Intro to Something Awful: Trolling

My project is about a game called Haven & Hearth and the trolling and griefing that occurred there. The project has a sort of historical nature to it, as it's all events that happened some time ago, but it's tied together by griefing, an activity that's avoided much interest by internet scholars (something I may address in the next post). I'm sorry to say that there's not much gender analysis in project, but we could look at it as a youth culture project as it involves the young and young at heart (immature adults). This post is primarily background, I'm asking the big question of, "what's up with those SomethingAwful goons griefing people in Haven & Hearth?" but in addressing that, there are questions that have to be covered.

1. What is Something Awful?
2. Who are the goons?
3. What is Haven & Hearth?
4. What is griefing?
5. Why does this matter?

As said before, my project centers on a game, Haven & Hearth, and one group of players. These players come from the Something Awful Forums (seen here), and their presence in games has become somewhat notorious after their success in Eve Online. Even before SA's members found Eve Online, the "goons," as they refer to themselves, possessed a peculiar proclivity for harrassing people online. A regular feature on Something Awful's front page, The Awful Link of the Day, has a tendency to bring the author of whatever awful link that was linked to seek out Something Awful's administrators for an apology, legal threats, or to simply express their anger for being made fun of. ButSomething Awful's staff often took these opportunities to troll people outside of their own community, and would employ their large member base in their assault. For example, when a small web ring of sites dedicated to women's still-born and miscarried fetuses was featured as an ALotD, the exchange was not kind, and eventually made it back to the front page where the would-be mothers were ridiculed.

This swaddled ground beef pretty much says everything there is to say about SA's inherent sensitivities.

This kind of cavalier attitude towards other people online is a staple of SA's overarching philosophy of the internet, it is put most succinctly in their motto, "The Internet is Serious Business." It implies through sarcasm that people's actions and activities online are not worth taking seriously by them or by the people that goons come across. This philosophy is most typically adopted by "trolls" who wish to rationalize their behavior as being inversely positive. A NY Times reporter who attempted to understand trolling by asking notable trolls to explain themselves got, predictably enough, trolled. However he did get some explaination in the middle of the ridiculous lies and fantasies that made up the majority of the article. According to Jason Fortuny, the method and the cure for trolling is the same as the philosophy. From the NY Times article

He proceeded to demonstrate his personal cure for trolling, the Theory of the
Green Hair.

“You have green hair,” he told me. “Did you know that?”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I look in the mirror. I see my hair is black.”

“That’s uh, interesting. I guess you understand that you have green
hair about as well as you understand that you’re a terrible reporter.”
“What do you mean? What did I do?”
“That’s a very interesting reaction,” Fortuny said. “Why didn’t you get so defensive when I said you had green hair?” If I were certain that I wasn’t a terrible reporter, he explained, I would have laughed the suggestion off just as easily. The willingness of trolling “victims” to be hurt by words, he argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it.

This "cure," of course, is worse than the disease, but it is built on logic. That logic may have the primary purpose of deflecting sensible arguments, but it is there. The cure boils down to the less than practical truth that not caring about anything is an adequate defense to anyone's attempt at make you upset. However, no one wants to live in a "utopia" built on apathy and ambivalence, and Fortuny's cure would have the effect of creating a world that is entirely comprised people who resemble teenagers who just got dumped and are taking it badly.

Trolling in online forums, chat rooms, and other textual spaces has been an internet problem pre-dating the internet, going back to BBS culture, and before that, newsletter and editorial pages, but the solution hasn't evolved one bit. Designers of forums, administrators, and academics have all reached the same conclusion that fortuny has: ignore it; ignore it with technical features, ignore it by banning offenders, or ignore it by not allowing yourself to be upset by it, or entertaining their baiting methods.

For Something Awful, this philosophy has been a mode of operation for some time. Rich Kyanka, the site's owner and (sort of) leader, was inspired by it and created an experimental sub-forum on the site called Helldump. Helldump utilized both sides of the trolling equation, it allowed many goons to ignore the trolling that happened between members of the forums, and it attempted to normalize their shenanigans by allowing the trolls to, basically, do whatever they want so long as it stayed in Helldump. While Helldump was active, users who browsed Helldump could see that its regular posters were vicious, just as vicious or perhaps even more vicious than trolls from other sites, but since all this tedious cruelty was limited to one central location, they could begin to see a larger picture. Most often trolls operate alone or in small groups, and their victims can only see their own interactions with trolls, but by putting a large number of trolls together in one space, users could see trolls troll eachother, or troll the trolling of others, and then more clearly see just how unremarkable trolling can be. After the creation of Helldump, attempts to derail discussions by provoking other people, antagonistic posting, and other trolling mainstays were met with the advice, "Go back to Helldump!"

This "better know your troll" method is a tactic that's been employed by Rich Kyanka for some time. As the proprietor of a volatile community he has developed a personally appropriate response to trolls:

Consider: When comments on the Web site of popular tech blogger Kathy Sierra escalated from anonymous vitriol to anonymous death threats last March, it sparked a story that inspired weeks of soul-searching and calls for uniform standards of behavior among bloggers and their communities. In response, Kyanka wrote a Something Awful column, which began with the question: "Can somebody please explain to me how is this news?"

Kyanka went on to review the long and bloodless history of death threats among Internet commenters, then revealed his own impressive credentials as a target: "I've been getting death threats for years now. I'm the king of online dying," he wrote. "Furries hate me, Juggalos hate me, script kiddies hate me, people banned from our forums hate me, people not banned from our forums hate me, people who hate people banned from our forums hate me ... everybody hates me."

So far, so flip. But almost as an afterthought, Kyanka appended the text of a death threat sent from a banned ex-Goon, aimed not at him but at his infant daughter: "Collateral damage. Remember those words when I kick in your door, duct tape Lauren Seoul's mouth, fuck her in the ass, and toss her over a bridge."

Next to that text, Kyanka posted a photo of himself holding the smiling little girl. His evident confidence in his own safety, and that of the child in his arms, was strangely
moving — in an unnerving sort of way.

Now what does this mean for Haven & Hearth? We know that goons have a tendency to troll other people, we know that trolling is a tough phenomena to beat, but we're looking at a game, not a forum or chat room where trolls operate. So then the question is, "what do trolls do in a game?" My answer is that they "grief." I see trolling and griefing as being closely connected in their motivations. Trolls mostly use communication to upset and offend others in forums and chat rooms, but griefers operate in games, and thus, use the mechanics of a game with the same intent and mastery that a troll will use words in a textual environment. Griefing is the logical extension of trolling in a different environment. Instead of attacking identity, like challenging feminism in a feminist forum and obstinately refusing to accept the validity of anything less than the most regressive portrayals of women, griefers pick fights in a more literal way. A griefer will still attempt to find the trait that one has invested the most in, but it may be a game object or a virtual character, as opposed to an idea or opinion.

So far, I've covered what it means to be from Something Awful, how trolling works, what the connection is between SA and trolling, next I want to cover the goon culture in gaming. The relation between griefing and goons, the practices that they take up, and how they create their virtual enclaves away from SA's motherland.