Trolling Al Qaeda... For Peace? 207
The Mister Purple writes "There is a small initiative underway to combat Islamic militant recruiting on the Internet... by trolling them. Quoting the article: 'The program, called Viral Peace, seeks to occupy the virtual space that extremists fill, one thread or Twitter exchange at a time. Shahed Amanullah, a senior technology adviser to the State Department and Viral Peace's creator, tells Danger Room he wants to use "logic, humor, satire, [and] religious arguments, not just to confront [extremists], but to undermine and demoralize them." Think of it as strategic trolling, in pursuit of geopolitical pwnage.' So, does this mean that I'm promoting peace when I post YouTube comments?"
Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Because pissing people off is an effective way to get them to leave you alone.
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Confusion is a great tactic. Make them so mad they can't think straight, and you reduce their total effectiveness.
See also political arguments, religious arguments, battle of the sexes, etc etc.
Re:Right (Score:5, Interesting)
There are no "tactics" that will work with any of the invincibly ignorant.
Take for instance, extreme Westboro Baptists, who have been reasoned with, taunted, stalked, given a voice in the press, ridiculed on t.v., forced to protest behind barriers of "Patriot Guard" bikers, and generally opposed in both good and bad ways, still they carry on....Nothing works that doesn't make you a lower scumbag than them.
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Re:Right (Score:5, Insightful)
These people are not blowing themselves up BECAUSE of their religion, that does play some part into it yes, but that is not the main driving reason. I paid attention in history class, I don't remember Muslims sending fire ships into New York Harbor in the 1880's. I don't remember suicide car bombings in the 1930's. I remember some piracy off their shores and that was about it. If religion was the DRIVING force we would have seen these past events, but we don't.
The reason they attack us today is because for the last 50 years we have been meddling in their internal affairs. We have installed/propped up dictators who have brutalized and oppressed their people for decades. They know that until the US has been driven from the region they will not have self rule. The purpose of 9/11 was to get the US more deeply involved and more easily attacked. They have told us their goals repeatedly, bankrupt the US Soviet Union style to force it to leave the region forever.
Why the suicide attacks? Because the US supported/influenced tyrants have made life so miserable that these people have nothing to lose. If they lined up as a regular army they know they would get slaughtered, so why not just go for a suicide attack and do far more damage. Either method ends in death. Self rule is worth dying for, so they make the very rational choice to sacrifice themselves for the future of their people to have the ability to rule themselves. If the roles were reversed you'd see Americans lining up around the corner to strap on the bomb belts for the same reasons and you and I would be cheering them on for their bravery.
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That is clear to me. Telling Al Qaeda that you're trolling them is the less clear part.
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>Confusion is a great tactic. Make them so mad they can't think straight, and you reduce their total effectiveness.
It's a great tactic in war, not so much as a way for the civilian public to operate in peacetime, against other civilians.
The most likely consequence of ruining discussions on the public internet is simply to move those discussions off the public internet, which then becomes solely an outlet for both sides' contrived propaganda, robbing the public of the value of watching and participating i
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Satire would probably just rile them up more.
Been there, done that. [wikipedia.org] This stuff is pretty much work in progress.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
Are you still touching me?
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You never touch the other elves like that.
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Actually I think if they just got laid once in a while it'd reduce their effectiveness. Unfortunately for them their belief system makes them think the only way it's going to happen is to get married or get martyred.
Given their apparently poor respect of women, the former isn't likely without some kind of arranged marriage.
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Many of the extremists are married. In fact the wife of the one of the 7/7 bombers was up for assisting him as the police claimed she must have known he was planning something and didn't report it.
Personality and love have nothing to do with it, only families marrying off daughters for political reasons in the hope of improving their standing and creating alliances. Wives are basically livestock that you trade and use for breeding.
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You have given yourself away as a member of the Taliban.
So, would you like to see my photo collection of burning Qurans?
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Come off it. Vivian is a guy's name. [wikipedia.org]
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Not to ignorant people who know nothing about what they are speaking about... yet they still speak.
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You have been "doing" what?
Using logic and reason when discussing such matters as the origin of mankind, Earth, the nature of the universe we live in...
Insulting all muslims and their faith...
