Where have all the trolls gone?

Now that Trump is once again the president-elect, changes are noticeable everywhere – not just on the domestic front, but internationally as well. Aggressive provocateurs are backing down and claiming they never really meant it.

Trump has been busy making Cabinet appointments and deciding who’s going to be running the government for the duration of his term. Meanwhile, the rats are jumping ship with amazing speed.

But it’s not just the highest level of government that is seeing the rats flee. I’m also noticing it at a far more humble level.

As a columnist for WND (and nowhere else), I have a cadre of loyal readers and a few faithful trolls. These trolls apparently have nothing better to do than to lurk on a website completely antithetical to their political suasions and spend their days snarking. That seems like something of a petty and useless existence, but hey – everyone needs a hobby.

These trolls don’t limit themselves to my column, of course. WND has dozens of columnists and hundreds of articles every month, and these faithful trolls move from columnist to columnist, article to article, informing all and sundry how stupid we all are.

But over the last couple months before the election, I noticed something interesting: The number of trolls increased. Exponentially. From the few faithful trolls we’ve had for years, suddenly there were four. Then eight. Then sixteen. Probably more. (One troll even had the original moniker of “ScrewWND.”)

As an example, my Nov. 1 column was entitled “Brace yourself for Election Day” and covered my concerns that either 1) Trump would win and the nation would explode into left-wing violence; or 2) Trump would lose due to rampant election fraud. (For the record, I’ve never been so glad to be proven wrong on both counts.)

Of the 57 comments left on the column as of this writing, 19 comments (33%) were direct snarks from trolls (far higher than normal), while 20 comments (35%) were responses from regular readers to those snarks.

(Typical example from one troll: “Just my observation, there are more stupid people posting on WND then most other sites on the Web. The crazy Biblical comments and references are priceless.”)

These trolls apparently had a single purpose: To convince other readers that the article or column was the stupidest thing ever written, and how anyone who read it must agree that it was stupid. And if the subject was irrefutably true (i.e. the sun rises in the east and sets in the west), then the trolls would neatly turn the tables to attack conservatives in general and Trump in particular for being stupid.

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These trolls usually follow a predictable pattern. They observe the stupidity of the readers, the stupidity of the writers, the stupidity of faith, the stupidity of Trump and the stupidity of conservative principles, etc. (Due to an utter lack of creativity, “stupid” seems to be the unifying term across all trolls.)

The logic of these snarkers never ceases to amuse me. What do they expect to achieve by trolling? “You’re stupid!” “You’re right! I’ve seen the errors of my ways! From here on out, I’ll refute my faith, vote for Kamala, endorse butchering children’s bodies and donate money to MoveOn.org. Thanks for saving me!”

Unlike our faithful trolls who presumably lurk here for their own peculiar jollies, this new crop of trolls were, I’m hypothesizing, paid professionals. There can be no other explanation for why they would suddenly come out of the woodwork mere weeks before the election, and then have the leisure to comment thousands upon thousands of times, over dozens of columnists and hundreds of articles.

Other readers were noticing the sudden influx of trolls too. (Sample comments from readers: “You leftist trolls are pouring out of the woodwork like a horde of cockroaches. Why don’t you go haunt CNN and MSNBC where your ‘wisdom’ is appreciated.” “The Left knows for sure that they will lose … they come to vent their frustrations.”)

What is trolling? One scientific paper defines it as malicious online behavior characterized by aggressive and deliberate provocation of others. Trolls seek to provoke, upset and harm others via inflammatory messages and posts.

It takes a special kind of person to troll with persistence and stamina. In one Australian study, “Results showed that gender, psychopathy, and sadism were all significant independent predictors of malevolent trolling. That is, if you are male, have high psychopathy, or high sadism, you are more likely to troll. The most powerful predictor of trolling was sadism. The more someone enjoys hurting others, the more likely it is they will troll. … It appears the popular refrain is correct: don’t feed the trolls and give them the hurt or angry response they are looking for.”

A different article reported on another study: “In all, the study confirms what feels obvious: trolls do what they do because they enjoy it. ‘Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others,’ the study notes. ‘Sadists just want to have fun … and the internet is their playground.'”

If these new trolls were indeed paid professionals, it meant the left was able to draw from its ranks to hire trolls to harass conservative readers and writers – not just on WND, but across all conservative media. Presumably it wasn’t hard to find people willing to perform this work, since viciousness and a lack of empathy seem to be common characteristics of the left.

However – and this adds a data point to my hypothesis that these were PAID trolls – now that the election is over, Trump won, and the Harris campaign is deep in debt, these trolls have disappeared. Zip, zero, zilch, nada. The only ones left are our few faithful snarkers who get their jollies by lurking on WND, since – as you know – everyone needs a hobby.

If nothing else, we can thank these trolls for ramping up the number of comments posted on each article or column, which in turn ramps up the number of replies, which in turn ramps up the number of page views for WND, which in turn translates to increased advertising revenues. Thanks, trolls!

This may all change – the left may regroup and launch more attacks – but for the time being, the air is a bit cleaner. Good riddance to bad rubbish.