Concern troll
From RationalWiki
A concern troll is said to be a subspecies of the common troll, who specializes in visiting sites of an opposing ideology and offering all sorts of unsolicited advice on how they could "improve" things. The term originated on Daily Kos. It is now generally used by extremist forums and blogs when confronted by moderates. Some so-called parodists "concern troll" on Conservapedia, and there has been evidence of concern trolling on Free Republic[1]. This valuable advice usually has the intention of silencing the strongest voices on the site, getting them to abandon the strongest arguments and soften their tone, so as to make the points more easily ignored. Concern trolls appear most frequently on very opinionated sites, on both the extreme right and extreme left[citation needed], and are generally easily spotted by the locals, since their advice is uniformly bad for them and good for their ideological opponents.
Another common tactic is the "a plague on both your houses" approach, where the concern troll tries to convince people that both sides of the ideological divide are doing the same thing, or are just as bad as each other, despite all evidence to the contrary. This preys on the sites' willingness to actually debate critics and allow dissenting commentary, since there normally isn't any more substance to these accusations than the endless repetition of the assertion.
It should be noted that this approach is only used against one side of the debate - and that no attempt is made to present the same advice to those who hold contrary views.
As with all species of troll, the concern troll should not be fed (if you subscribe to the beliefs of the trolled community), although liberal applications of ridicule are often effective in sending the moderate-leaning concern troll running to hide under its bridge.
Concern trolling on Conservapedia, however, is quite teh fun activity recommended for the entire family, and frequently leads to good material for Rationalwiki's What is going on at Conservapedia article.
[edit] An alternative view
Posts by people who, for example, are sincerely liberal Democrats but break from the liberal orthodoxy on one or more issues (usually immigration, abortion, single-payer health care, or guns), and posts by people who are political moderates and swing voters genuinely interested in a dialog -- usually on the premise that they are considering voting for Democrats but "this, this, and this thing" are what is holding them back -- are sometimes mistaken for concern trolls. These should be distinguished from real concern trolls, who hold opposing views and are there only to disrupt the site, but they are sometimes hard to distinguish. In this case real concern trolls tend to repeat the most ludicrous right-wing smears and stereotypes about Democrats and demand the people on the site distance themselves from whomever or whatever they are repeating smears about, however, an over-sensitivity about "concern trolls" can also have a stifling effect on debate, allowing only the most "pure" progressive-left opinions or pure extreme-right opinions to be voiced, and drive sincere people away when they are treated like common trolls.
In addition, it sometimes works the other way - the most progressive voices (for example, Ralph Nader supporters) have the "concern troll" label thrown at them as well. In both cases the casual throwing about of this term is a way of enforcing an in-group/out-group mentality and social norms in an online community. Not that different from how things work on Conservapedia, no?
[edit] See also
- Agent provocateur (this can be considered the opposite of concern trolling in that an agent provocateur will attempt be more extreme, rather than less extreme, compared to the group)
- Groupthink (this can lead to allegations of "concern trolling")
