Internet "Trolls": How to Properly Handle These Nuisances

An internet "Troll" is basically someone who comes online to be a little terror. They act poorly, try to cause problems and just plain aggravate anything and everything that they come in contact with. These people can make chatting online a pain and can even end up causing people to stray. Seeing as one popular forum for trolls to come on is IRC (Internet Relay Chat) I will go over a few ways to handle these troublemakers without getting yourself into serious trouble.

When these "trolls" come on to chat, they will immediately try to stir up the first amount of garbage that they can. They may say something that is rather racist or just plain 'stupid'. These trolls are hoping to tick off the first person who reads it and start a fight. Why? Who can rightfully say, they could be some bored kid not being supervised and wanting to see what mischief they can get into before being banned. I will warn you right now, they may say things that will hit you personally - in fact, they may be counting on this probability. Even if it's only remote, they may just end up saying things that are so horrible that you will become angry.

Your first reaction to these creatures is probably to argue back - they're wrong most of the time, after all. However, this reaction is wrong and should be avoided at all costs. Unless you're well versed in debate, you'll just end up making yourself look foolish and ending up being punished as bad as the troll may be, too, or even worse. These "trolls" feed off of the negativity, basically.

If you are a channel operator the easiest thing you can do is merely kick them out of the channel. This resolves the issue fairly quickly and leaves the channel (a channel is a chat room, basically) to resume normal activity. However, there is that chance they realize it wasn't a ban and they may return. You can issue them a warning first to watch their behavior or face a ban, but chances are they'll be determined to return to cause even more trouble. Sure, on occasion you'll get the, 'I was kidding, sorry!' response and they chill out, but chances are they'll be back in, the figurative fists flying and you then have a just reason to ban. This will prevent the person from returning to the channel - unless they ban evade. In this instance, you can always get an IRCop and they can issue a G-Line. (A G-Line is a global line, which means they are banned from the entire server) Beyond that, the problem should be solved.

Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be a channel operator unless the owner is overly generous and insists on all having equal power. While that isn't too bad an idea, it just doesn't happen all that regularly. There are several things you can do in order to rid yourself of this troll. Channel Operators aren't always around, this can be a sad reality especially if there is only one or two on at all. You can't honestly expect these people to live on their computer, however, some do. As eerie as that sounds, yes, there are those that always seem to be around. Anyway, so here you are in a channel chatting and a troll comes in, fingers a flaring up a horrible remark and they're being serious.
You can ignore it by pretending they aren't even there. This may spur them to act worse or just leave when you don't You can always hope for the latter, but chances are they will crave the attention and work even harder for this cause.
From here you can either request them to please stop and hope they have a brain and will respect this request or you can simply place an /ignore on them. (By typing /ignore you do not see messages in the channel from the person and they can not send you private messages. If you have to do this as a last option, it's the most useful tool to have when that operator just happens to be missing in action.

However, not everyone will put the troll on ignore and he may just start trying new tactics to cause problems. This is when you contact an operator. The operator can then deal with the situation and leave you to your chatting.

What you shouldn't do, ever, is try to fuel these people further - that makes you just as much a guilty party as the troll. Along with this, do not encourage others to fight back and never seek out people who are willing to look for a fight too. If you take a step back you can see how immature these 'irc fights' can be. Also, don't ever do a personal attack on a computer, or a DOS (A DOS is basically a denial of service attack and they are illegal). Remember that these trolls lust anything negative thrown at them and when they have nowhere to go that gets a rise out of anybody, they do go away. Just be patient and hopefully soon they will disappear.