7.3. Activity: Evaluating Trolling Examples#

This page has several examples of trolling. For each one, consider the following:

  • What are the potential benefits of this example (e.g., it’s funny, in-group identifying)? And who would get the benefits?

  • What are the potential harms of this example? And who would suffer the harms?

These examples will range from mild to much more extreme.

7.3.1. Banana Slicer Reviews#

In 2011, Amazon users started leaving parody reviews of a banana slicer on Amazon

Screenshot of Amazon page for the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer. The slicer is a flat piece of plastic roughly in the shape of a banana, but wider. It is hollow with rows of thin plastic slicers across it, so when it is pressed down onto a banana, it will turn the whole banana into about equal size slices. It costs $5.28.

Fig. 7.2 The Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer on Amazon.#

Here are some examples of parody reviews of the banana slicer:

Review by Nosh in 2018. 5 Stars. Really? I've always wondered how to get that professional restaurant quality slice. Now I can! No more paying for those expensively sliced fruits- i can just stay at home. Considering selling banana slices to my neighbors now for active & passive income !

Fig. 7.3 A review about how hard it is to cut bananas without a banana slicer#

Review by Emily S in 2018. The review has a photo of a couple holding a banana next to the banana slicer, but they are curved in opposite directions (which could be easily fixed by rotating either the banana or slicer). The review says: Be careful of wrong-way bananas!! We were so excited to get our Hutzler 571... until we realized that our bananas curved the wrong way. Gonna have to go to the store for new bananas...

Fig. 7.4 A review about the slicer and bananas being curved the wrong way (you could just rotate it)#

Read more at knowyourmeme and see also the related Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt

7.3.2. Fake Pronunciation Guide#

Below is a fake pronunciation guide on youtube for “Hors d’oeuvres”:

Note: you can find the real pronunciation guide here, and for those who can’t listen to the video, there is an explanation in this footnote1

In the youtube comments, some people played along and others celebrated or worried about who would get tricked.

Four comments on the youtube video. First comment by thorswill: ""Mmm! What delicious hors-d'oeuvres!" Thank you for helping me pronounce this difficult phrase! I am a wealthy businessman and will make use of this knowledge to maintain my status in America." Second comment by unfa: "I'm afraid someone could actually believe this pronounciation. Please exaggerate more." Third comment by Azbazzer: "I'm French I can confirm." Fourth comment by Joe Blues: "I love how this is the very first link that pops up when googling: "how to pronounce hors d'oeuvres" PronunciationManual, you've made it son."

Fig. 7.5 Various comments on the fake pronunciation video#

7.3.3. Forever Alone Involuntary Flashmob#

In 2011, a group on 4chan started spreading a plan for making a “Forever Along Involuntary Flashmob.” You can see their instructions below:

image in the form of a sort of flier with meme faces of foreveralone and trolls. The text reads: How to make your very own Forever Alone Involuntary Flashmob. 1. create fake online dating profile as mildly cute woman from NYC - just use somechicks facebook to get several believable pics etc. etc. 2. find forever alone guys from NYC on dating site, get them to believe you're interested. 3. Once forever alone guy takes the bait, suggest you meet for a date at this time and location: Pay phones outside 47th Digital store 46th st * Broadway NEW YORK 7:30PM Friday 13th May 2011. 4. watch angry alone guys flashmob rage at earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/ (select Camera 2). Also Remember: This will only work if we keep spreading these instructions and actually get involved. There is no limit to how many fake profiles and people you can trick or method used. Take time and prepare - think smart, if they suspect you're pushing the time and date too hard it aint gonna work.

Fig. 7.6 A meme spread on 4chan trying to recruit 4chan trolls to catfish single men and have all the single men show up to the same location at the same time with no one there to meet them. Then 4chan users can watch a webcam to laugh at the lonely men.#

Read more about what happened in this Vice article.

Note

As we look at more cruel trolling examples, be aware of this online troll’s explained the justification for trolling (though we, the authors, do not think this justifies the cruelty):

The purpose of the community … I guess is to exchange ideas and techniques, and to plan co-ordinated trolling. The underlying philosophical purpose or shared goal, anyway, would be to disrupt people’s rosy vision of the internet as their own personal emotional safe place that serves as a proxy for real-life interactions they are lacking (i.e. going online to demonstrate one’s grief over a public disaster like Japan [2011 Tsunami] with total strangers who have no real connection to the event).

7.3.4. RIP trolling#

RIP trolling is where trolls find a memorial page and then all work together to mock the dead person and the people mourning them. Here’s one example from 2013:

A Facebook memorial page dedicated to Matthew Kocher, who drowned July 27 in Lake Michigan, had attracted a group of Internet vandals who mocked the Tinley Park couple’s only child, posting photos of people drowning with taunting comments superimposed over the images.

One photo showed a submerged person’s hand breaking through the water with text reading “LOL u drowned you fail at being a fish,” according to a screen grab of the page shared with the Tribune after the post was removed.

7.3.5. Flooding Police app with K-pop videos#

To go in a different direction for our last example, let’s look at an example of trolling as a form of protest.

In the Black Lives Matters protests of 2020, Dallas Police made an app where they asked people to upload videos of protesters doing anything illegal. In support of the protesters, K-pop fans swarmed the app and uploaded as many K-pop videos as they could eventually leading to the app crashing and becoming unusable, and thus protecting the protesters from this attempt at Police surveillance.

Read more at the Verge: K-pop stans overwhelm app after Dallas police ask for videos of protesters

For another example of trolling as protests, this one with bots, see: A TikToker said he wrote code to flood Kellogg with bogus job applications after the company announced it would permanently replace striking workers

1

In American English, “Hors d’oeuvres” is pronounced like “or-dervs”. In the fake pronunciation video they pronounce it: “haars-doovs-dees” and then give an example sentence: “MMmm, what a die-loose-us [instead of delicious (dee-lish-us)] haars-doovs-dees”