Episode 316 Scott Adams: Teaches the First Class of Troll College

Date: 2018-11-25 | Duration: 25:08

Topics

Improve your trolling with these tips and techniques Classic and effective troll responses Rules for custom created responses that own your target

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> [!note] Rough Transcript
> 
> This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

## Transcript

[0:07]

bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum 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 they're 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 app grab your cup your beverage your glass you container your chalice fill it with your favorite beverage and join me for the simultaneous it alright so I hope many of you have come out from underneath your bridge to watch this first episode

[1:07]

your bridge to watch this first episode the first 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 be either be a cartoon some kind of a comic picture can also be a cat a cat is a sub 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 or one that looks kind of cool you don't want anything like that you want it to more scraggly so scraggly is what you're shooting for with the with the beard picture all right so now you got your profile there are a number of things you need to learn

[2:08]

are a number of things you need to learn in terms of the rules of being a troll and how to how to respond - comments on internet on the Internet so 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 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 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 it could be as good

[3:08]

could be as good sometimes but it's 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 know more of a more of a fun environment so that when you're calling somebody an idiot it's more of a lol or you could 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 on creative references and the key here is

[4:09]

creative references and the key here is they have to be uncreated 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 you know unique creative new you want to stay away from all the last stuff so you want to go with the first thing that anybody would say if they were going to insult the 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 could 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

[5:10]

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 where you'd say Einstein he's old well he's actually dead now but let's say he was live but he was old it would be good enough just to say his old you don't need to give into the 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

[6:12]

difference if you can say something in a sarcastic way you have given a reason that's all you need I'll be giving an example Einstein says whether 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 see squared sure-sure 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 them and all I did was a Darrell at 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

[7:12]

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 on other levels but that's not important what's important is that you dumped on him you dunked on Einstein you dunked him hard it's also good to say rather than addressing the point in this case a 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 a equals MC squared oh I didn't know the author of that was such an asshat I am never going to follow him again all right so these are some of the responses that you would give for your target but they're

[8:13]

would give for your target but they're 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 miss state what you're criticizing because lots of times the 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 miss state what they said and then criticize your whole fascination 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 O 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

[9:15]

that now in most cases your target will say are you crazy I just said equals MC squared why are you criticizing 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 order 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 auntie feh auntie fire racists 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 appointee 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 the humor is

[10:21]

defines it remember also the humor is not subjective it's not subjective a lot of people think that humor is sort of a personal things or 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 alright that's the final word find a 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 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

[11:23]

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

[12:24]

science than other people then you can criticize it any way you want cuz you know more about science you know more science more about science and 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 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 oh you don't know everything about science so it's all in the attitude half

[13:29]

science so it's all in the attitude half pinions are the same as being smart now 1/2 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 it 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 patroling is mind-reading non trolls believe the mind-reading doesn't exist it cannot be identified in any kind of scientific setting and that no

[14:29]

kind of scientific setting and that no human being possesses the ability to read anybody's mind in fact non trolls would 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 were 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 they you the troll you the troll can read minds so if the president says something like I like to cut taxes to boost the economy you should immediately look past the

[15:31]

you should immediately look past the statement look past that and peer into the mind of the president and see earn cutting taxes obviously racist so it's the inner thoughts that you can see alone because of your trolled mind-reading skills this 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 if everybody likes thinking but the hard ways to think and then there are easy ways to think the easy way to think is with an analogy and let me let me tell you how to do this let's say for example you'd noticed 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

[16:33]

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 are patrol 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 even the things they think are bad but if they're letting people know they're Nazis that's not really good for

[17:35]

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 supremacist or the Nazis have good judgment and they have 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 now this is my first

[18:36]

tell you something 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 oh yes I forgot to mention something called a dog whistle now there's in 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 it's a secret like 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

[19:39]

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 act as if the thing that we're saying deserves some kind of a response but now I just grade them troll great D - and then I

[20:42]

grade them troll great D - and then I block them so you know the 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 could say yeah that Garfield guy he blocked me and then you tell your friends and you know you're all y'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 because there's one thing if you can't be a productive member of society that'd be bad enough but if you if you 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 the best kind of way to deal with that is to tell them that they're not even good at that you're yeah 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

[21:43]

seems like trolling would be an easy thing to do well at least it would be easy for people went to troll College but if you can't even troll right
alright I'm just looking at your comments at the moment 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 plus he's been trolling quite effectively have you noticed one of the one of the things that I think is the funniest thing about the way people treat President Trump is you remember what he was he was in the primaries and everybody who was smart said you better

[22:43]

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 gonna work when you're trying to actually run for a president against the Democrat and then he tweeted exactly the same as he always was and he became president and then people said ok ok it 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 you're president and that he kept tweeting and the next thing you know North Korea was blowing up its guard its guard facilities on the DMZ and talking about reunification the next thing you

[23:46]

about reunification the next thing you know unemployment is the lowest has been and however many decades and he's just tweeting away he's tweeting like crazy next thing you know he's got a he's got the Supreme Court that his followers wanted tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet
so so people have asked me lately though 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 now you know finally you know all those other times we thought you 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 listened to that and I think nope no I don't think that at all
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 all right

[25:00]

and I think I'm going to sign off now and keep this a tight little lesson on how to troll and I will talk to you later