Comm 375

COMM 375 Spring 2017

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Trolls in comments

After analyzing gaming videos on youtube I noticed that many trolls will comment very aggressively aiming their comment at the way the video person is playing or just talking smack about the game in general. Trolls would also comment on other viewers comments just to tell them how lame they are for playing the game or bashing their grammer. Since it is 2017 many people are use to trolls online, many ignored the trolls comments and did not give them the satisfaction of a reaction. However some did take the trolls comments seriously and started a whole debate, usually calling them “trolls” in their replies. 

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Fake news story

http://channel28news.com/2017/04/serial-killer-loose-in-pickens-county-2/

This news stroy struck me as shady because to start it does not include many details about the location where this is taking place, they just mention “Pickens County” but do not give specific streets or zip codes. The article also seems to just want to scare people by telling them to stay away and call the police department but do not give any specific telephone numbers or names of people involved. 

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Facebook community

While I was in highschool I was apart of a senior facebook page that was created by a few students. It was very much like a community. We would use it to communicate about events happening a school, events outside of school, some students would even use it to promote their music or art. It was a page we all knew we could use to help each other and that is very important in a community, 

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grumpystrawberry-instagram celebrity

The use “grumpystrawberry” has 46.4k followers on instagram. She tends to post a lot of selfies or just random pictures of what she is doing though out the day. Some of her more popular post include pictures with her partner. The comments she receives are generally positive, many people comment things like “slay my life” or :Youre a beautiful person”. I feel like she relates a lot to her followers because she lives a very normal life for the most part. She’s a teenager that goes to school and hangs out a lot with her friends. The authenticity of her post come from mostly her looks, she does have a bit of an original style to her. Along with this she makes it very clear that she doesnt care what people think of her and she encourages her followers to be themselves 

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For a facebook profile page I feel like any of these would be okay to post. Facebook is a place where you can really post anything you want, however I would only post pictures B and C to be funny. For a company profile I would use picture F because I feel like its the most straight forward and does not have any distraction (like the funny faces or phone in the others). For a dating profile I would use pictures D or E because they are really basic mirror selfies and how my face along with some of my body. For a history book showing life in 2017 I would for sure use picture B, demonstrating a snapchat filter which is a pretty popular app in this day and age. 

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Social media profiles

After comparing my online profiles from Facebook, google, and my own interpretation I’ve noticed that there are a lot of similarities between the three. Entertainment, focusing more on music and movies, was always at the top of my interest. Animals was also another topic that appeared a lot in my profiles. However on my google account fitness was one of my top interest while it did not even make the list on my personal profile or my facebook interest .

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Social media sites can make money from our digital activity in many ways. One of those ways being monitoring our digital activity to see what interest us. From this information social media is able to control what ads are being shown to us when we use social media. A big way that social media tracks our digital activity is whenever we show interest in something. For example on facebook you are able to “like” post and pages, this gives social media sites an idea of what appeals to us.

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On Twitter, ESPN tweeted about the NFL Draft taking place the following day. The problem was this was posted on the same day ESPN was in the process of laying off up to 100 on-air and digital personalities for “budget cuts”. The trolls came out full force.

The bottom left picture shows someone parodying the NBA Playoffs with “ESPN Layoffs”. The playoffs slogan is “Where Amazing Happens”. The troll posted “Where ESPN executives close their eyes, randomly pick 100 people to fire”.

The tweeter on the bottom right shows his disgust by basically saying ESPN fired 100 people who have families to support, all while bragging about college prospects entering the NFL Draft to make millions of dollars.

People responded by bringing up the liberal vs. conservative narrative. They hinted that ESPN doesn’t want to support such “liberal garbage”, so these personalities were fired.

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I watched a video of a woman playing GTA V. She was playing online and all of a sudden Anonymous came on her screen and was trolling/borderline harassing her. He told her that he knew she was cheating in her husband and needed to tell him or else he would release private information about her online. She thought it was a joke, but he knew where she lived. He also knew her bank account number. In the end we later found out that it was her husband that contacted Anonymous to troll her to get her to admit to her infidelity.

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I chose a more "friendly" version of trolling. Nicki Minaj promised a new album in 2017, and since it's almost already May, people are getting anxious and replying to her tweets asking where the album is. Nicki Minaj has tweeted in response (like in the above picture) but has yet to release details. Therefore, the trolls have been replying things like "where's the album?" or "drop the album." It's all in good fun and the trolls are nice enough about it, and it's just a fun interaction between her and her fans.

