You might be a troll if you bitterly hop from one site to another as soon as you have angered the natives.

Troll has become a loosely used accusation attempting to discount people, mostly here at TPM, who oppose Obama for whatever reason.

One of my very earliest post at TPM objected to the insults and offensive accusations of many writers. The only time I've seen Josh attempt to police the comments is when they venture into anti-Jewish or anti-Semetic remarks. In any case, there is no need for insults and offensive accusations, regardless of the candidate that you might support. Labeling some as racist, as a troll, as a blithering idiot, and so forth does not make for intelligent conversation and reflects very poorly on those writing such trash as well as the candidate they claim to support.

You note, I suspect my picture of Obama is one you reference. Do you object that I use a picture of Obama like many others, or that it is one from December wherein he is smoking, or that I have placed a circle an bar over it? Yes, I make two statements with the avatar, one is to say no to Obama and the other to say no to smoking. I opted for the Obama avatar after suffering insulting markups and insults by Obama supporters regarding my own picture.

Finally, while you are talking about trolls, why not talk about who each of you really are. While many writers apparently share their own names and identities, others hide being anonymous names. Personally, this to me defines a troll, anyone not willing to put their own name and identity behind their comments and opinions.

Matthew
http://www.TheProblemWithObama.com

You might be a troll if:
You use the phrase "throw under the bus" in more than 50% of your posts.

What's wrong with Obama smokin?

The Marlboro man? Phillip Morris?

Since when is smoking objectionable. (LOL)

If late-comer bloggers like me are posting here, it's too late, this place is already gentrified....

You might be a troll if I say you're a troll.

If every comment is snark, but really well hidden, like a Bosnian sniper, you might be a troll.

Ben, great job incorporating the word "troll" into the title of a post.

This is, as Allsburg once remarked, a metapost, e.g., a post about posting.

*echo*

*echo*

After my recent post about posting, which I think became the second most recommended post at one point, I contemplated the ultimate test of my theory of successful posting -- a post called "Obama Good, Clinton Bad," without text, to see if it would lure in reflexively angry posters (e.g., trolls). But then I thought you would all think my blank post was idiotic (no offense to Idiotic) and seriously intended, and it would likely have received a disturbing number of recommendations.

You might be a troll if you can't write a post without including that defiant caveat "I know I'm going to get labeled a sexist/racist for saying this, but..." or by appending the sarcastic "...so I guess that must make me a racist/sexist!" to your comments.

You might be a troll if you have more straw men in a single post than friends in your real world.

ooops! I just violated your instructions and referred to a candidate.

Troll!

You might be a troll if you think David Brooks, William Safire, Dick Morris, Maureen Dowd, or Peggy Noonan have valuable insights about Democrats or you cite their articles as "must-reads."

You might be a troll if you're green and live under a bridge.

My thanks to Ben for providing a forum for this discussion. Given my Bona Fides on the subject, and being a true connoisseur of the genre, I thought I'd take a moment to add a few words to the discussion. Unfortunately, due to scheduling, my time as critic will be limited this week, but I'm hoping to shed a bit of light on the current landscape here at TPM. I had planned to compile a post of this nature into a weekly Trollywood Minute, but again, thanks to scheduling that will have to wait for the time being.

Without highlighting particular performers, TPM is graced with a number of known trolls, along with a few posters who have adopted the habit for one reason or another but do not fall into the true Trollus species as it were.

Two of our performers are known from a host of other sites. These are Natural Born performers, interested only in engaging an emotion response with readers in an attempt to get a bit of attention - their Rage Against the Reasoned is part of the schtick, as their contributions would otherwise drive little in the way of discussion. Sockpuppets come and go in association, but a simple linguistic analysis makes it easy to spot these associations (think uncommon shared misspellings, structure and phrasing). These are by far the most fun to critique - countering nonsense with nonsense that's at least funny gives us a net positive, by my thinking at least ;)

There are a number of other Drive By types in the mix on a day-to-day basis. I have not taken the time to backtrack phrase structure or naming conventions to some of the better-known marshaling sites, but I'm sure most longtime readers here can spot them and understand the Winger nature of their input. The Drive By Troll is a well-known archetype - and there are many more standard archetypes for those curious enough to research. I'll continue to try to point out these archetypes during my critiques when i can. (**Extra Credit - TrollCritic 3000 is, itself, an archetype.)

With that said - it's important to note that a couple of posters on this site who have been labeled trolls over the last month or two are, in fact, not. As I've noted above, they have adopted the habits and methods of the true Trollus among us, but we might think of them as simply Confrontational Leaning without a firm basis to model it on in a way that would likewise be seen as simply Spirited in a face to face discussion. One can be a Contrarian without being a true Contrarian Troll, and simply being a contrarian, no matter how vocal, does not necessarily lead to adoption of other core Troll Characteristics.

My methodologies as critic are designed to flush these traits into focus to aid in the identification of the true performers in our midst. If they happen to make you laugh in the process, well, we'll just call that Gravy :)