TL;DR: Trolls don’t pick targets at random. They go where they can get a reaction, and certain online behaviors light them up like a beacon. There are sixteen of them, from sharing personal stories to correcting people to simply being visible. None of these behaviors are wrong. But knowing which ones draw trolls lets you decide when to post freely, when to lock things down, and when to block on sight. Here are all sixteen, plus how trolls operate and what to do when one finds you.
I have no sympathy for trolls, and I don’t think anyone should waste much on them. They go after people for sharing a diagnosis, a divorce, a political opinion or a photo of a new baby, and then they call it free speech. The people I worry about are the quiet ones who get hit once and stop posting for good, because every one of those exits leaves the conversation poorer and hands the room to the person who wrecked it.
What is an internet troll?
A troll is someone who shows up to wreck the conversation. They post inflammatory or off-topic junk to provoke a reaction, start arguments, and upset people on purpose. The goal is never to add anything. What they want is to get a rise out of you and watch the thread fall apart.
A troll isn’t someone who disagrees with you.Share on X
The word covers a range. Some trolls are loud and obvious, dropping insults and moving on. Others are quiet and patient, working a thread for an hour to turn a calm discussion into a brawl. What they share is intent. A troll isn’t someone who disagrees with you. A troll is someone who showed up to ruin the room, and disagreement is just the tool they reach for first. If you want the psychology behind why they do it, I cover that in Unmasking the Dark Art of the Internet Troll.
Most people share a lot online now. Their politics, their religion, their health, their relationships, things that used to stay private. Some of that is fine. A lot of it is bait, and trolls know it. Strong beliefs draw them in. The more personal and the more heated the post, the more it looks like an easy target.
Why your privacy settings will not save you
People assume the privacy controls handle this. They don’t, because regardless of how locked down your settings are, it’s possible, with some effort, for your employer, your spouse, a friend, an enemy, or a complete stranger to see what you wrote. Screenshots travel. Friends of friends have access. Platforms change their defaults without telling you.
That matters for two reasons. The first is that what you post can follow you into your job, your credit, your insurance, your marriage, and parts of your life you never connected to a comment box. The second is simpler. Strongly held personal beliefs attract trolls, and the privacy setting you think hides them is doing far less than you believe. Assume anything you post is public. Then decide what to post. For more on how much you give away without realizing it, see Social Media Privacy: What You’re Actually Giving Away.
I blame the platforms for a lot of this. They build privacy menus that look like locks and behave like curtains, and they change the defaults whenever it suits the business.
A company holding that much of people’s lives ought to tell them plainly who can see what. They don’t, so I tell people to assume the worst and post accordingly.
What behaviors attract internet trolls?
Trolls go where they think they can cause disruption, grab attention, or pull a reaction out of you. Look at the behaviors that set them off and you’ll notice how much of it is normal online life: sharing personal stories, correcting people, holding strong opinions, simply being visible. You aren’t doing anything wrong by doing those things, and I’d hate for anyone to read this as a reason to go silent. Being visible makes you a target, and knowing which habits raise your profile lets you pick your moments.
- Sharing personal stories. Trolls target people who post personal or sensitive information. They see emotion as a soft spot to exploit, and a heartfelt post is an open door.
- Expressing strong opinions. Strong political, religious, or otherwise pointed posts become magnets. The firmer the stance, the bigger the target.
- Correcting others. Pointing out someone’s mistake, even politely, can draw a troll. Nobody enjoys being corrected, and a troll uses your correction as the opening move.
- Engaging with trolls. Responding to a troll or arguing with one only encourages them. This is the behavior most under your control and the one most worth breaking.
- Using hashtags. Trending or controversial hashtags make a post more visible. That makes it easier for trolls to find. A hashtag is a signal flare, and not everyone who sees it is friendly.
- Posting about controversial topics. Politics, religion, gender rights, and other divisive subjects are troll magnets. Trolls know exactly which topics start fires and they camp out where the smoke is.
- Being in the public eye. Celebrities, influencers, executives, and other visible people get trolled for the simple act of being seen. Visibility alone is enough.
- Frequent posting. Being very active or vocal, especially on polarizing content, gives trolls more chances to find you. Volume is visibility.
- Defending a cause or group. Advocacy draws heat, especially for a cause trolls like to attack. Standing up for something publicly raises your hand.
- Making errors. A typo, a wrong fact, a misjudgment. Trolls pounce on mistakes because an error hands them a reason to mock you that looks justified.
- Announcing success. Share an achievement and someone will want to bring you down out of jealousy or spite. Good news is bait for the resentful.
- Joining group discussions. Public forums and comment sections put you in range, especially when the topic is divisive and the crowd is already restless.
- Moderating or administering a group. Trolls target admins and moderators, sometimes because they got blocked or had a comment removed, sometimes just to challenge whoever holds authority.
- Being part of a minority group. Trolls go after people over race, gender, sexuality, and identity. This one is pure cruelty, and the target did nothing to invite it.
