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Nov. 25, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
25:04
Episode 316 Scott Adams: Teaches the First Class of Troll College
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Hey everybody!
It's time for the first ever Troll College class.
I will be teaching today's lesson.
It's very valuable.
There are a lot of people who have been trolling or attempting to troll on Twitter especially.
And I've noticed that their trolling technique is a little lacking.
And so I thought I would jump on here and give a little class on how to be a better troll.
But before we do that, I think we should start with a simultaneous sip.
Grab your cup, your beverage, your glass, your container, your chalice, fill it with your favorite beverage, and join me for the simultaneous sip.
Ah.
All right, so I hope many of you have come out from underneath your bridge to watch this first episode, the first class of Troll College.
Now the first thing you need to know if you're going to be a good troll on Twitter is how to create a good profile picture.
The ideal troll profile picture should either be a cartoon, some kind of a comic picture, It can also be a cat.
A cat is a good troll profile.
Or, if you don't have a cat or a cartoon, you could take a picture of a white male with a bad beard.
Now, don't make the mistake of using the profile picture of somebody with a neatly trimmed beard or one that looks kind of cool.
You don't want anything like that.
You want it more scraggly.
Scraggly is what you're shooting for with the beard picture.
Now you've got your profile.
There are a number of things you need to learn in terms of the rules of being a troll and how to respond to comments on the internet.
I wanted to start with an example.
In which your target, the target of your trolling, says something, and then you want to respond to it, and I'll teach you how to respond.
So let's say your target is, I don't know, let's say Albert Einstein.
And let's say that he's made the mistake of getting on Twitter, and he said E equals MC squared.
Now, the appropriate responses to a statement like this For a good troll would be idiot.
That one's always clean, simple.
It works in every situation.
You don't really, you don't need to overthink it sometimes.
Sometimes you just go with idiot.
Or stupid could be as good.
Sometimes moron.
But just a good clean idiot and then gone.
That is good trolling.
It's economical. It's to the point.
It says everything you need to say, and then you're out.
You could also just go in with, let's say, a more artistic approach.
Instead of just saying, idiot, you could say, LOL. It's more permissive.
It allows, I don't know, more of a fun environment.
So that when you're calling somebody an idiot, it's more of a LOL or you can also just do, wow.
Wow. That's it.
Just go with the wow and out.
Reasons are not terribly important for trolling.
Now, if your target happens to be a cartoonist as opposed to a physicist, you would use uncreative references.
And the key here is they have to be uncreative.
It should be literally the first thing that anybody would think of.
When you're doing your trolling, you don't want to say something that's sort of novel, unique, creative, new.
You want to stay away from all of that stuff.
So you want to go with the first thing that anybody would say if they were going to insult a cartoonist.
And it's important to write it in a way that when people are reading it, even when they read it, they make a certain voice.
And the voice sounds like this.
Oh, there's the creator of Garfield!
Now, it's hard to write so that the ear hears it that way, but with a little practice you can get that.
You should also refer to anything I say as something that would come from Dilbert's boss, the pointy-haired boss.
The reason you would make a reference to Dilbert being really Garfield or what the cartoonist says as Dilbert's boss is because it's hilarious.
You see it, right? It's hilarious!
So you should do that.
Now, if you're going to take this technique and apply it to, let's say, Albert Einstein, instead of saying, Albert Einstein, you're the greatest physicist in the world.
Maybe you know what you're talking about.
Instead, you would say something like, nice haircut.
Something like that. Or you'd say, Einstein, he's old.
Well, he's actually dead now, but let's say he was alive, but he was old.
It would be good enough just to say he's old.
You don't need to get into the weeds, into the details.
Now, if you're a troll, sarcasm is exactly like having reasons.
There's no difference.
If you can say something in a sarcastic way, you have given a reason.
That's all you need. Let me give you an example.
Einstein says, well, E equals MC squared.
Now you want to rebut this and you want to totally own Einstein.
You just want to like dunk on him.
Here's how you do it.
You say what he said, but you do it with sarcasm.
You say, oh, E equals MC squared.
Sure, sure.
E equals MC squared.
So you see what I've done there?
I've completely owned Einstein using his own words against him.
I've used his own words against him and all I did was add a light level of sarcasm and it completely changed this ridiculous statement into a good critique.
Now you also want to call whoever you're talking to an apologist.
So if Einstein says E equals MC squared, you say, oh, there goes the physics apologist again.
Now, it doesn't mean anything, and maybe you disagree with physics on other levels, but that's not important.
What's important is that you dunked on him.
You dunked on Einstein.
You dunked him hard.
It's also good to say, rather than addressing the point, in this case, E equals MC squared, you want to go at the author.
Alright? It's not the point that matters when you're trolling.
It's who said it.
So you want to say, oh, E equals MC squared.
I didn't know the author of that was such an asshat.
I am never going to follow him again.
Alright, so these are some of the responses that you would give for your target.
But there are also a number of rules that you should keep in mind.
