No, trolling doesn't work that way.
I saw a posting online making fun of an alleged "Tick-Tock" challenge where supposedly you can change your jaw line by hitting yourself with a hammer every day. I think it has to be a joke of some sort - getting people to smash themselves in the face with a hammer has to be the ultimate idiotic Tick-Tock challenge.
But what was interesting were the comments about the posting, as shown above. One respondent opined that a real troll from China would be trying to organize a Communist worker's party in the United States. Never mind that China is not really Communist, but rather a brutal one-man dictatorship.
This goes back to what I said about Russian trolls. They aren't going online with poorly worded postings that "Russia good! USA bad!" but rather try to get us angry, upset, and hating each other. It isn't just one thing, but background noise - a Greek chorus - of discontent and ultimately, apathy.
The West is so awful it isn't worth saving! Kids these days! Eating tide pods and hitting themselves with hammers! It just makes no sense at all!
But that is the point, not "Comrade! Rise up and fight the oppressors!" - although I am sure that they troll the neo-communist and socialist discussion groups as well. And when they do, they are not obvious about it, but want to stir up discontent.
You read a posting about someone with $200,000 in student loans that they "can never pay off!" and you are probably looking at a troll account. You read a posting about how "I'll never be able to afford a home!" (something I once thought, before I owned four of them, at one time) it is likely a troll. Funny thing, but those "broke Millennials" who ruined Avocado Toast (is that still a trope?) or whatever, are mostly successful middle-aged people who actually own their own homes, now.
We are being trolled. All the time, every time. And the trolls are not trying to persuade us that China or Russia is great, but rather that the USA or Canada or the West in general, sucks. And since people tend to love bad news, it isn't hard to sell this message. Everything is awful! Only a Trump dictatorship can save Democracy and preserve "freedom" - you know, like in China or Russia! Oh, if only to live in China or Russia, where you can own all the firearms you want and can speak your peace and even protest the government! It is a paradise of freedom!
The sarcasm light is lit.
It is our strength, not our weakness that we can disagree about things and protest the government and say we don't like one party over another. People criticize the two-party system we have in the USA, but fail to realize it is a thousand-fold improvement over the one-party system they have in half the world today. We have it pretty good, if only we stopped to notice it.
And no, not "everyone" is so dumb as to hit themselves with hammers or eat laundry detergent. But a lot of people are stupid enough to go on social media, and sites like Twitter and Tick-Tock, in particular. And as we are discovering, it ain't hard to convince them of anything - that the world is flat, the moon landing was faked, Donald Trump is the new Jesus - anything.
And no, this nonsense doesn't directly affect one country over another, but it creates this background of discontent and distrust. "You can't trust the mainsteram media!" they cry, "They will tell you that vaccines don't cause autism, but the mommy group I subscribe to on Facebook has the real info!"
As I write this, there is a controversy over the "bombing" of a hospital on Gaza. Hamas claims Israel did it in an "air raid" and postings online tell me that Israel "FIREBOMBED!" the hospital, in all caps, because "Firebomb" is so much more incendiary (pun not intended) than bombing. And of course, everyone was quick to jump on the bandwagon of "Israel Bad, Hamas Good!" which is nonsense, as Hamas is a terrorist organization that kills people for fun.
(UPDATE: As the smoke clears (no pun intended), it appears that the bombing of the hospital that killed a thousand people is widely overstated and, in fact, made up. There is one small crater in the parking lot from a Palestinian missile that set fire to number of cars. How a thousand people could have died in a hospital that only has 80 beds is questionable. Not only that, but pictures show the hospital is very much intact and not a pile of rubble as alleged. We are being trolled.)
Of course, a day later, we find out that maybe this wasn't the case. US tracking satellites show no Israel air strike took place at that time, and Israel provides ample evidence that the actual culprit was a Palestinian rocket gone astray. The Israelis also point out that if it was one of their airstrikes, the entire place would have been obliterated.
But you might as well shout into the wind at this point - the "true believers" will argue that "Well, of course Israel would say that!" And you see how trolling works - you can convince people to believe what you want them to believe and immediately discount any contrary argument. The first casualty in any war is the truth.
The true believers believe because they been conditioned to believe just about anything. That is the point of the subtle online trolls.
Maybe a year from now - or ten years - we'll know what really happened. And in ten years, I have no doubt that the situation in Gaza will remain unchanged.
And a new generation of online users will be trolled as well.
[–]Gnukk 1 point