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What I noticed the most about what the trolls would comment would be that every comment was positive. There was nothing that was disrespectful on there. All I saw was people talking about how much they want to get there hands on one of these delicious desserts called the doughnut ice cream sandwich. I also saw someone say that they've never seen anything as beautiful before which was very comical to me. I got to notice this awesome video because one of my friends were tagged on it and looking down the comment feed you can see actual dates set up by people tagging other people so then they can go Togo there to get one. All in all the trolls that commented on this video seemed to be very hungry at the time because they really wanted to have this dessert .

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Here is an example of a troll on Twitter. After analyzing different trolling moments on social media it seems as though most people are able to identify when someone is trolling. When users troll they are either ignored, called out, or mocked. It was very rare when someone actually argued with a troll, they are clearly not taken seriously. From what I have seen, trolls tend to mock whatever the original message is trying to say by changing the initial emotions of the readers/viewers. As you can see in the example above, the original message was serious and political. The troll comments by mocking the original tweet and making it into a joke. This is the typical trend of trolls.

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I chose this comment from a yahoo article because I feel like every time I look at the comment section, there is always someone who has to mention politics despite what the subject of the article is about. Most troll comments I see on Yahoo articles have terrible grammar, but this one is actually grammatically correct. The usernames are also not tied to any real names, and are often vague. They also almost never have any picture of themselves, just a default picture or something cartoonish. Most people on Yahoo articles do not respond to these types of comments, probably because they are so common, they are almost guaranteed to be on any article that you read. 

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I picked a very old tweet I found from 2013. Since I was once good at trolling I decided to analyze what 15 year old me was thinking (current me is embarrassed to read this).  When I trolled I would make sure I could upset as many people as possible. So I would usually make controversial posts like the one above to make people upset and get a reaction. Above there was me bringing up the fact that Mitch Lucker was an atheist in the rudest way possible. This happened a couple of months after he tragically died so obviously people were still upset about him passing. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to go for it. What happened next was getting tweets from people from all over the USA telling me to go to hell and other mean things for about two hours straight. Obviously, they gave me the entertainment I was looking for so, in the end, it was a success.   TL;DR make controversial opinion to get a reaction. Get reaction. Laugh about it and repeat

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This is Soulful T. She has a cooking channel on YouTube. As you can tell, she is a plus woman, and when she speaks, she has some teeth missing. I have been following her for months and love her cooking shows. She always has positive things to say about life and family; and she will also talk about the trials she has had in her life. Unfortunately, people love her cooking, but they tend to focus more on her weight and the missing teeth. There are so many negative comments on her channels; but other people tend to defend her because she is a nice and likable person. But when you put yourself out there; you kind of become fair game.

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The trolling I picked is a more friendly one. ESPN business columnist Darren Rovell tweeted a picture of a cat by the Cubs season ticket gift which the Cubs responded by acknowledging the cat. Rovell took his shot at the Cubs making a goat joke, Some Cubs believe that the Cubs didn't win a World Series in over a century because they didn't allow a goat in the stadium in 1908. It was a classic Cubs troll that even the Cubs knew what was going on. People who weren't Cubs fans found the troll funny (me) and Cubs fans were angered at the troll and responded to Rovell with harsh comments. This example of trolling is "PG" but sometimes trolling goes too far. Hate speech is usually common in trolling because the troll is anonymous. With the digital era rising, people will still be busy trolling.

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I chose a social media post from Twitter that focused on trolling and body shaming. Trolls have the intent to hurt people’s feelings, but Lady Gaga was not bothered by it. There were several trolls that thought it was okay to make comments about her body. Some of the trolls wanted to draw attention to her body rather than her talent.

I noticed that some trolls would tag their intended target (Lady Gaga) in their posts, so they know she would see it. The funny thing is that individuals like that have anonymous profile pics, so they can’t be identified, whereas other trolls would just make offensive comments with their profile pic and really not care. I also noticed that there were a lot more men than women who were making some of the comments that I came across. Some women were coming to Lady Gaga’s defense and saying that she looked great and that she is a real women who is not afraid to show her body. I feel that more women need to be confident and not compare themselves to society’s standards. These standards are not realistic for everyone nor should they be used to body shame anyone that doesn’t fit the standard. Lady Gaga spoke out about body shaming by saying that she is proud of her body and other people should be proud of theirs too.

After reading the comments, I realized that there are always going to be haters and people that want to break you down. If you have a strong mind and are confident and comfortable in your own skin, then no one can break you. People that troll or body shame others are people that are obviously unhappy with their own lives, that they feel the need to break someone else down in order to feel better about their own less than perfect lives.