Let's get to the rules.
So the rules look like this.
Before you criticize, it is often useful to misstate what you're criticizing.
Because lots of times a troll will make the mistake of criticizing something that somebody actually said or something they actually meant.
And that's always a mistake.
You don't want to do that. It's better to misstate what they said and then criticize your hallucination of what they said.
So in the case of E equals MC squared, you don't want to go right at it every time.
Sometimes you want to modify it and then go after it and say, E equals MC cubed?
On what world, Einstein?
On what world does E equals MC cubed?
Why do you keep saying that?
Now, in most cases, your target will say, are you crazy?
I just said E equals MC squared.
Why are you criticizing E equals MC cubed?
Nobody even said that.
Doesn't matter. You owned him.
You dunked on him. Totally owned.
Now, another rule of trolling is that every group is defined by its worst person.
So, for example, if you wanted to criticize Republicans, you would say that they are defined by, let's say, the few racists that are in that group.
If you wanted to criticize, let's say, leftists, you would say they're all Antifa.
Antifa, racist, kind of roughly equal in this context.
So never assume that the group is a bunch of individuals which may have something in common which has nothing important to do with the point you're trying to make.
It's more important to say that the worst person in that group is really the one who defines it.
Remember also that humor is not subjective.
It's not subjective. A lot of people think that humor is sort of a personal thing, sort of like music.
Some people like this song, some people like that song.
Humor is not like that.
Humor is either funny or not funny, and the way that you can determine it's funny is if the troll himself or herself thinks it's funny.
It is objectively not funny if the troll says it's not.
That's the final word.
Final word. It's also important that context doesn't matter.
When you are trolling, you don't want to look at the big picture.
You don't want to look at all the costs and all the benefits.
You don't want to look at the short term and the long term.
You do not want to look at what would happen to people's incentives or how it would change how people think about things.
Those things do not matter.
Do you know what matters? One variable.
Now, it doesn't matter what topic you're looking at.
All that matters is if you've picked one of the variables and you've ignored all of the other thousands of variables.
Because if you get into all the other variables, something bad could happen.
For example, you might start agreeing with the person you're trying to mock if you considered the whole argument.
You don't want to do that.
That's not trolling. That's not how it's done.
You need to pick one variable and say that's the only one that matters.
That's trolling. You should also pretend that you as a troll does something called understanding science.
So for example, when you're criticizing Einstein for E equals MC squared, you should start by assuming that you know more about science than Einstein.
Don't start from behind.
That's a loser's game. Just make the assumption that you know more about science than other people.
Then you can criticize it Any way you want, because you know more about science.
You know more about science than whoever you're talking to, that's for sure.
And it's always good to say it with a condescending, arrogant, mocking, kind of sarcastic way.
So a bad way to say that you're good at science is to say, well, I have a science degree, and I'm a PhD, And I've been working in the field of science for 35 years.
Don't say anything like that.
Nobody cares about that.
Instead, you want to say, oh, Einstein doesn't know anything about science.
Don't give any reasons.
If you give reasons, it will weaken your argument.
Just the attitude is enough.
You don't know anything about science!
So it's all in the attitude.
Half-pinions are the same as being smart.
Now a half opinion is different than an opinion.
An opinion would consider all the variables and short term, long term.
It would consider incentives as well as cost.
It would consider the moral implication.
It would put it all in there.
That would be an opinion.
You don't want to do that if you're a troll.
None of these opinions are for you.
What you want is a half opinion.
So the quickest way to do that is to take a topic and only look at, say, the costs and ignore the benefits.
Or only look at the benefits and ignore the costs.
So half-pinions are smart.
Now the most important rule of trolling is mind reading.
Non-trolls believe that mind reading doesn't exist, it cannot be identified in any kind of scientific setting, and that no human being possesses the ability to read anybody's mind.
In fact, non-trolls would say that we're usually wrong when we try to imagine what people are thinking.
They might point to, as evidence that we're not good at mind reading, let's say every relationship you've ever had.
That would be considered evidence that we're not good at knowing what other people are thinking.
How about every boss you've ever had?
Again, good evidence that we're not really good at knowing what other people are thinking.
How about politics?
Well, that would be evidence we don't know what other people are thinking as well.
But if you're a troll, you ignore all of that.
You want to make as your first and most important assumption that you, the troll, You, the troll, can read minds.
So if the president says something like, I'd like to cut taxes to boost the economy, you should immediately look past the statement.
Look past that.
And peer into the mind of the president and see...
Cutting taxes.
Obviously racist.
So it's the inner thoughts that you can see alone because of your trolled mind-reading skills that should be the most important factor in all of your analysis.
The other thing you need to know as a troll is that analogies are thinking.
They're like exactly the same thing.
Everybody likes thinking, but there are hard ways to think and then there are easy ways to think.
The easy way to think is with an analogy.
Let me tell you how to do this.
Let's say, for example, you notice that the sky is blue and you have a shirt that is also blue.
