Conflict Management for Dummies, Thursday, Third Period
Today, Oz had his class meet him in the computer lab.
"So, since so many of you are new to this business, before we get to the good stuff, I'm going to take this week to ease the newbies in with one of the easiest forms of conflict escalation known to modern times, online trolling."
Oz gestured to the computers. "These have been set up with their own dedicated forum. Each workstation is signed in to an existing account on this forum." With the ability to create more sockpuppets, but Oz wasn't going to mention that, let them figure it out. "Your job is to try to take a civil discussion to a disagreement, to an argument, to a full out flame-war, but try to be subtle about it, since hopefully by now the average web-user knows not to feed the trolls."
"One final thing to keep in mind, you mightn't be able to know who's posting what, but I will, the assignment is to start and escalate an argument, not abuse your classmates. You want to be an ass, not an asshole."
"So, since so many of you are new to this business, before we get to the good stuff, I'm going to take this week to ease the newbies in with one of the easiest forms of conflict escalation known to modern times, online trolling."
Oz gestured to the computers. "These have been set up with their own dedicated forum. Each workstation is signed in to an existing account on this forum." With the ability to create more sockpuppets, but Oz wasn't going to mention that, let them figure it out. "Your job is to try to take a civil discussion to a disagreement, to an argument, to a full out flame-war, but try to be subtle about it, since hopefully by now the average web-user knows not to feed the trolls."
"One final thing to keep in mind, you mightn't be able to know who's posting what, but I will, the assignment is to start and escalate an argument, not abuse your classmates. You want to be an ass, not an asshole."