind of have you know, they're playing instruments, so it has
54:22
a punk like feel, which I guess that's the bar to entry anymore to
54:24
being punk is is that you actually play on instrument. It's a very pop
54:29
punk record and it's guitar music. If you like guitar music and you like
54:32
pop punk, then it's what it's I mean, it sounds like a Blanquidy
54:36
two album. Great, all right, very good. Well I think that
54:38
is all that. I have anything you'd like to add or that I have
54:40
forgotten before we wrap this one up. No, I think that covers it.
54:44
Don't be a troll unless it's for good whatever that means, troll for
54:47
good, not for bad. That's perfect the love of that message. All
54:51
right, great, well, then this is Abraham and this is Shane.
54:52
We're out. Soya, you've been listening to why we do what we do.
54:58
You can learn more about this and other appisisodes by going to WWD WWD
55:02
podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.