Swifty Decoding Interview

Decoding interviewed by Ronan Swift.

The text of that interview, edited from the remastered recording for reading, with Ronan's words in italics.

I'm Decoding Trolls. I write at Disinfolklore.eu, on X as Disinfolklore and DecodingTrolls, and at Disinfolklore.net, DecodingTrolls.net and PowerofMana.net.

Hello everybody, I'm Ronan Swifty. This morning I'm going to be talking to Decoding Trolls.

Hi, I'm Decoding Trolls. Great to be with you. Nice to meet you, Ronan.

Thanks for stepping into my podcast arena. I want to get onto the name, because I know it's a project of yours. Decoding Trolls. I can understand the decoding bit, I think. But the troll side of it, for me, was always something. Something that I just associate with people being nasty to other people online. What is it that you understand by trolling? Is there more to it than what I originally thought?

Trolling is about movement

As I see trolling, it's about movement. My definition of trolling is emotion-moving activity of body, speech and mind. Most conceptions of trolling focus only on the medium, like the internet. And so we focus on a particular form of communication in a particular arena.

I researched many different aspects of trolling, through academia and through participating in groups online myself. That led me to look into the linguistic root of trolling. That in fact led me into folklore, which is the origin of the metaphor of trolls. And eventually I realised that actually trolling on the internet is merely one form of communication.

If we are going to understand how trolling on the internet works. Then it's a good idea to look at how we troll each other in real life as well. And so that led me to this conception. Trolling is any form of communication which moves the emotions of another person.

And then I realised, actually, sometimes I'm trolling myself internally. And so this is partly how I arrived at the definition of trolling. It is any emotion-moving activity of body, speech and mind. And so we can fit how any sentient being trolls us. Our cat, for instance, wants some food. They're running around our legs as we're coming in with lots of shopping, and there's lots of children around. And we feel a bit annoyed, or great joy. That feeling of emotion is what's essential to trolling, whether it's online or in real life. And it can be positive.

It doesn't have to be negative?

Absolutely, yeah. Once you see trolling as any emotion-moving activity of body, speech and mind. We need a way to determine the quality of the troll. We need to ascertain whether it is positive, neutral or negative. And the clue there is in the troll: neutral, no movement.

And so that led me on a hunt. For a way of determining the quality of particular, I call them, informational units or memes. A meme isn't a cartoon online. It's any informational unit, whether it's a sound or a word or a whole essay, for instance. Well, that's probably a bad example.

And so then once you see it, there's every form of communication. You need a way of thinking, okay. Because we get trolled positively all the time. Our lover, our romantic partner, will have particular routines. We'll have particularly nice routines with our pets, or our lovers, or our wives, or our husbands, or our children. They bring us great joy. And what we're doing is purposefully moving their emotions. That's positive.

And so I was hunting for a way of determining what's positive and negative and neutral. And that's how I arrived at what I call the Code of Positive Trolls.

A code for the quality of a troll

I see. So you've got a code, a checklist of sorts, to determine that positive or negative or neutral troll. And that's the decoding part of the title.

Checklist is a great idea. I actually hadn't made that link before. The Code of Positive Trolls and decoding. Back in my past, I trained as a lawyer. So I was looking for a code, in terms of law-code criteria that, say, judges use in cases. They often have these four-limb tests. To see whether you have the right to do something without criminal liability, for instance. But I recognise now that the code is actually in the decoding as well. That's really cool.

I was hunting around for this code. And I found it actually in Tibetan Buddhism, in the Dalai Lama's form of Buddhism. It is summed up into six criteria. If you perfect each of these six criteria, then in Buddhism, according to Buddhists, you will achieve enlightenment.

Obviously, we're not looking for enlightenment when we're online, or dealing with a really annoying situation. We're trying to resist making it worse by trolling the emotions of the person we're dealing with. But we are looking for codes which are proven, which have worked. Billions of Buddhists have run their life to a more successful extent, according to these six criteria. I then rebranded them as the Code of Positive Trolls.

And the idea is that you have this algorithm, these six criteria that you intuit. You learn them very quickly. And because billions of Buddhists have used this, what they call the six perfections. It's clear that humans can do this.

If you proof any communication that's emanating from you according to these six criteria. Then, if not achieving enlightenment, you have a chance of avoiding trolling others in negative ways. But equally, when you're receiving communications from people, you can run the sensory inputs. I talk about having a troll radar.

We have this idea that we're now proofing communications as they're moving into our minds, according to these six criteria. And if they contravene any of these six criteria, then we run a new battery of tests.

So that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to ensure that we don't get manipulated. Our energy doesn't get manipulated negatively by others. And we're trying to avoid ourselves accidentally negatively manipulating others. And so I use these six criteria to decode trolls: my own trolls outgoing, and incoming trolls as well. And I've been using this for three years now.

I think the listeners are on tenterhooks as regards what this code of six is. Because it's been mentioned a lot. Is it helpful just to list them all?

The six criteria

Totally. So: generosity, ethical discipline - right is the same as ethical discipline - patience, energy, Mana - what I call Mana - focus and insight. So six of them.

So, generosity. Is the message you are communicating to someone else an act of generosity? Equally, is the message you're receiving from someone else? Say it's a post about migration. And they're saying, you know, our house is full, we can't take any more migrants. They're stealing our jobs. They're eating our dogs. That is not generous. So sometimes trolls fail that.

The second one is right, ethical discipline. It's always wrong to breach the laws of the land, international law. In the context, say, of migration, this set of ethics is set by the Refugee Convention. Most countries in humanity have signed it. That means that if you have a well-founded fear of persecution, you have the right to seek asylum. So this idea of illegal migrants, illegal asylum seekers is not only not generous. It's a breach of the law. And it's not right in that sense.

Patience. You want to communicate that you are yourself patient. And obviously, most of us fail on this front a million times a day. So it's an aspiration.

But some of us in work will have done these courses on how to avoid being trolled or phished online. And they'll always say one of the triggers for this is someone putting you in a pressure-cooker situation. Are they saying you have to use five seconds to press this button, to respond to this email immediately?

So this is where the patience element comes in. When you're receiving these trolls, if they're putting you in an impatient thing. So a political campaign, like Donald's campaign, will say, vote for me to save America. And you've got five days to save America. And sometimes, again, you will need to react quickly.

So this is why I say, if the …

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