It's Troll Week on порнография по украинскиMashable. Join us as we explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of internet trolling.
It used to be that the troll population consisted primarily of sweaty nerds. But now, everyone's trolling, including crappy steak brands and ... actual candidates for higher office.
Used correctly, trolling — which uses inflammatory humor and pranks to provoke emotional reactions — can be an artful weapon. It can mobilize a base, stun the opposition, and help folks who lack connections construct a large, authentic social media presence.
No wonder, then, that politicians running for higher office have started to use troll psychology. Their ads are trolly. Their tweets are trolling.
Everywhere we look, we're being governed by trolls.
SEE ALSO: Steak-umm is using anti-consumerism to get you to buy. Snooze.I'm so sorry.
President Trump, of course, is our troll-in-chief. His brain may be full of expired mayo packets (troll, see troll), but he sure is good at energizing a bunch of frightening people online into doing his maniacal will.
Remember when he convinced Twitter that the 3,000 people who died in Puerto Rico weren't real people, and were instead part of a Democratic conspiracy? That was the work of a troll as well as the work of the devil.
Between #FakeNews hashtags, borderline doxxing, and white supremacist memes, he's used nearly every tool from the troll toolbox.
And many of the political candidates of 2018 are using some of those very same weapons to buttress their own campaigns.
Here are just few of their trolly weapons.
1. Pivot to video, then troll
Video is where the political troll thrives. Just 24% of Americans use Twitter, for example, compared to 73% of Americans who use YouTube. 96.5% of all Americans, aka everyone except the dorks I went to college with, own a television. Video has the capacity to reach the broadest possible audience.
Trolling, which uses humor and confrontation to provoke a reaction, is built for the medium.
Very rarely, it can even do real good. Just take a look at the best campaign ad of 2018, produced for Democratic candidate David Brill:
Apologies for the overused media superlative, but weaponizing your opponent's family against them is brilliant. It's also classic troll behavior: cruel, biting, and a little bit subversive. It's not likely to cause defections from the opponent's base, but it did attract national press and Democratic praise.
On the opposite end of the political spectrum, there's Florida gubernatorial candidate and "Pitbull Trump Defender" Ron DeSantis. In August, DeSantis published an ad featuring him building a toy wall, modeled after Trump's wall, with his son.
It's not like Trump's wall or DeSantis' fake wall will ever materialize. It's the fear it inspires among the immigrant community and the rage it inflames among the left that matters.
DeSantis' approach is Troll 101, where emotion (liberal tears) trumps substance (physical walls).
Then there are the ads that straddle the line between sarcasm/hyperbole and reality. In the spring, Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp released an ad in which he threatened his daughter's boyfriend with a gun. Kemp made the boyfriend promise he would demonstrate "Respect, and a healthy appreciation for the Second Amendment." This happened just months after the Parkland massacre and after a long spike of mass shootings in schools.
"Brian Kemp is a conservative. Get over it," Kemp for Governor spokesman Ryan Mahoney said when asked about the ad. "He loves his daughters, values our 2nd Amendment rights, and will be an unapologetic fighter for our families as Georgia’s next governor."
The ad had all the classic troll ingredients — anger, "humor," subversion — with an added troll bonus: It almost felt real.
Sometimes candidates will take the Troll Technique (TM) too far. Republican Michael Williams created a deportation bus, which he planned to fill with undocumented immigrants and drive around Georgia. No matter that the bus couldn't "technically" deport anyone; that's not how trolls work. Williams had a deportation bus ad filmed for YouTube and for TV.
So incendiary and morally repulsive was this ad that YouTube — one of our most debased platforms — took it down because it violated hate speech guidelines. Thankfully, Williams' garbage bus broke down almost immediately into its tour.
Democrats also overstep. Colorado Democratic congressional candidate Levi Tillemann once made an ad in which he sprayed himself with pepper spray. Tillemann was trying to make the point that teachers should carry pepper spray, not guns, but the troll just seemed to cause confusion.
Can't we just give teachers copier paper instead of flammable acid?
Both Tillemann and WIlliams lost their primary campaigns. We can't blame these ads specifically, but it certainly didn't help.
Even trolling has its limits.
