Incendiary Insincerity: On the Ethics of Trolling

Florida, deep red and with a large population, provides a valuable window into American conservative politics. What, then, should we make of a bevy of leaked, slur-filled, text messages? A group chat started by Abel Carvajal, the secretary of the Miami-Dade County Republican Party, for students at Florida International University, quickly became a swamp of violent language, n-word utterances, and Nazi jokes. This is hardly a lone finding. James Fishback’s campaign, currently running an uphill battle for the Republican nomination in the primary race for Florida governor, employs similarly incendiary language (especially among staffers). At the national level, polling by the free-market oriented Manhattan Institute found just over 30% of GOP members under 50 claimed they held racist views. Trump himself recently controversially posted, then withdrew, an image of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

Yet all these events share an ambiguity in interpretation. Are racism and other extreme views rampant, especially among younger Republicans … or are people simply “trolling”?

Trolling refers to a range of behaviors, from malicious bullying to harmless pranks. One of these is what media studies scholar Whitney Phillips calls subcultural trolling. The intent is to provoke a strong reaction by someone (gullible fool that they are) assuming the troll is sincere. Boldly asserting something widely condemned, like racism, is perfect for subcultural trolling.

Philosopher Ralph DiFranco argues such trolling is typically ethically suspect. It violates general norms of good conversation such as respect, honesty, and treating one’s interlocutor as an equal. The intent of trolling is often to shame, embarrass, and belittle, or at least waste time and attention. But this does not mean trolling can never be a force for good. DiFranco provides the example of trolling the trolls – countertrolling those who abandon good-faith conversation. Additionally, like satire, trolling can be used to deflate the haughty and the hypocritical.

From a certain perspective, proclaiming racism or using racist language could be a way to push back against a presumed overweening political correctness or cancel culture, rather than a sincere belief in racism. (To be clear, one can still consider the trolls’ language and behavior harmful and worthy of condemnation, even if the proclaimed belief is not sincere.) But trolling is not automatically satire. For someone to understand something as satire, they need to know the intended message, what it’s really saying. (Even if the victim is not necessarily in on the joke.) But trolls often hold their true beliefs close to their chests, making the underlying intent ambiguous. This may even be part of the emotional appeal of trolling. The slipperiness of belief involved in trolling leads to further ethical challenges.

One of those challenges involves the identification of bad actors. From the outside, a sincere racist and an insincere racist look the same. The sincere racist (the bad actor) can use the cover of irony or trolling to advocate for and desensitize people to sincerely held, deeply racist beliefs. But it is not merely onlookers who can get confused by trolling. The troll themself can use trolling to avoid fully committing to a moral stance. In this sense, it is perfect for social media, facilitating the escape into irony to avoid the pain of having one’s views the subject of constant scrutiny and judgment. One can engage in a behavior, say mock racism, and if they receive approval from surrounding individuals, they can stick with it. If they receive condemnation, they can turn the tables on their condemner — ”I can’t believe you fell for it. You idiot.”

This can harm moral self-development. While philosophers disagree about the details, it is generally accepted that virtuous behavior requires a process of cultivation. Putting one’s beliefs out there and receiving feedback can be a way to grow morally. But that growth requires sincerity. By holding beliefs in a perpetually half-joking way, the troll can avoid having to actually wrestle with their implications. What’s more, the troll never has to be honest with themselves. They can reassure themselves that they don’t really hold a belief, even while acting as if they do. In this way, harms associated with pernicious beliefs such as racism or antisemitism can occur, even without people being ideologically committed to the viewpoints.

Moral issues associated with trolling become especially complex as the trolling-style achieves political prominence. Like satire and mockery, trolling is a form of discursive offense. To the extent trolling can result in good, it is likely as pushback against a stuffy, self-serious status quo. But to what end? Policies cannot be enacted ironically. Worse yet, by being inherently ambiguous in its sincerity, trolling masks candidates’ real positions. From a campaign perspective, it performs the same function as politicians lying. Only post-election can one tell trolling from truth.

Still, we should not be too quick to blame the trolls alone. Trolling thrives in a media ecosystem in which “rage-baiting” drives clicks and sincerity is for suckers. It is worth asking how politics became such a good habitat for trolls.