“Generosity” and the Code of Positive Trolls
A Guest Op-Ed by cultural archeologist Stephen Douglas of Decoding Trolls, Disinfolklore, and the Power of Mana
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Guest Op-Ed: “Generosity and the Code of Positive Trolls
by Stephen Douglas
“Trolls consist of emotion-moving energy (Mana) that only moves when we share them. Then, we become the troll. The informational unit (troll) consumes us, as it instrumentalises us to keep it in motion. In the manner of a virus hacking our minds, the troll manipulates our Mana / mind to keep their troll moving. Ruschia’s Nordic troll monarch Putler, for example, or Trump, are very successful at provoking our minds with emotions, which often carelessly we communicate into others’ minds — thereby doing those demonic trolls’ mean work for them. Such trolls, once inside our minds, commingle their energy (Mana) with our Mana through linguistic, visual, tonal, or audible means. They fire their energy / emotions into our minds. Before we know it, we become the petrol fueling the troll, whether we agree or we disagree with its content. When Negative Trolls troll us into feeling and propagating their emotions, we risk becoming the Useful Idiots of Useful Idiots.”
—Stephen Douglas, Decoding Trolls
In understanding how to decode trolls, our challenge is to find a means of distinguishing between the Positive, Negative or Neutral trolls concealed inside memes of all kinds — on the Internet, in conversation, in media we’re consuming, across the universe of our daily lives.
If we are to avoid accidentally falling for the troll and propagating harmful emotion-moving nonsense by accident, we need to be empowered to decide on-the-fly, if what we are hearing or reading or seeing is Positive, Negative or Neutral.
Our lives and our minds move so fast. Any fact-checking service that we might use to determine the truth or the falsehoods immanent in any particular informational unit trolling our emotions may require us to go to a website or research in a library.
This is not Good Enough.
It’s too slow. By the time we understand that our Mana / energy has been hacked by a Negative troll’s emotion-moving activity, it might be too late.
We might have risen to the bait.
We need a system that helps us make immediate — albeit provisional — assessments but also reliable assays of the quality of the thousands of informational units (trolls) we encounter every single day of our lives. This way (because we’re at risk of throwing in our lot in with a Negative Troll!), we might avoid becoming embroiled in silly arguments or actions and reactions that we shall regret soon afterwards. We shall avoid being negatively manipulated into propagating others’ negative energy (Mana), if we have access to a mental algorithm to sort the Positive, Negative or Neutral Mana inside the thousands of potential Negative trolls we might encounter every day.
Before we can decide whether a troll’s energy / Mana is Positive, Negative or Neutral, we need some criteria. An evaluative framework with which to proof whichever meme or informational unit or article or sentence or word or feeling or sign we receive from anyone. My solution to this challenge is what I call the Code of Positive Trolls.
The Code of Positive Trolls comprises 6 criteria which are:
1 Generosity
2 Right / Ethical Discipline
3 Patience
4 Mana / Energy / joyous perseverance
5 Focus
6 Insight
Of these ingredients, we can compose a mental algorithm in any situation to determine the quality of the trolls which, if unthinkingly, we allow them to infect our Mana — the well from which all our Intentions / Attitudes / Motivations flow, we are at risk of being manipulated into ourselves becoming Negative Trolls.
The Code of Positive Trolls’s six elements are also the factors we can use to proof our own responses to trolls, before we actualise them: “Should I press send on this emotion-charged email? Will I lose a friend if I send it?”
Apply the Code’s first element – Generosity – and chances are if there’s any meanness immanent in your email, you won’t regret saving it in “Drafts,” and leaving it there forever.
In a nutshell, if you proof a particular meme or sentiment or speech by your favourite politician against these six criteria and you can say — hand on heart — that meme is consistent with these six criteria, then you have what I call a Positive Troll. No need to be so on guard. Relax. This troll won’t get you into trouble.