2. Home Sweet Twitter
Twitter, not video, has always been the best platform for troll extremism. Twitter was, after all, the last platform to ban Alex Jones, and only because of a dumb publicity stunt. It's been called a "Nazi haven." Posting a tweet takes considerably less energy than producing a video, but can generate the same amount of animosity. It's home territory for trolls. And that's why Trump has excelled there. Many candidates across the political spectrum have since followed his trolling lead.
In contention for the best troll of 2018 is Democratic candidate Leslie Cockburn, who once accused her opponent, Denver Riggleman, of liking Bigfoot erotica. Riggleman had written a book, which he claims was a parody, about the mating habits of Bigfoot.
"This is not what we need on Capitol Hill," Cockburn said.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Let me correct Ms. Cockburn: Bigfoot erotica is exactly what we need on Capitol Hill. I'd much rather have my representatives discuss the girth ratio of monster penis than hear Jeff Flake speak ever again.
I'm not sure if you can measure the success of a Bigfoot takedown, but Cockburn is currently leading in a district held by a Republican incumbent. This is either the result of a Democratic blue wave or Bigfoot sex negativity.
Other, far more upsetting examples exist. Take independent Mark Roberts, who one day decided he'd call Melania Trump a #hoebag on Twitter.
Now, I'm no political strategist. I'd just like to believe that a hashtag #hoebag campaign wouldn't be successful even in our fascist-fetishistic post-apocalyptic never-ending political dystopia. Roberts' tweet proceeded to tank among the left and the right.
There are Twitter trolls who are far more successful than Roberts and more consistent than Cockburn. Trigger warning: The following section cites Senator Ted Cruz multiple times.
If there's anyone who qualifies as a troll on Twitter, it's Cruz. This season, he's had to compete against a younger, likable, *actually human* candidate.
In response, he and his staff have turned up their troll game. The results have been, um, mixed:
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Look, it's hard for all of us to watch Ted Cruz use emojis.
After the joke tanked, his spokeswoman spoke out on his behalf:
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
It's more than just barbecue. Ted Cruz also isn't afraid to share memes on the internet like that supposedly "cool" guy, Beto.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Credit where credit's due: Once Ted Cruz had a genuinely funny troll about Senators Ben Sasse, Tom Cotton, and Chuck Schumer, three also deeply hated people.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
None of these trolls have been good enough to allow me to think that Senator Ted Cruz is human or even human-lite, however.
Still, Twitter trolling has a way of making people who are insufferable on camera and painful in real life look ... almost normal. Even Trump just looks like a moron on Twitter. How comforting.
At its best, trolling can bring out the weirdest and kindest in us.
It's all so incredibly rare.
3. Trolls, You Have My Heart
When candidates troll too hard, it often backfires. Levi Tillemann lost his primary. Ted Cruz is routinely trashed on Twitter. Meanwhile, those who troll quietly and carry a big followers list are often most successful.
Hats off to, I'm so sorry to say it, Republican Governor Scott Walker, whose campaign included one of the weirdest trolls of 2018. Walker criticized his opponent Tony Evers with an ad modeled after the extremely unpopular opening theme song to The Electric Company.
Do you remember The Electric Company? Of course you don't. I barely do, and I'm a child of the public television era.
How could Walker possibly think this would be successful? Was he chasing the coveted Xennial independent child's television demographic?
Shortly after Walker released his ad, his Democratic opponent trolled Walker by releasing a dueling Electric Companyad. The whole exchange was so gosh darn charming it made me want to move to Wisconsin and eat cheese curds in my luxury La-Z-Boy purchased for Sears.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Listen. Trolling has a bad reputation for an excellent reason: It's become synonymous with social media harassment. Every once in a while, however, candidates who possess a soul can use it to their advantage. If 2018 gave us anything good, it's the idea that people can use all the classic troll techniques — humor, nostalgia, cruelty, and inflammatory pop-culture references — without turning into a monster/Donald Trump. We've always had biting campaign ads and winky social media campaigns. They've just never been this aggressive, this mobilizing, and this prolific.
Politicians on the side of justice and good trolls, this is your era.
Featured Video For You
Boston Dynamics 'parkour' robot took more than 20 attempts to nail it