Chapter 2 – Literature Review
2.5 Trolls Come in all Shapes and Sizes
2.5.7 YouTube Trolls
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Hong Kong student Sunflower movement, and most recently in the war against terrorism when they have since shut down multiple websites and social media accounts linked to the ISIS terrorist group (Petroff, 2015).
2.5.7 YouTube Trolls
A few years back, a popular form of trolling which utilized YouTube was termed
“rickrolling.” Rickrolling was a bait and switch technique in which a person would provide a hyperlink relevant to the topic at hand but when clicked, users are led to a YouTube video of Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up." As their 2008 April Fool’s Day prank, YouTube even used this method to troll its own users -‐ they redirected all videos on their main page to Astley’s song.
Other than this mischievous bait and switch form of trolling, there are two broad categories of trolling on the YouTube platform, the first includes creating and uploading original content meant to troll others while the second variety includes posting nasty remarks in a video’s comments section in order to troll specific users (the video creator or other commentators) or the entire community of users. These behaviors may overlap as with individuals who take part in both kinds of YouTube trolling.
An infamous, yet extreme example of a content troll is that of 2012’s The Innocence of Muslims, a YouTube video uploaded Egyptian-‐American Nakoula Basselely Nakoula. The video portrayed the prophet Mohammed as a sex-‐obsessed violent pedophile and sparked widespread outrage by Muslim populations across the world, as intended by its creator.
Unfortunately, because of characters such as Nakoula, in conjunction with deeper issues of cultural misunderstanding, many violent protests ensued across the Middle East. Violence
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further escalated when a Libyan embassy was rocket bombed a few months later, causing the deaths of a U.S. Ambassador and three other Americans. MacKinnon and Zuckerman (2012) argued that Nakoula and other central individuals involved in fueling the fire were essentially trolls because they “attempt to hijack a discussion through harassment or inflammatory content hoping to provoke emotional response” (p.18). Nakoula’s example is an extreme one but it provides a clear testament to the sheer power and influence that popular video sharing platforms, such as YouTube, command over its viewers and how online events can quickly traverse into real world issues on a global scale.
A more mischievous instance of content trolling occurred in 2009, titled “Operation YouTube,” (also known as “YouTube Porn Day”) and was undertaken by the formerly mentioned Anonymous group. In the operation, Anonymous, 4chan and eBaum’s World community members spammed YouTube with porn videos under than tag “marblecake”
(Courtney, 2009). YouTube is usually able to monitor and flag videos that are inappropriate for viewing but Anonymous members made it difficult for moderators since they uploaded individual videos across a great number of accounts. Also, all videos were initially uploaded as private in order to escape the radars of YouTube moderators. Members later, at a predetermined moment, set all videos to public (“Operation YouTube,” n.d.), unleashing a massive upsurge of porn onto the website in one fell swoop. Once YouTube moderators caught on and began filtering and removing videos associated with the “marblecake” tag, Anonymous members switched to alternate tags, including “swine flu,” “twilight” and “jonas brothers.” In addition, members began flagging compliant videos in order to confuse the YouTube administrators as to which videos were actually inappropriate or not.
Typical YouTube trolls are rarely as controversial as Nakoula and nowhere near as organized as Anonymous, through their actions may be sometimes be characterized as
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playful mischief. A few trollish videos on YouTube dispense false or harmful advice designed to make other users seem foolish. Examples include “How to Increase Your Wi-‐Fi Signal”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QJ2vESMwEc) where an “expert” provides a DIY demonstration to boosting your computer’s Wi-‐Fi signal by wrapping an Ethernet cord around their cell phone. Other trolls like Durham Francis, voted # 1 of the Top 10 Biggest YouTube Trolls has vehemently denied the existent of tornadoes and has posted several questionable videos to support his argument (Park, 2012).
The bulk of YouTube trolls, however, lurk in the comments section, posting inflammatory (Moor et al., 2010) and provocative messages in order to rile up fellow community members and instigate heated exchanges. This is not surprising as YouTube has long been notorious for its cesspool of negative, offensive, and inane comments. Lynch (2014) even claimed the site as “home to arguably some of the nastiest comments on the Web.” Randall Munroe wrote in one of his popular XKCD webcomic, “The internet has always had loud dumb people but I’ve never seen anything quite as bad as the people who comment on YouTube videos.”
For the past several years, Justin Bieber and all videos in relation to the young heartthrob have been a popular target for trolls who post an assortment of unpleasant comments such as:
I was in a coma for months, one day the nurse turned on the radio, JB was playing…I got up and turned off the radio. This is how JB saved my life.
Another writes:
“Justin i am afraid no fence i will haveto remove your final breath from body as your music poor also brushyour teeths”.
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While these comments may be aimed at Justin Bieber, many times they are also intended to evoke negative responses from his fans, commonly young teenage girls also known as
“Beliebers.” Not only are famous celebrities commonly targeted by trolls, but so are famous YouTube stars, as we will examine in the following sections. This thesis will observe trolls who try to instigate the most popular YouTube user as of this thesis’ publication, PewDiePie, and his massive fan base.
In essence, YouTube trolls and their tracks are apparent throughout the entire video-‐
sharing platform. From individuals posting trollish comments about the Twilight movies to others leaving negative comments on videos about Gingers (red-‐headed people), trolls seemingly congregate the most where entire communities are very passionate about a certain subject. YouTube provides such fertile grounds for negativism and disrespect that, at times, it almost seems to encourage users to partake in trollish behaviors.
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