Conservative and/or Russian Trolls Don't Care

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. Maybe there are two kinds; the amateurs and the pros

Some do it for (warped) personal reasons - attention seeking, bitterness, whatever. Some do it to achieve a desired political purpose. We've had a lot of practice at DU with trolls coming over here from Free Republic trying to mess with our heads, some are better at it than others. Most are terrible at it actually, but he ones who are skilled can do a little damage. I still haven't gotten my mind around foreign sponsored trolling yet. It seems so far fetched to be real but at least to some extent it does seem real. We may all be very minor targets here at a forum like DU when seen on a global scale - but then again so are individual soldiers during a war, and words are cheaper than bullets. My first hint of Russian sponsored trolls came with the sudden surge of Russian source news stories here covering how all the Ukrainians were supposed shelling their own people and the like (such as shooting down airliners) to make Russia look bad etc.