So if you notice the sky is blue and you have a shirt that is blue, Therefore, logically, you can wear the sky like a shirt.
Now if that's not obvious to you, you don't know how to think.
Because analogies are exactly the same as thinking.
You don't want to use any kind of detailed cause and effect, logic, logic stuff.
That's no good. Just go for the easy way.
Go for the analogy. The analogy is thinking.
It's all the same. There's no difference between an analogy and actually thinking.
Now, another thing that's good to assume When you're a troll is that Nazis have really good judgment.
Now I know most of us who are not trolls would say Nazis.
They would be the very definition of somebody who has bad judgment.
Because, first of all, the things they think are bad, but if they're letting people know they're Nazis, that's not really good for anything.
That's not good for your career, probably doesn't help you love life too much.
So most people think Nazis are not good at thinking.
But if you're a troll, you imagine that they have impeccable thoughts.
For example, you might ask, Why is it that all the white supremacists seem to be backing President Trump?
Now that would be a statement in which you believe that the white supremacists, or the Nazis, have good judgment, and they've applied their good judgment to decide who to vote for and why.
The rest of us think, maybe we should just ignore people like that because they don't have anything to tell us.
But if you're a troll, those opinions are pretty solid, and they've got good reasons for why they do it, and it should tell you something.
Um, now this is my first day of teaching troll college.
So how did I do?
Did anybody learn anything in class today?
I will look at your comments while I enjoy my simultaneous sip.
Ah, yes. I forgot to mention something called a dog whistle.
Now, in the troll world, there's something called a dog whistle.
And it's one you can't hear if you're not the troll.
So the troll can hear this whistle, and it's a secret whistle to racists that only the trolls can hear.
They're pretty sure other people can hear it, But they can't.
So, make sure that you imagine you can hear a whistle.
Now, the next time you're trolled, be sure to link people to this video.
That's why I'm making it, so I can just link people to it.
And that will help them be better trolls.
I'm saying it's okay to troll.
That is correct. It's okay to troll, and you should be good at it.
That's why I'm trying to teach you the techniques of trolling.
Somebody says I like when I say the stupidest tweet of the day.
So you may have noticed on Twitter, I've started grading my trolls.
I used to address whatever hallucination they were making for their point.
So I used to act as if the thing they were saying deserved some kind of response.
But now I just grade them.
Troll grade, D minus.
And then I block them.
So, you know, the whole fun of being a troll, apparently, is getting blocked.
So if you get blocked, you've had a good day as a troll because you can say, yeah, that Garfield guy, he blocked me.
And then you tell your friends and, you know, you all feel good because you got blocked.
So what I do is give them a D minus on their skill of even being a troll and Because it's one thing if you can't be a productive member of society, that'd be bad enough.
But if you've completely given up on being a productive member of society and decided to spend your time insulting strangers on Twitter, the best kind of way to deal with that is to tell them that they're not even good at that.
I like to tell people they're such losers that they couldn't even troll right.
How hard is that?
Seems like trolling would be an easy thing to do.
Well, at least it would be easy for people who went to troll college.
But if you can't even troll right...
alright I'm just looking at your comments at the moment And Excuse me while I take a sip of my delicious coffee.
Feel free to join me.
Somebody says we have the biggest troll in the White House.
What's his grade?
A+. He's been trolling quite effectively.
Have you noticed, one of the things that I think is the funniest thing about the way people treat President Trump, is you remember when he was in the primaries and everybody who was smart said, you better stop tweeting the way you've been tweeting.
You better not tweet like that.
With your sassy tweets, that'll never work.
And then he got nominated for the GOP. And then people said, all right, well, he got nominated.
Sure, it works when you're nominated, but it's never going to work when you're trying to actually run for president against the Democrat.
And then he tweeted exactly the same as he always was.
And he became president.
And then people said, okay, okay.
It worked when you were in the primaries, I'll give you that, but that was a special case.
And sure, it worked in the election, but that's a special case too.
You don't want to keep tweeting after your president.
And that he kept tweeting.
And the next thing you know, North Korea was blowing up its guard facilities on the DMZ and talking about reunification.
The next thing you know, unemployment is the lowest it's been in however many decades.
And he's just tweeting away.
He's tweeting like crazy.
Next thing you know, he's got the Supreme Court that his followers wanted.
Tweet, tweet, tweet. Tweet, tweet, tweet.
So people have asked me lately, they'll see some specific tweet from the president, and they'll ask me, okay, but now, now you would admit he should stop tweeting.
Finally. All those other times we thought he should keep tweeting and it seems to have worked for him really well.
But now, wouldn't you agree, now he's gone too far?
And I just listen to that and I think, nope.
No, I don't think that at all.
I didn't think he went too far in the beginning.
I don't think he's going too far now.
He's completely controlling the conversation.
Troll apologist. Alright.
And I think I'm going to sign off now and keep this a tight little lesson on how to troll.
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