- Supporting or opposing a popular figure. Praise or attack a well-known celebrity or politician and you draw troll attention. Those names are where the crowds and the arguments already live.
- Asking sincere questions. On Reddit and other forums, trolls mock sincere questions just because sincerity is an easy thing to sneer at.
Most people do several of those every day, and I don’t want anybody giving them up because some stranger gets his kicks out of wrecking threads. That hands the troll a win without him writing a single reply. Learn the terrain so you can decide where to post freely and where to lock things down before you get blindsided.
| Group | Behaviors from the list | Why trolls notice |
|---|---|---|
| Sharing yourself | Personal stories, announcing success, making errors | Emotion looks like a soft spot; good news baits the resentful; errors invite mockery |
| Taking a stand | Strong opinions, controversial topics, defending a cause, backing or attacking a popular figure | The firmer the stance, the bigger the target |
| Being visible | Hashtags, frequent posting, being in the public eye | Volume is visibility, and visibility alone is enough |
| Joining the conversation | Correcting others, group discussions, sincere questions | Corrections and sincerity give trolls an opening move |
| Engaging with trolls | Responding or arguing with them | Only encourages them; the behavior most under your control |
| Holding a role or identity | Moderating a group, being part of a minority group | Trolls challenge authority and target identity out of pure cruelty |
How does a skilled troll operate?
I knew a guy. Call him Tim. Tim loved replying to posts all over the place with responses that were negative, sometimes openly and sometimes in a way you almost couldn’t pin down. He was a textbook troll.
You’d post something about a politician. Tim would reply with a comment that was a hook. Something that begged for an answer without crossing any line. You’d reply, calm and logical, explaining your position. Tim would come back a little sharper. Then a little sharper again. The pattern repeated until you were ready to throw your phone across the room, and Tim was sitting there delighted with himself.
Tim kept his hands clean. He stirred up so much bad feeling across a thread that nobody could tell who started it. Read his comments one at a time and they looked innocent. Follow the thread back and you’d find him feeding the fire, comment by comment, until the conversation collapsed into anger and somebody deleted the thread in frustration.
A clumsy troll just posts insults and pointed questions designed to enrage the room, and you can spot him in a second.
The skilled one is worse, because he makes you do the yelling for him. By the time the thread dies, you look like the angry one and Tim looks like a bystander who wandered into a fight. That’s the craft of it, and it’s why arguing back never works: every reply you write gives him another scene with you in the starring role.
Why can’t you win against a troll?
Replying to a troll in any form is called feeding the trolls. It’s exactly what they want. The food is your reaction.
Understand that and it changes how you handle them. You can’t win a conversation with a troll. They don’t care about you or the topic. The only goal is to upset whoever they can reach, to enrage people, and to blow up the conversation. There’s no argument you can make that works, because winning the argument was never on the table. You’re trying to score points in a game where the other player is trying to flip the board.
Ask a troll outright and they’ll play innocent. They’re just trying to educate you.
You’re trying to score points in a game where the other player is trying to flip the board.
They’re looking out for you. They’re keeping you from harm. It’s a lie, and a practiced one. Don’t let it lull you. They exist to make as many people as possible angry, unhappy, and worn down, and the wounded innocent act is part of the performance. The moment you accept the explanation, you’re back in the thread, replying, feeding.
What makes me angriest about this is who ends up paying. The people who get dragged into these threads are usually the most reasonable ones there, the people who believe a calm answer ought to work. They walk away feeling foolish and worn out, and the troll moves on to the next thread and does it again.
My take
Stop replying. A troll wants your reaction, and every calm, logical answer you write hands him another scene with you cast as the angry one. You won’t out-argue somebody who never cared about the argument. Post what you want, lock down what you need to, and block the second you spot the hook. The thread can die without you. Save your patience for the people in the room who deserve it.
What should you do instead of feeding trolls?
Ignore them. If you can spot one, remove them from the conversation. Better yet, ban them outright. On Facebook the cleanest fix I’ve found is to block them for good and move on with your day.
Blocking feels harsh to a lot of people, and some worry it’s censorship.
I don’t buy that for a second. Some people’s only purpose online is to sow discord and tear apart any attempt at a real conversation, and distance and anonymity strip away the brakes that would stop them face to face. A person who’d never say a word to you in a room will type things they’d be ashamed to say out loud, because the screen makes it feel like it doesn’t count.
Your conversations are better without trolls, and so is your peace of mind. Block them, ban them, delete their comments, and don’t spend another minute wondering whether you were fair. I’d much sooner lose one bad actor than watch a dozen decent people drift away from a group because the person running it was too polite to throw him out. Anyone who moderates a page or a group owes that protection to the people who show up in good faith.
Trolls feed on platforms built to reward anger. In Sins of the Internet I trace how the companies chose that design, starting with Facebook’s own finding that angry posts got six times the engagement.
