Troll In the Dungeon
How I Manage the Cesspool that is Internet "Discourse"
Stan Lee once said, “With great power comes great responsibility”, a line that Spiderman, Marvel, and general comic book aficionados know all too well. Had Stan been writing comics in the modern era of social media and speaking to his teenage superhero, he might have also said, “With great fame and popularity comes many detractors and trolls”.
Of course, this has always been the case. People acting in bad faith arguments or trying to get a rise out of someone is certainly not an internet phenomenon. However, in the digital age people thrive in this space because of the anonymity and lack of personal responsibility behind a screen. Long story short, it’s much easier to be a jerk (or justify cruelty) when you take the humanity out of a dialogue/situation.
Sadly, it’s a tactic we see far too often in spaces a lot more important than sports fans going back and forth online, but I will NOT be touching any of those subjects today. I want to focus specifically on how one can spot a troll relatively quickly with a little research, and how to guard yourself against annoyingly mind-numbing engagement. Now, if you choose to go back and forth with said trolls, more power to you.
How I Tolerate Twitter
I will not be calling it X. Its mamma named it Twitter Ima call it Twitter.
I’ll be honest. For about 4 years I stayed off Twitter because of the trolling element and being bombarded with terrible things unsolicited. Somehow Facebook was a better option (letting you know how long ago that was). However, when someone told me I could block/mute words I was back on the platform. For total transparency, I block and/or mute any political, pseudo political, propaganda oriented, political influencer, clearly biased news source…you get the gist. I also have almost all words affiliated with anything that could be perceived as political fodder muted as well. I’ve had to mute everything from communist and conservative, to something as mundane as the word “woke” because people don’t know what they’re talking about and engaging in bad faith commentary.
Needless to say, to keep a timeline cleansed of the arena where the most bad faith actors preside, takes due diligence and dedication. Call it censoring if you want, I call it looking after my own mental health. Besides, less than a percent of a percent of THAT space on Twitter is sharing anything with the hopes of engaging in a genuine dialogue. It’s all about stirring up hate, fear, and division.
As a result, I have over 4,750 accounts muted or blocked on the platform, and over 30 words/phrases as well. It keeps my timeline *mostly* sports related unless it’s something else I enjoy like travel, Marvel stuff, music, science and what not. But most of you who read my articles know me to be someone who is a gigantic sports fan, especially when it comes to college football and softball. So how do I apply the same level of scrutiny when it comes to accounts that do their trolling in those spaces?
My Twitter Rules of Engagement
If you’ve known me for a while, you have likely heard me allude to my “Twitter Rules of Engagement” in passing, especially if I see a friend engaging with someone who really has no interest in dialogue. While they are not hardlines, I would say 99 percent of the time it helps me steer clear of troll accounts or folks who are just in it to instigate. There’s a difference between the usual sports back and forth, and those who just want to hurl insults. So, before I choose to potentially engage in a discussion with a reply, I check the following:
When was the account created? Simple enough. Easy to refer back to when pairing with the other rules.
Number of followers. I don’t have a huge number myself, but in general this combined with the first rule tends to show the intent of an account.
Account profile. *generally* speaking, if your account profile has anything political in it, I just move on. Again, this isn’t party specific, I do that for everyone. Crypto and a couple other things are red flags too. There are very rare exceptions.
Profile Picture. If it’s some stock photo/unoriginal, unless I know the account personally, I will likely not engage.
Account activity. I will look at the likes, replies, tweets, retweets, anything that will give me information about how that “person” engages on the platform. If they are mostly replies and/or retweets, I tend to stay away. If original tweets are also sparse, I do the same.
Content. Again, kind of like rule 5 but more specific. It’s pretty simple to see what a person is about on their account based on what they say, it’s just a matter of doing a quick scroll to see it.
These are the rules I look at before choosing to engage with a profile, and it has served me well. While 6 criteria may seem like a lot, it really doesn’t take more than 30 seconds to gather all of this information. From there I choose to engage, ignore, or sometimes block outright. An ODU fan I follow told me sometimes they’ll just block an obvious bad actor before giving them the chance to say something derogatory or offensive, and I can't blame him for that.
Trolls vs. Parody Accounts
You’d think this would be obvious, but sometimes the lines are blurred. In general, parody accounts are easy to spot. Those doing so are more likely than not going to state it in their profile or have a “not” (insert person) as their stated name. What’s made it more difficult is the fact that anyone can pay to be verified nowadays, so one does have to read the fine print. The Not Coach Cignetti account sometimes gets a little miffed when I talk about trolls on Twitter, but I have to remind them that there’s a difference between parody and trolling. I think a parody account can troll, but most do so within the parameters of said parody.
