Hey Cain!

[Pæs]

I've been away for a while, playing DUST 514, which is the FPS tie-in to EVE Online. These games have a massive metagame behind them, where political scheming, embezzlement, scams and the like are all encouraged by the game developers as valid means of achieving victory.

Do you have any recommendations which might be described as "Psychological Warfare for Dummies", "How to Destabilise Communities and Influence Uprisings" or "Trolling for Fun and Profit". Are these things available on the internet? I have suspicions regarding these spaceship pilots' ability to jump high enough which I would like to experiment with.

[Cain]

Hi.  I'm not ignoring this.  Well, not permamently anyway.  It's just I've had five hours of sleep, and I'm making myself tired in order to reset my sleep patterns.  At least, that's the plan.  There are such things but it might take a while to get it all together, even just as a list.

[Pæs]

No, sort your sleep out! My scheming can wait.

[Cain]

Right, I managed to get a solid 9 hours, which is practically a miracle.

So, firstly, I did include a short primer on psychological operations in the old HIMEOBS manual.  I'll quote here:

Causes of conflict can be nearly limitless, however the most frequent are the following:

Data (misinformation, lack of access, PI given out etc)

Relationships (anything relating to social interactions, from romance to personality clashes)

Values (politics, religion etc)

E-reputation (relates to the relationship one, but is of overriding importance and so deserves its own catergory)

Resources (control and say in the running of a site)


Fanning the flames

Never assume people are acting in good faith.  Everything is personal, or at least should be portrayed that way to the "wronged" party.

React to malice.  If someone clearly dislikes an other poster, stir it up.  Say things like "you're not going to stand for that, are you?"  PMing such sentiments is a good idea, as its basically a "lets you and him fight" situation.

Since the issue is personal, make sure the persons involved become a part of the argument.  Ad hominem and flaming is thus assured.

Also, everything is unfair.  Mods are always biased.  When a mod does not do something in your puppet's favour, they are clearly biased and the whole System is against the puppet.

Never allow the conflict to be defined.  The vaguer it is, the more likely more people are going to be insulted and get involved (napalm principle).  As soon as anyone tries to frame the debate, resist it. 

Not business as usual.  Try to disrupt other conversations with some skill (toolbox the threads) so that the complaint becomes the primary issue.

Reject attempts to seek common ground or play up similarities as psychological manipulation. 

Ignore threadjackers or toolboxers.  If someone should do this in the complaint thread, a troll needs to rejack the conversation quickly.

Claim all third parties are tainted by bias.  Make it up if you have to.  Also, make your pro-admin trolls overly keen on that person, thereby planting the seeds of suspicion.

Do not allow compromise.  You are in the right, are the wronged party.  Why should your puppet concede anything to the other side?


How to make the conflict worse: a "pro-admin" troll's guide

Attempt to stifle the debate.  Trolls pretending to suck up to the mods need to try and silence dissent, causing the conflict to become more venomous and likely to end up in a flame war.  If the puppet feels like they cannot get their point across via normal channels, extremer reactions result.

Shout Them Down. Don't let a single point slide, hammer every point, repeat to absurdum.

Enlist idiots.  Appeal to the most moronic members of the site for popular support.  Encourage them to dogpile the troll puppet.

Involve everyone.  Be it idiots you've enlisted, or ordinary members, get everyone in on the fun, one way or another!

Knife in the back.  Pretend to see their point, or concede they may be right.  Just as things look ready to die down, strike and start everything up again.


Miscellaneous tricks and tactics

The troll has the attacker's advantage of flexibility - you can start off being angelically good, then move to betrayal or alienation later on, according to what seems likely to be most effective.

Divide opinion as to your troll status.  If the distribution is quite even, this creates significant tension between the people on opposite ends of the spectrum; the skeptics are sickened at how others could be taken in by the performance, while the forgivers question the motives behind the continued hostility of the other members. The people in the middle may find themselves quietly taking sides, and the issue becomes a Land Mine. At this point, the you can exploit the tension and encourage conflict by subtly employing other tactics.

If someone praises a specific contribution, you should misrepresent this support as applying to yourself in general.

When the you are attacked, do the opposite: make the attack seem like it was against your contribution, regardless of what it is really about.

Trick n00bs into seeing you as a maligned and put upon person.  Win their support to create proxy forces willing to defend you.

Always always always exploit back room channels.  Gain peoples IM names and use these to pass on (mis)information that you want them to see.  You can use PMs, on one hand the mods may read them and banhammer you, but on the other they may be stupid enough to reveal so, thus showing a huge breach in trust which will turn the forum against them.  It's your call, really.

Also note any backroom comms among the mods and admins.  This is fertile ground for anti-authoritarian conspiracy theories and claims of cliques.  Make people feel outside the decision making process, then present your solution ('create discontent and solve it' is the basis of all
marketing).

Note any and all power imbalances among cliques.  Your entry into a certain clique may tip thescales enough for hostilities to be considered worthwhile, and you can also enrage individual members of larger cliques to the point where they call on backup and create inter-clique conflict.

Naturally, if you are the catalyst in the former example, you should confer with other trolls to make each side evenly matched, before systematically routing all of them.

I'll now look at getting a reading list together by actual professionals.

[LMNO]

This appears to be, while not relevant to anything I am doing with my life, at least interesting to my interests.

[Junkenstein]

Divide opinion as to your troll status.  If the distribution is quite even, this creates significant tension between the people on opposite ends of the spectrum; the skeptics are sickened at how others could be taken in by the performance, while the forgivers question the motives behind the continued hostility of the other members. The people in the middle may find themselves quietly taking sides, and the issue becomes a Land Mine. At this point, the you can exploit the tension and encourage conflict by subtly employing other tactics.

This is brilliant.

A couple of years ago when Thatcher was ill, this gem popped up and created an almighty shitstorm. I can't recall where it was posted but I do remember that the guy had never posted before or again. Just walked in and threw this delicate grenade

"Thatcher sick. Let's all keep our fingers crossed"

The flamewar is probably still going on.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Divide opinion as to your troll status.  If the distribution is quite even, this creates significant tension between the people on opposite ends of the spectrum; the skeptics are sickened at how others could be taken in by the performance, while the forgivers question the motives behind the continued hostility of the other members. The people in the middle may find themselves quietly taking sides, and the issue becomes a Land Mine. At this point, the you can exploit the tension and encourage conflict by subtly employing other tactics.

This is brilliant.

A couple of years ago when Thatcher was ill, this gem popped up and created an almighty shitstorm. I can't recall where it was posted but I do remember that the guy had never posted before or again. Just walked in and threw this delicate grenade

"Thatcher sick. Let's all keep our fingers crossed"

The flamewar is probably still going on.

That's beautiful.

[Cain]

Divide opinion as to your troll status.  If the distribution is quite even, this creates significant tension between the people on opposite ends of the spectrum; the skeptics are sickened at how others could be taken in by the performance, while the forgivers question the motives behind the continued hostility of the other members. The people in the middle may find themselves quietly taking sides, and the issue becomes a Land Mine. At this point, the you can exploit the tension and encourage conflict by subtly employing other tactics.

This is brilliant.

A couple of years ago when Thatcher was ill, this gem popped up and created an almighty shitstorm. I can't recall where it was posted but I do remember that the guy had never posted before or again. Just walked in and threw this delicate grenade

"Thatcher sick. Let's all keep our fingers crossed"

The flamewar is probably still going on.

Indeed, that is perfect.

And I often find when I'm having a reaction like the above (I'm normally the skeptic), it reinforces my gut suspicion about a poster.

[Telarus]

Good stuff here Cain, thanks.