...is a side effect of doing the former, but it's them who get offended and not me offending them. Any person with a working brains surely understands this distinction. To put it in different words, I treat all people in discussion the same - I assume that all parties to the discussion are willing to use the brain in an intellectually honest way, but for some reasons there are a few p
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But?!?!?
If you disable Al Qaeda, how will you get them to overthrow Assad in Syria [alternet.org] for Hillary?
You must understand one thing. "Al Qaeda" never stopped being a board piece used by "Western" powers, when they were Reagan's Moral equivalent of our founding fathers." [youtube.com]
If you dispute this, it's because YOU have already been trolled into disinformed confusion...
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I don't think Regan was talking about the future.
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Regardless of what their position is, anyone who says this is more confused and misinformed than the people he's accusing of the same.
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Mujahadeen != Al Quaeda, you racist pig.
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:-)
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I don't think you know much about the Koran.
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Yes.
Look how I use "quotes".
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Exactly.
Controlling is to definite a term. I like "playing"
Re:Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Because pissing people off is an effective way to get them to leave you alone.
It's not designed to work on the nuts, it's designed to work on the ones the nuts are trying to recruit.
Making the nuts look like idiots hurts their recruiting.
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
It's not designed to work on the nuts
NUT ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE NUTS!
improper internet meme usage (Score:2)
proper internet meme usage:
Nut On, Apply Directly to the Nuts
Nut On, Apply Directly to the Nuts
Nut On, Apply Directly to the Nuts
without the theepeat, the meme is deficiently applied
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
Right... the nuts are working on stirring up the mark's religious fervor, and inserting "Penis" in the middle of the conversation sort of ruins the mood.
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
"inserting penis" never seems to ruin the mood for me ;-)
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Haven't been reading about the Penn State scandal?
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As in Kent Brockman's "How can I prove we're live?"
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
Right... the nuts are working on stirring up the mark's religious fervor, and inserting "Penis" in the middle of the conversation sort of ruins the mood.
or vagina
Re:Right (Score:4, Interesting)
It worked when Superman defeated the KKK. They gave out the secret codes etc and made them look so childish that members became ashamed to associate, and to this day many people think of the KKK as childish, uneducated, illiterate fools.
Re:Right (Score:5, Interesting)
You know the religious fanatics who stand in the middle of college campuses shouting at everyone passing by that the end of the world is coming, and they're all going to Hell, and generally making fools of themselves? And you know how people laugh at them, or shout back at them, or make jokes about them to the crowd, or point out loudly what absurd fools they are?
That's exactly what they want to happen.
You see, they aren't targeting those people who stand around and laugh at them. But somewhere in the crowd is someone who feels sorry for them. Someone who knows perfectly well they're a religious fanatic, but that still doesn't give people the right to laugh at them. And so afterward that person will go up and talk to the religious fanatic, just to be polite, just to say, "I wasn't one of the people laughing at you, and I don't approve of them doing it."
And that is who they're really targeting. That person who is trying to be polite, and is off their guard, and who suddenly finds the religious fanatic is actually a friendly person who can talk intelligently and doesn't sound like a fanatic at all anymore. By laughing at the fanatic, you helped them to lure in the person they were really after, and gave them a chance to give the real recruiting pitch.
Trolling fanatics may be fun, but it can easily have the opposite effect from what you intend.
Re:Right (Score:5, Insightful)
You know that trolling doesn't mean ridiculing someone?
Trolling is a fine art, and often it means gaining someone's trust, and provoking an emotional reaction you want, but not necessarily drawing attention to yourself as the troll.
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And that is who they're really targeting. That person who is trying to be polite, and is off their guard, and who suddenly finds the religious fanatic is actually a friendly person who can talk intelligently and doesn't sound like a fanatic at all anymore. By laughing at the fanatic, you helped them to lure in the person they were really after, and gave them a chance to give the real recruiting pitch.
That's how it works on TV but not in real life. The basic tactic is to get the victim into a situation where they can be bombarded with religious bullshit for years on end and surrounded by others who seem to believe it totally. It isn't unique to Islam either, most monotheistic religions prefer to get people in young and hammer them for years so they become true and unshakable believers. It isn't even unique to religion, extremist groups of all kinds do it.
