GOD DEFINITELY EXISTS FOR SURE

Colo Millz

Trolling and Bullshit

This brief post examines the difference between the internet phenomenon of trolling and the separate but related phenomenon of bullshit as defined and discussed by Harry G. Frankfurt in his famous essay On Bullshit.

In that essay, Frankfurt distinguishes bullshit from lying. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it. The bullshitter does not care whether what they say is true or false. Bullshit, for Frankfurt, is speech produced with indifference to truth, motivated instead by the management of a particular impression that is trying to be made.

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.” – Frankfurt

The danger of bullshit, Frankfurt warns, lies in its subtlety: it erodes the value of truth itself by making sincerity or style a substitute for truthfulness.

The internet phenomenon of trolling can be seen as a category of bullshit - but bullshit on steroids. While Frankfurt’s analysis illuminates speech motivated by indifference to truth, trolling reveals a related but more performative form of indifference, one not driven by self-promotion, but by disruption, irony, and the pursuit of affect rather than understanding.

A troll is someone who speaks bullshit but explicitly invites, in fact, compels, the viewer to react against it. The visceral disgust we feel toward bullshit is part of the troll’s game - but unlike the bullshitter, the troll wants us to notice and care that what is being said is, or may be, false.

My child likes to play a game where she points her finger at me, almost touching my face, but stops just an inch away, saying, “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you.” This is trolling. By contrast, when she sits in the back seat arguing with her brother, and I tell them to stop, she might protest, “I’m not touching him.” That is bullshit. The latter feigns innocence for the sake of impression management. The former goes beyond this and delights in provoking a reaction.

We no longer live in an age of bullshit, but of something beyond it - an age of trolling.

Recently on X, President Trump posted an AI-generated video of himself flying a fighter jet and dumping a mass of fecal matter on “No Kings” protesters below. This is an example par excellence of trolling.

Trolling shares bullshit’s key danger of eroding the value of truth by substituting style and performance for sincerity, but it goes further. In trolling, the value of truth is no longer merely eroded as a side effect - it is deliberately targeted.

Thus, trolling shares bullshit’s indifference to truth but adds an element of nihilism. Truth and falsehood are no longer mixed unintentionally, as in bullshit; both are wielded deliberately as tools for generating chaos. Trolling signifies not mere indifference to truth, but contempt for it. It doesn’t just transform speech into sophistry - it weaponizes it.

If the prevailing mode of bullshit in our society is advertising, then trolling represents what happens when that mode becomes self-aware. Advertising teaches us to value attention over truth; trolling celebrates that condition. It marks the point at which we are no longer merely susceptible to manipulation - we have become addicted to it, fascinated by the power of provocation itself.

If bullshit ignores truth for the sake of impression management, trolling ignores truth for the sake of spectacle. The troll’s goal is not to appear credible or admirable, but to elicit a reaction, often at the expense of any meaningful communication.

If bullshit marks a disregard for truth, trolling marks a disregard for dialogue itself - a symptom of a digital culture that values power more than understanding.

Joshs

If bullshit marks a disregard for truth, trolling marks a disregard for dialogue itself - a symptom of a digital culture that values power more than understanding. — Colo Millz

I would counter that your post confuses cause with symptom by positing the motive for bullshit and trolling as the valuing of arbitrary power for its own sake. You don’t seem to allow that lying, bullshit and trolling may not be primarily intended to cause breakdown in understanding, but may arise as adaptive coping responses to such breakdown. The problem then would not be lying but the deterioration of trust that makes one believe lying is the only recourse. I find the accusation of ‘trolling’ to be most often used as a dismissive weapon to delegitimize the reasoning and justifications of those who we disagree with.

ChatteringMonkey

↪Colo Millz

My child likes to play a game where she points her finger at me, almost touching my face, but stops just an inch away, saying, “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you.” This is trolling. By contrast, when she sits in the back seat arguing with her brother, and I tell them to stop, she might protest, “I’m not touching him.” That is bullshit. The latter feigns innocence for the sake of impression management. The former goes beyond this and delights in provoking a reaction. — Colo Millz

This was very funny, especially the dry serious way you conveyed it.

I would say if it weren't for Plato rethorics would be considered the 'natural' way of using speech. And Protagoras would consider appeal to truth just another form of sophistry.

