Bait

Not to be confused with Clickbait or Jailbait

Bait is troll food. It is what a troll deposits when they want responses. Not all bait is as simple as posting a Hitler image to a Jewish community. Well-crafted bait might take weeks of build-up including sock puppets and other subterfuge. The idea is to post something on a forum that can start a discussion or a flamewar.

Preparation

~ Gather the following ingredients.

1 community/forum/imageboard full of touchy, emotionally vulnerable targets (Furries, trannies and Q-fags work best for this recipe).
At least 3 sock puppet accounts on chosen website.
Some fucking imagination.
Alcohol or other drug of choice for garnish.
1/2 cup of distilled, deionized malice.

~ While gently kneading the ingredients in a large glass thread, pay attention to the noises coming from the targets. If they know you're a troll, then you are doing it wrong. Abort the mission and start over elsewhere.

~ After all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, place in the oven, and set it to Auschwitz. Watch for as long as possible.

~ Some re-mixing may be needed if the lulz begin to drop to a slow boil. Just poke it with an additional sock puppet to stir things up again.

~ Serves 8.

Master Baiting Techniques

On the Internets, baiting is similar to trolling, in that baiters, like trolls, try to elicit a response from other users. The difference is that the response is supposed to be embarrassing to the user in question, and humorous to others. Baiters frequently concentrate on groups they do not like, such as pedophiles, vegans, hippies, or homosexuals. What the baiter says does not need to make sense, it is often simply written to baffle the bait, and to produce an interesting result. In that respect, baiting is similar to telephone prank calls, but often much more elaborate.

Baiting frequently takes place on IRC or instant messaging. The chat logs are then typically posted on the internets.

Confirmation Bias

This technique exploits a person's natural want to seek out, interpret and recall information that confirms their own beliefs and perceptions of themselves. For example if you say, "The country is so messed up right now." a person may then reply with, "It's all because of Obama!" You can then say, "You only think that though because you're a Republican." they then may reply with, "No, it's because he's not even an American!"

Eventually you can drive this train on out to the point of getting a person to reveal their deepest, darkest, inner most secrets, prejudices, stereotypes, fears, passions, paranoia, etc. Normally it starts by throwing out a partial piece of bait, then waiting to see how the person reacts to that bait, then continually altering the bait in order to get them exactly where you want before setting the hook and reeling in your prize.

Misdirection

Pretty self explanatory- this technique relies on attracting people's attention with something big, flashy or something they're expecting to see while simultaneously doing something subtle that will go unnoticed while everyone's attention is focused elsewhere. Or it can be used as a form of reverse psychology in order to get people to do something by making them believe that it will cause you or someone else grief.

As an example, you could create a fake FaceBook profile using the name and dox of someone you don't like and then go around using that account to openly attack other people. Those people will then be inclined to try and "get back" at "you", when in fact they'll actually be targeting your intended target for you. Essentially getting other people to do your dirty work for you, misdirection is largely about avoiding direct actions and utilizing stealth and subversion in order to achieve goals.

Sometimes this technique is also referred to as "click baiting". In that context, it usually takes the form of using a misleading headline or using something out of context in order to attract immediate attention and to then entice the subjects into reading further or clicking on a link (which may or may not also contain malware).

Appeal To...

Moar info: Fallacious reasoning.

Flattery, novelty, pity, popularity, ridicule, spite, etc. These are emotion based fallacy forms designed to direct a person's cognitive bias to act on emotion without the benefit of intellect. This form is especially popular with women and social justice warrior types who often use it as a means of building up personal armies of lackwitted bottom feeders. Often used as a catalyst in the form of self-victimization, "appeal to pity" and then utilized offensively in the form of "appeal to spite" in order to "get back" at those that wronged the imagined victim.

Spotlighting

This is based on the tendency to overestimate the amount that other people notice your appearance or behavior. This form is most often utilized on sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica by way of article creation. When an article is made about a person, that person then has a tendency to over-imagine how much negative attention they're receiving as a result of the article and in turn, become increasingly irrational, upset and emotionally compromised in ways that make them ripe for exploitation. Often to the point where they do and say things in retaliation that actually exponentially increase the amount of negative attention much more so than the article alone ever could have by itself. In essence, they wind up creating the very situation that they're most afraid of. This is also sometimes referred to as the Streisand Effect.