FU Comment Trolls

By Joe

Today’s tragic accident bought out the comment trolls in droves. Comment trolls are probably the worst side of the internet/blogs. (The techwankers are a close second).

These trolls can be classified into the following:

1) High Almighty:

Trolls who think they know what is right. Today, many news outlet/blogs wrote about the tragic Tesla accident – but also, reasonably, had related side stories (including ourselves). Techcrunch had a very insightful one (we give credits where it is due) on power outage in the area. Of course, this was ammo for the ‘High Almighty’ trolls – ‘distasteful..’, ‘no respect…’ etc etc. To these trolls – take your blinkers off – life goes on. If you are so righteous- why are you surfing the web and posting comments when you should be out there doing good.

2) No Shit Einstein:

These are the ‘echo’ trolls. Stating the obvious and repeating the story’s context. Example: For a news story on Zynga acquiring Serious Business: ‘it makes sense for Zynga to acquire Serious Business to expand their gaming business’. Eh…’No shit, Einstein’.

3) Name Droppers:

The attention grabbers. These are the ones that will storm the speaker at the end of a session. Example of comments include: ‘Hey Michael, great session last night, hope to see you again at the next conf’, ‘Michale, when are you coming to Los Angels again, it was great chatting with you last night’ – translation: Arrington was at post conf party, the troll said hello on passing him.

The comment is usually on a first name basis – to give it that ‘ I want to give the impression that other commenters thinks I know you’. You are not fooling anyone – that’s why friends use email, not blog comments.

4) Brown Nosers:

We hate these trolls. They typically appear when an acquisition story appears. ‘Congrats Joe, good job’. ‘Hey Joe, good job, you guys deserve it – can’t wait to see your next startup’. Honestly, the real people involved in the actual acquisition are celebrating with their REAL friends – not some trolls.