Bullshitting then is perhaps a more honest self-conscious way of using speech in that it recognizes and plays with the inherent rethorical nature of speech. And trolling would be a way to actively undermine the force of the rethorical game the sophists that appeal to truth play.

If rethorics was the name of the game in pre-socratic Greece, than there is nothing essentially nihilistic about it.

Colo Millz

↪Joshs

It may be that we cannot finally determine the motivation for a speech act without the aid of psychology. For all we know Trump's X tweet may be a cry for help.

But while motive can diverge from the effect of a speech act, the cultural consequences of these behaviors remain ethically and socially significant.

Even if the origin of trolling is not malicious, it results in a breakdown in trust and in cynicism.

Colo Millz

↪ChatteringMonkey

Yes, in recognizing that all speech is strategic, self-interested, and contextual, the bullshitter or troll unmasks the illusion that language could ever really escape the play of rhetoric.

In that sense, “bullshitting” can be a more authentic stance than a pious appeal to “truth,” which often disguises its own rhetorical posture.

The nihilism only enters once Plato posits a transcendent realm of Truth. Speech must forever be measured and found wanting against that "Truth".

So the irony is the Platonic cure for sophistry creates the very disease of skepticism it wanted to prevent.

In a way Plato himself thereby invents the problem of bullshit.

T Clark

Inappropriately misleading thread title.

Joshs

↪Colo Millz

Even if the origin of trolling is not malicious, it results in a breakdown in trust and in cynicism. — Colo Millz

I’m just skeptical about the idea that we can define ‘trolling’ as a thing, apart from the intersubjective dynamics between the alleged troller and the annoyed accuser. One person’s trolling is another’s critique. From one vantage, it is the troll which produces breakdown in trust and in cynicism. From another vantage, the troll
is merely an adaptive response to breakdown in trust and in cynicism.

DingoJones

Inappropriately misleading thread title. — T Clark

Tell someone cares.

baker

Even if the origin of trolling is not malicious, it results in a breakdown in trust and in cynicism. — Colo Millz

Rather, it's the other way around. The breakdown of trust and the cynicism can lead to various socially unacceptable behaviors. Tellingly, the breakdown of trust and the cynicism are not considered socially unacceptable, but reacting to them in a negative way is.

T Clark

Tell someone cares. — DingoJones

I did

Colo Millz

I’m just skeptical about the idea that we can define ‘trolling’ as a thing, apart from the intersubjective dynamics between the alleged troller and the annoyed accuser. One person’s trolling is another’s critique. From one vantage, it is the troll which produces breakdown in trust and in cynicism. From another vantage, the troll
is merely an adaptive response to breakdown in trust and in cynicism. — Joshs

Rather, it's the other way around. The breakdown of trust and the cynicism can lead to various socially unacceptable behaviors. Tellingly, the breakdown of trust and the cynicism are not considered socially unacceptable, but reacting to them in a negative way is. — baker

Maybe it is like a feedback loop, to use a favorite concept from cognitive science. I.e. the environment shapes the behavior, the subsequent behavior feeds back into the environment.

Tom Storm

I find the accusation of ‘trolling’ to be most often used as a dismissive weapon to delegitimize the reasoning and justifications of those who we disagree with. — Joshs

Totally agree with this. Often expressed as, 'You're either lying or a troll..."

Tom Storm

↪Colo Millz

If the prevailing mode of bullshit in our society is advertising, then trolling represents what happens when that mode becomes self-aware. Advertising teaches us to value attention over truth; trolling celebrates that condition. It marks the point at which we are no longer merely susceptible to manipulation - we have become addicted to it, fascinated by the power of provocation itself.

If bullshit ignores truth for the sake of impression management, trolling ignores truth for the sake of spectacle. The troll’s goal is not to appear credible or admirable, but to elicit a reaction, often at the expense of any meaningful communication.

If bullshit marks a disregard for truth, trolling marks a disregard for dialogue itself - a symptom of a digital culture that values power more than understanding. — Colo Millz

I'm not quite sure what your plans for this OP were. I've never taken much interest in lying or in bullshit.

From what I see, the world is primarily about marketing a perspective. For some, this is lies; for others, Frankfurt’s bullshit; and for others still, it is truth.

Are you arguing that the world lacks trust and has become cynical because of trolling and bullshit? Is this a factor in the West's meaning crisis?

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