{"id":659600,"date":"2013-05-22T12:18:57","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T16:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/?p=229817"},"modified":"2013-05-22T12:18:57","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T16:18:57","slug":"instructions-on-how-to-transform-a-comment-troll-into-a-human-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/659600","title":{"rendered":"Instructions on how to transform a comment troll into a human being"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you write anything on the internet — or for that matter, read anything on the internet — you’ve undoubtedly experienced<\/a> comment trolls, flame-wars and plenty of other bad behavior. Some blogs and news sites have tried either handing over their comments to Facebook<\/a> or not having comments altogether as a way of preventing this kind of activity, but one site called Climate Desk took a different approach: they tracked down and interviewed<\/a> their most persistent troll, and in the process revealed him to be a fairly normal human being.<\/p>\n

As the Columbia Journalism Review<\/em> describes in a post on the project<\/a>, Climate Desk not only found and interviewed their comment troll — a 57-year-old insurance executive named Hoyt Connell — as part of a video series called “The Secret Life of Trolls,” but also profiled a scientist who spends much of her time engaging with trolls on the topic of climate change. In the final instalment, the scientist and the troll met each other<\/a> via Google Hangout.<\/p>\n