Why I Am Writing This Now
While dealing with sports banter is nothing new for me and fans of any sports team, when a team or institution you care for starts to gain more and more prestige, the trolls tend to come for you. For this specifically, I am talking about JMU and the “recent” football success and national attention. Of course, JMU fans and players are used to said success, however being FBS now and in a conference with more engaged fan bases, detractors and trolls are a lot more likely to pop up.
And to be fair, I do find some of the noise JMU fans make about the postseason ban to be a bit much from time to time, though I do understand the frustration. That said, when one is loud about something like this, inevitably it invites those who wish to try and get a rise out of you to slide into those replies or post something in a Facebook group. Personally, I just try to stay humble and allow the players to do the talking, but I get that back and forth is fun. Our fan base is passionate, and I can see why it gets on other people’s nerves, but it’s probably more annoying that the football team is able to back it up with play on the field.
The Flaming Elephant in the Room
We expect back and forth from SunBelt fans, accounts, and even the likes of UVA and Virginia Tech. While the latter two may hold their noses while they admit it, JMU is now a legitimate thorn in their side in terms of recruiting. However, the oddest obsession that seems to have come from our move up to FBS has been the obsession that Liberty fans have had with diving into any discussion where JMU is mentioned.
For purposes of this article, I will not go into why I personally almost never engage with that fan base online or otherwise. That’s maybe a topic for another time, because of the personal experience me and fellow band members had to endure traveling to that campus for a game. However, when it comes to online banter, they are by far the most obnoxious and unhinged when it comes to trolling JMU and coming with bad faith and poorly researched “talking points”. It’s to the point where anything that a Chris Vannini, ESPN, Big Game Boomer does that acknowledges JMU, those replies will inevitably have 15-20 Liberty related accounts spewing something.
Personally, I don’t see them as a rival. I understand that some JMU folks will have family that went there or perhaps pursued education there as well. But it is certainly not the same kind of family comradery we have with other Virginia institutions. Hence, I pretty much never choose to engage with their accounts/block most of them. And in case any Liberty fan happens upon this article, no, this has nothing to do with religion.
At the end of the day, it also comes down to self-preservation. A JMU fan I know very well does choose to swim in their waters, and as a result he is in their crosshairs frequently, to the tune of multiple accounts tagging him when Liberty beat JMU in swim and dive a couple weeks ago. It’s one thing to have back and forth but again, when multiple accounts in the same fan base are tagging a specific person for something like that, it gives off weird energy to me.
Of course, I try to treat everyone on a case-by-case basis. No one likes to be lumped into a group and be told “no, all of you are like this”. However, when constantly presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary along with personal experiences to back it up, the exceptions are few and far between compared to the norm. And like I said, there are A LOT of accounts from this specific fan base that seem to be more interested in bashing JMU and the SunBelt rather than talking up their own athletic department or CUSA. Perhaps they’re mad the SunBelt chose ODU and JMU over them, and that their online money wasn’t enough to bribe themselves in.
Deep Breath, There’s Hope
With more bots popping up on Twitter and so many troll posts happening in Sunbelt affiliated Facebook groups it may look like things are just too much, too annoying and altogether not worth the time to have fun with. While I understand this and why I more or less only post articles on Facebook anymore, there’s still ways to combat trolls and bad actors. Don’t give them the oxygen or time of day. Trolls feed off of your frustration and get high off of the angst they create in you. For better or worse hate, fear, and anxiety sell, and this is precisely what trolls’ traffic in, even in the sports debate.
I’ll leave you with this. An account created in 2023 All4OneCUSA has been one of the loudest and most idiotic detractors when it comes to JMU and the SunBelt as a whole. While the account tries to say it’s about the whole of CUSA, their disdain for JMU and the time the account was created make it painfully obvious it’s run by a Liberty fan. As a result, I avoided engagement with them. A couple weeks ago though, they were doing their usual trolling and I decided to respond to them with reasonable talking points. They were lengthy and I did not engage with insults, but the account apparently did not enjoy my levelheaded responses. I did not feed their need to prop up whatever stereotype they had of a JMU fan, and they were obviously not getting under my skin to have me act irrationally.
Couple days later, they blocked me. I honestly consider that a win. By not giving into their need to feed off of negative emotions, I annoyed the troll into removing themselves from my own space. This won't always work, but it is a pretty good way to rid yourself of unwanted engagement, at least on Twitter anyway.
That said, enjoy the back and forth. I love that JMU is in a conference where the fan bases are so passionate, we can have this genuine back and forth. Just keep some of my Twitter rules of engagement in mind when doing so. Don’t give the trolls the time of day or oxygen, and you’ll inevitably be rid of them. If they persist, just block. Trust me, you’ll be in a much better mental space with your dialogue online if you do so!
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