https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/ We've moved from 'troll' means someone who spews in comments to 'troll' means Dale Carnegie, but working for Russia. We need a new word. (Thanks, @AgnesCallard, for the link.) 1/

There is a common-denominator: trolls are agents of chaos. Their purpose is to foster anti-social vice and discourage pro-social virtue, through discourse and in discourse. Everything Habermas is for, concerning deliberative democracy? They're agin' in! 2/

But their methods are as divergent as Screwtape's and Wormwood's, in "The Screwtape Letters". With shades of Voight-Kampff. Remember how, in PKD novel, the humans have started to fail the test? 3/

It's not that folks online lack empathy or are schizophrenic. But it's turning out we have met the bots and they is us. That is, real humans are so bot-like in some ways that it's hopeless to try to keep simple bots from manipulating us, regularly and predictably. 4/

Our virtue is not so much weak as highly and transparently heuristic. Heuristics can be gamed. (This is what Screwtape knows, Wormwood does not appreciate.) We need a new "Screwtape Letters", but written as a PUA how-to, but about politics. 5/

"How To Win Friends and Influence Followers", by johnny06734965, a highly successful senior bot (he's existed for 3 months) to melanie09286487, a lowly junior bot (she's existed for 3 hours.) 6/

All this is very complicated, as the difference between the old and new sort of troll is not just raw vs. cooked, unsophisticated vs. sophisticated. The old sort of troll spreads chaos through anger and annoyance. His refined acme is a kind of cynical, socratic gadflyism. 7/

The new breed of troll rides the tide of positive emotion longer, though the ultimate goal is for one wave of pro-social positivity to collide with another, to even greater negative affect, hence anti-social effect. Socrates can piss people off, but not assemble or aim a mob. 8/