There is no logic, no rational argument, just rele
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OTOH, I guess you've gotta try what you can - and if at least the semi-intelligent on up see that the recruiter was dumb enough to fall for a troll, they'll loose faith. As long as they don't use this to recruit, say 3 or 4 times the people who didn't join up...
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You have to care about the subject matter to fall for trolling. Like your post could be trolling people who care about America's image in terms of whether it kills innocent people etc. Someone might respond to you acting all indignant about how America's not like that, or other places are so much worse. Others don't care because they know America's history and are proud of it.
That's why I don't get how this is going to work with al Qaeda. What on earth are people going to say to make them feel emotional and
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How many people have I murdered? Lives ruined?
And if I'm profiting, my check must be lost in the mail.
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1940s - nuked Japan.
Death toll: 145,000 to date in Nagasaki, 250,000 in Hiroshima
1947-49 - U.S. helps command extreme-right Greece party in Civil War.
Death toll: about 70,000 contributed by US-backed forces
1948-54 - CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion in Philippines.
Death toll: about 11,000
1950 - Independence movement crushed in Ponce, Puerto Rico
Death toll: conservative historians estimated about 8,000 peasants
1950-53 - Korean War
Death toll: about 1,776,000
1952 - CIA overthrows Democracy i
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Re:Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I think that is it. There are too many wars due to lack of humiliation.
Sadly if one were to rewatch most American movies aimed at teenagers since the 1980s, I think you'll find the predominant cultural moral message has been pretty much exactly that.
Act 1: A young wimpy kid/cop/spy/soldiert is pushed around by bullies/criminals/Soviets/terrorists.
Act 2: The bullies continue to push the wimp who is tragically plagued by common sense/compassion/robots. This nearly loses the lunch money/case/mission/Vietnam.
Act 3: Pushed to the wall, the young wimp faces his/her deep inner fears of his/her own glorious American manifest destiny. Hoo-rah!
Act 4: The former wimp utterly humiliates the enemy in the most embarrassing way possible with a devastating rock solo. This ends all wars everywhere and there is no such thing as blowback, at least until the sequel.
I'm pretty sure that if this formula worked for Marty McFly and Rambo, it will work for the United States diplomatic corps.
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Or "Better Off Dead", "Karate Kid", "Breakfast Club", "Ferris Beuller."
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Because pissing people off is an effective way to get them to leave you alone.
A visit from 4chan is unlikely to do much about the 'currently at a training camp in hellholistan learning to use RPGs' crowd; but suitably competent trolling can reduce an online community to little more than flame wars and tumbleweeds fairly quickly.
It might annoy the wannabes enough that they give up and just go look at porn or something instead. People aren't known for their dedication or attention spans on the internet.
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That might work for some wannabees. It seems to me that at least some of the people looking online at jihad sites and who are actually interested in it are more likely to pick sides in a flame fest than leave in disgust.
They'll have to be very careful to make their trolling uninteresting and non-inflammatory, which doesn't even make sense. That's not how you troll.
Frankly I don't see how this is going to work. I'm hoping that they are using the word "troll" in a different sense than how I understand it. Unf
you don't want them leaving you alone (Score:3)
you want them furiously attacking you, with words. you, an anonymous troll on the internet
rather than bombing people in the real world
keep them occupied and wasting their time on the Internet by pointing the object of their rage at trollish subjects and ideas rather than real people and places
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Not such pissing them off, more getting them in a tissy. Spacked out terrorists confused about where to put the stick of TNT.
If they could redirect 4chan posts to the Taliban they'd be all rainbows and unicorns.
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The art if trolling is to make them embarrass themselves, not to insult them directly. Asking the right questions in a sincere tone etc. Make them speak about the weak points in their quest, the things they might rather not mention in a recruiting campaign. The thin line between open discussion and good trolling is that the art of trolling includes the concepts of intentionally misunderstanding the others point, carefully associate them with groups you know they don't completely agree with (e.g. Confront a
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which is essentially sows distrust of everything that comes from TV, Radio and the Internet.
That would be an improvement. Why, somthing like widespread critical thinking might emerge! The world is full of people who benefit by being dishonest.
in other words, you create in the other person the sentiment that IT'S ALL BULLSHIT.
