Chapter 4 -‐ Characteristics of YouTube Trolls: The Case of PewDiePie
4.2 Deception
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most trolls were fairly direct with their aggression, jelena jankovic (20)(21) was the only troll to have exclusively exhibited passive-‐aggressive tendencies:
Example (20)
(Mohammad “TheMtarGaMer” Matari): because your a dumbass and being owned on the internent. hey let me join. #momgetthecamrea
(jelena jankovic): #momthisguymispelledcamera Example (21)
(Razerware146): omfg hahaha Facepalm It's not a stereotype if it's true hahaha.
(jelena jankovic): WALLPALM A stereotype doesn't need to be true... #Derp
It is also worth mentioning that jelena jankovic “appeared” to have used her real name and profile picture, indicating that she is female. If so, her non-‐anonymous status and female identity might be significant factors in assessing her rather tame commenting style in comparison with other trolls.
4.2 Deception
In previous studies, a large factor in trollish behavior includes deception. In this study, deception only proved to be present in about 10 (43%) of the observed trolls. As per Donath’s (1999) definition, deception refers to trolls who try to establish themselves as a legitimate part of the community while in truth, they are seeking to deceptively disrupt the group undercover. This is also true for several YouTube trolls, to an extent. Hardaker (2010) noted in her study that rarely will trolls go on-‐record to reveal their trollish intents
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beforehand which also true for several YouTube trolls who stalwartly denied their troll identity when accused:
Example (22)
(Babywannabe) stfu am not a troll and get the fuck out of here little boy!
Example (23)
(Orange Tortoise) IM NOT TROLLING FUCK U Example (24)
(Σκεπτόμενη) stop trolling bitch!
In examples (22) and (23), other users’ accusations of trolling leads to denial and further hostility by the trolls, while example (24)’s Σκεπτόμενη even goes so far as to counter-‐
accuse others of trolling when Σκεπτόμενη is, in fact, the real troll. Some trolls will also go one step further by attempting to diminish their troll status through reasoning and
deflection:
Example (25)
(Rachel Lambert) Lol. Troll much?
(Lyric) Troll a word that is used by uneducated unsophisticated people. Guess that explains you.
Example (26)
(BBL Podcast) A troll is someone who just says something to piss someone off, i can't be a troll because it's my honest opinion. if i was a troll i would only be saying shit like
"PewDiePie sucks hahahahahahahaahahahah"
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Lyric (25) deflects accusations of being a troll back to his original accuser while BBL Podcast (26) says he is not purposely antagonizing other users, but his original comment, “Calm Down, It's just PewDiePie. Nobody important,” appears to indicate otherwise.
The most common form of deceptive trolling amongst the PewDiePie community was based on flawed rhetoric regarding PewDiePie’s subscriber count. In one of PewDiePie’s videos, “Mean Comments,” dated May 2014, he ridiculed a comment posted on one of his videos -‐ “how can pewdiepie have 26 million subscribers while there are only 7-‐8 million people on the earth?? Fake accunts..?” While it is unclear if this video launched or merely catalyzed this comment into meme status, numerous similar copycats posting near identical comments have since run rampant throughout PewDiePie’s videos, including four of the trolls identified in this study:
Example (27)
(Σκεπτόμενη) HOW is it possible for this video to have 13 million views when there are only 7 million people on planet earth?
Example (28)
(MLG POTATO) how dufuq is there 20 million views theres 7 mil people on the planet omg hacks
Example (29)
(EpicNEd) If there's only 7000 people in the world, why is does he have 32 million subscribers? Fake acunts.
Example (30)
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(jelena jankovic) How PewDiePie has 32 billion subscribers when there is only 7 billion people in this world? (__) waits for 12-‐year old kids
Though the troll’s intentions were obvious to many community members, there was also a large swath of users who believed that these trolls were genuinely misinformed and thus took it upon themselves to rectify the inaccuracy (this method of trolling is also heavily characteristic of ‘disruption’ as explained in the next section). Thus, these trolls were all successful in attracting large swaths of attention from the fan community. Σκεπτόμενη, MLG POTATO and EpicNEd in examples (27), (28) and (29) continued to feign ignorance and vehemently denied all attempts by community members who attempted to correct their original comment. Only jelena jankovic in example (30), who made her trollish intentions clear from the beginning by writing “waits for 12-‐year old kids,” did not attempt to prolong the ruse, so it cannot be said that her comments were intended to be deceptive like the others. Nonetheless, her original comment still managed to accumulate a long list of comments.
Other than these examples, there were rarely instances in which users doubted the true identity and intentions of a troll. Therefore, trolls were either not able to successfully deceive others of their identity or they never had any intentions of truly deceiving
community members into believing they were legitimate members of the PewDiePie fan community. Deception may be a less pronounced characteristic in the context of YouTube because it is simply not required for “trolling,” whereas in more traditional forms of asynchronous CMC such as UseNet forums, open hostility could lead to swift banishment from the community, never to be seen again. While there are methods for flagging spam and offensive comments on YouTube, given the massive scale of the entire site and the fact
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that the comment sections are mostly left unmoderated by any one person, it is not as easy to control the sheer number of trolls who easily obtain lulz through overt aggression.
Deception is, however, most commonly attributed to disruptive troll practices explained further in detail below.