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The troll’s purpose is to terminate or disrupt transit along a line of communication. He or she lurks beside, under, or astride a line of communication, waiting to waylay some thing or some one traveling along it. The troll’s job is to prevent orderly transit, and, if possible, prevent transit altogether, along a specific line of communication.

In fairytales, a troll is a creature of nefarious character who, among other ambush opportunities, chooses to live under a bridge, waiting to waylay travelers who intend to use the bridge for travel they wish to complete. A bridge is a man-made device built to jump a line of communication, a road for example, over a natural obstacle. A fairytale is a fictionalized metaphor for common experiences: in this case, the experience of being ambushed at a hazardous time or place — a bridge — and pillaged by a highwayman.

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The internet troll lurks on the message boards of well-trafficked websites with intent to discourage the site’s owner from posting or, more often, discourage and prevent commenters from discussing the site owner’s posts, which he or she wants discussed.

Private and public agencies have hired up to make internet troll a regular day job for demonic personalities as well as for AI machines. School teachers and administrators, retired and active, comprise the majority of private and public agency employees working as internet trolls.

Internet trolling is an information operation, a literary activity meant to effect a specific attitudinal, and therefrom behavioral, result in populations large or small. Intelligence agencies, advertisers, psychologists, political scientists, NGOs, and private enterprises, criminal and otherwise, exist to produce, and maintain themselves by producing, information operations. The purpose is longevity of the agency producing the information operations. Persistent existence of their employer — public or private agency, business, NGO — is the internet troll’s mission.

Private and public agencies who hire internet trolls do so for the very reason that their legitimate mission is extinct or by them renounced.

The troll’s job description is: terminate or disrupt communication between others whom their employer deems hostile to their employer’s longevity; divide others, prevent them from talking amongst themselves, make them unable or unwilling to transit life’s bridges, those critical nodes in a nation’s communications system. Thus, control others’ lives by controlling their very minds. This ensures longevity — the true goal inside all trolling — by the private or public agency generating information operations and hiring internet trolls to execute them. For awhile.

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Austin Bay:
Uncle Sam Needs You for a
Counter-Psychological Warfare Strategy

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Information operations are designed to
terminate or disrupt a concourse of
information. They are war-fighting
assets aimed, as in war is proper,
at an enemy’s logistics.

An internet troll conducts information operations against
persons and groups their employer considers enemies.

If an internet troll is on you, you are their
employer’s enemy as well as their own.

You are their enemy because you are thinking,
saying, and/or doing something they do
not want you to think, say, or do.

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The troll’s job is to get you to talk about what they want you to talk about rather than what you want to talk about. The initiative is in your hands because you are the one who has set the agenda by thinking, saying, or doing something the troll and their employer do not like. They are reacting to you, wanting to seize the initiative from you. You have a choice to react or not to them. Context fortified by your own discernment and decision determine whether or not, and how, you react to a troll’s reaction to your input initiative. Remember, you have the initiative and are not obliged to convey it to the troll.

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Proper conduct on internet trolls is straightforward. As is said, do not feed them. This is done in several ways, depending on the context:

First, ignore them, disregard their taunts, which are meant to seize the initiative from you.

Second, use kindly and very direct language.  Be absolutely and strictly straightforward in presentment.

Third, describe the situation unfolding with the highest accuracy you can summon, the clearest, most simple language you can muster, and the funniest humor you can find present in it.

Fourth, invite them to come out from behind their handle, to use their own given name and surname.

Fifth, and most important of all, never insist on anything.  When you command a group, you may insist.  Otherwise, set out your case clearly, completely, and forthrightly, and then let it rest, let the truth you announce take care of itself.  The truth is a lion, perfectly self-sufficient.

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Education is not to be taken as a process of filling an empty sack and pouring out its contents, making its sack empty again. It is not the head that has to be filled through education, it is the heart that has to be cleansed, expanded and illumined. Education is for life, not a living. The sign of the educated man is the humility, that he has not been able to know the vast unknown that still remains to be explored. The educated man must realise that he has more obligations than privileges, more duties than rights. He has to serve the society amidst which he is placed and the heritage that has been handed over by forefathers. He should be delighted to serve and not desire to dominate. For, service is divine; service makes life worthwhile. Service is the best way to use one’s skills, intelligence, strength and resources.