All? No. Just most of it. Usually this is in the "bought and paid for" sense of advertisements. Half-truths are always a popular one as well, because on the surface they seem legitimate unless you scrutinize how they're being used. It tends to fool people who are otherwise smart except that they're naive.
then they're drawn to someone who strikes down that FUD, in person, face to face.
What would lead them to believe this person is a
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
The first time "Troll" and "Insightful" are valid on-topic moderations!
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
Troll + Insightful = Funny
That's how the palette of Slashdot mod points work.
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Religious Cartoons (Score:5, Funny)
be very careful (Score:2)
For example, they might DDoS your server, or dox you, of any number of other similarly terrifying acts.
Waste of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
it never worked on [Republicans, Democrats] (delete as per preference) so why should it work on fundies?
Amanullah... (Score:2)
Get ready to nullahfy terrorists!
Let me help... (Score:3)
Genius! (Score:2)
And whoever heard of an Islamic Militant holding a grudge?
how can I help? (Score:5, Funny)
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Anyway, any English speaking Mohammedans that have a forum?
Just go to YouTube and search for "jihad bil saif", then have fun in the comments.
Other useful search terms are country name + "mujahideen", where country name is one of: Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya (or, better yet Ichkeria, or Caucasus Emirate), Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Somalia - you can find more on Wikipedia. Also try "caliphate" and "ummah" with the same.
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Logic? Religion? (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes and no. You're about half right. The thing about bin Laden was that he wanted us out of there so he could re-establish a caliphate and bring the region backwards about a thousand years. It wasn't all freedom and non-interference with him. Not saying that US intervention is always, or even often a good thing in that region, but bin Laden was dangerous to everybody, especially the Muslims in the area.
Not trolling, counter-trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
I think people reading too much into the description of the effort as "trolling".
Trolling on Usenet and sites like Slashdot is about provoking people who are otherwise engaged in reasoned, rational, discussions into flaming.
The Al Qaeda elements are presumably using weakly supported but not obviously wrong statements written to appeal to the emotions of would-be recruits and convince them that the irrational is reasonable. In other words, these elements are themselves trolling.
The counter would be to either reveal the trolls as nut jobs or provoke them to revealing that themselves. Posting fictitious but not obviously wrong arguments yourself is probably not the way to go about this.
Re:Not trolling, counter-trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
Trolling on Usenet and sites like Slashdot is about provoking people who are otherwise engaged in reasoned, rational, discussions into flaming.
Actually it's about pushing people's buttons, and it works best on people who take themselves waaay too seriously.
You troll people who are inclined to jerk their knees, not those who are inclined toward reasoned, rational discussions.
trolling the trolls (Score:2)
for epic lulz instead of epic tragedies
I would love to do that! (Score:2)
Poe's Law (Score:2)
Your tax dollars at work people.... (Score:2)
Maybe poking bee's nests (Score:2)
Great idea! (Score:2)
I am all for anything that promotes the idea that any kind of political speech coming from US is poisonous propaganda, and should not be trusted.
Think of it as a weakened vaccine against more sophisticated forms of US propaganda.
That's it (Score:2)
That's it, let's pit one group of amoral and antagonistic extremist virgins against another. Let's see what happens!
Or:
We've replaced the hardcore soldiers in this scenario with ineffectual internet nerds. Let's see if they notice.
Re:Slashdot's reallyghone down hill.... (Score:5, Funny)
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He said "more than ten". Might have been as many as... eleven.
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well trolled, but I think the thrust of the article was to troll the _other_ way...
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While I'm all for trolling Muslims
Never would have guessed that. You seem to be part of a different trolling campaign than the one promoted by the article though.
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It's best to troll everywhere, just to make sure.
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It's not working anymore, is it?
Re:The Muzzies are coming! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Muzzies are coming! (Score:4, Funny)
Extremists: taking planned obsolescence one step too far.
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What else do you expect from uptight nuts?
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pull back to a little bit tolerant
Tolerant of what, exactly?
You might note that they don't suggest to troll Muslims in general, just al Qaeda and other jihadists. Are you suggesting that we should be tolerant of their ideology of violent spread of their religion?