By contrast, if the meme / informational unit’s energy / Mana you're comparing to these criteria contravenes any of the Six Criteria… Then, you have what I call a Negative Troll or a Neutral, which means literally ‘no movement’ Troll. You need to be on guard when you’re dealing with and considering responses to Negative Trolls.
My mantra is “Look for the Mana in the Meme!”
Is this troll’s energy / Mana Generosity — the first element in the Code of Positive Trolls — or something else? Is its Mana nastiness, unvirtuous, parsimony, ugly?!
Once you’re scanning for the quality of the energy / mana immanent in whichever informational unit / meme / troll your mind is being challenged by, that is a big step forward!
As soon as you’ve consciously identified what the energy / Mana in the meme is, you can use the six criteria to determine its quality and whether it’s Positive, Neutral or Negative.
I find the first criterion in the Code of Positive Trolls – Generosity- particularly useful. Authoritarian-minded trolls are almost always mean. Ungenerosity is immanent in almost every drop of the pure poison they inject into our communities.
“Is it Generous?” is a Good Enough test to sort quickly in real time which memes, if I allow them into my unguarded mind, will probably negatively provoke my Mana into communicating Negative emotions / energy / Mana into others’ minds / Mana. Memes suffused with the Mana of Ungenerosity — as a general rule — will get us into trouble. They’re propagated by unconsciously or consciously manipulative Negative Trolls.
We hear a politician, for instance, talking about how our country is full. We cannot welcome any further refugees even though they’ll be persecuted to death in their home country for their political views. Even though our country signed the post WWII 1949 UN Refugee Convention. If we let in these refugees fleeing war, we’ll be sacrificing our sovereignty, security and prosperity on the altar of Wokeness. This is the Ungenerous message from the politician’s speech we’re listening to. Perhaps our own children cannot find work. We’re tempted into agreeing with this politician that drone-bombing the ship of refugees fleeing a war is a just solution. Yet, once we notice how Ungenerous this politician’s speech is, we know we’re being Negatively Trolled.
If we hear someone complaining that Medicare, Medicaid or our social welfare or healthcare system is too expensive to maintain. We should exclude sick people from life-saving care. Then, again, you don’t need to be a lawyer to get that this Ungenerosity breaches the Generosity criterion of the Code of Positive Trolls.
Chances are whoever is promoting Ungenerous sentiments is trying to manipulate us into negative behaviours. They’re trying to trigger our emotions – fear that our country is becoming full or we are running out of money – so that they get us to promote whichever cause – MAGA?- that they’re selling.
So, as a practice in our own daily lives, when we are faced with a particular message, meme, informational unit, sentiment, call to action,… inside a conversation with a friend or a boss or a family member and we detect what I call the Mana / energy of Ungenerosity in their speech, then, we now have an analytical advantage, if we understand the Code of Positive Trolls.
The first tool in this method is what I call the incoming troll radar.
We're scanning for Ungenerosity or Generosity in the messages we are perceiving.
To be clear, I am not saying that all acts of Generosity are wise. Rather, that all Ungenerous sentiments immanent in memes we’re trying to assess on-the-fly should be regarded as suspicious.
Authoritarianism and negative manipulations are almost always Ungenerous. So, until you have a moment or a few months to assess whether you agree with some sentiment, applying the Generosity test from the Code of Positive Trolls is a good way to avoid falling for negative trolls.
by Stephen Douglas for Bette Dangerous, July 18, 2024
Stephen Douglas is a Cultural Archæologist. His work appears as “DecodingTrolls” on X/Twitter.
He writes three publications on Substack:
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Above, Stephen Douglas — an international lawyer and diplomat — on a bridge in Ukraine, where he ensured safe passage of civilians from 2015 through 2018, while listening to narratives coming from the Russian side that sounded folkloric to him. Thus, he began his work exposing disinfolklore and how to decode trolls.
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A lot of this sounds like Buddhism. I attend a local sangha (a Buddhist meeting with meditation and dharma talk), but I'm not Buddhist.