Essay:Pedophile trolling for beginners
It is worth noting, as a general disclaimer, debating strategies involving the impersonation or co-option of otherwise hostile parties (such as radical conservatives, 4chan and groypers) are not uncontroversial within our community. This is especially the case where impersonators deploy pro-MAP arguments, and less so when attempting to project a negative image of anti-MAPs. This guide advises users how to employ impersonation, subversion and black propaganda against those said groups, or while impersonating them. It may also be of use within said groups, or where they share an interest with MAPs - for example, educating the public on the history of MAPs in the gay movement, or mobilizing outrage to further the cause of MAP visibility.
Pedophile trolling for beginners: Insights from the MAP Movement's radical fringe.
Incorporating why "Newgon vols" sometimes impersonate alt-righters.
19/04/24 ◆ Jim Burton & PCMA
"Pedophile trolling" is provocative online behavior most will characterize as "pedophile apologia".
As there is no shortage of functioning insane people online, pedophile trolling isn't necessarily the sole domain of pedophiles. With that said, if you post on sites such as Reddit, X and Quora, and are repeatedly accused by onlookers of being a pedo, you are probably engaged in de facto pedophile trolling.
If these accusations hurt, you should perhaps learn to live with them, or even to take advantage of your new-found infamy.
Deliberate trolling is a strategy that has worked for some MAP Activists, and not worked for others. Some of my operatives have tried to debate honestly and logically, only to be accused of being a pedophile. This pedestrian level of debate can be frustrating to some, but not the true pedo troll, who thrives in such situations.
Your success as a pedo troll ultimately depends on your level of skill, ability to impersonate and think like another person, plus the terms and behavioral norms on the platform you are using. As they have little understanding of online discourse, memes or debate-as-performance, the following personality types are generally unable to troll, or can only do so in a highly predictable manner:
- Low-IQ.
- Narcissistic.
- Emotional.
- High levels of political "conviction" rather than just enjoying the game.
The last point includes those with an innate tendency to evaluate situations according to a theory of "justice". As an example, I am none of the first three criteria, but have to put my judgmental tendencies on hold when engaging in pedophile trolling, as I would end up becoming too argumentative and obscure. In the same sense, it is also no coincidence the most radically left-wing MAPs I know, have only had visibility-engineering successes playing themselves, or characters closely resembling the day-to-day on-server personas I am familiar with. Some of these threads (putting aside an obvious failure to mitigate cringe) have been huge successes. But in my experience, it takes a fundamentally cynical, even borderline nihilistic mindset to repeatedly thrive as an activist troll. That is, to be someone who can control - rather than be controlled by the voices in their head; to employ dishonesty to engineer social visibility, as PCMA did in 2022/23.
I'll explain a bit later, why I feel "morally upright" pedo critics of pedo trolls miss the point, but I suspect it has a lot in common with the factors I describe above. In other words, there is an unwillingness to separate the cruel justice of online discourse from a personalized theory of social justice, and thus a failure to properly mask easily-dismissed "cringe" aspects of their persona; to undermine existing conceptions of what MAPs are really about. Fundamentally, the idea of being given a lecture on ethics by a self-proclaimed "degenerate" pedophile is laughable to most participants in online discourse, since they lack a fine-graded understanding of complex psychosocial phenomena. It's a sad reality, but seemingly too much of a slap in the face for most online MAPs at this point in time.
What do we want to achieve?
Pedophile trolls are not aiming to convince their target opponent/s, i.e. whoever they are arguing with. The troll uses his opponents as a mechanism to recenter his radical ideology as "wise" or "street smart" by forcing them to respond in a certain way before his real target, the wider audience. Most of those reading a thread will be non-participants, i.e. "lurkers"; generally less confident viewers who are more open-minded and easily persuaded. With this in mind, the troll makes use of memes and links to information sites, to elaborate on his position, without himself looking pretentious.
The pedophile troll seeks to come across as "based" and make people laugh at common hypocrisy; this way, he gets people on his side.
What are the best personas for trolling?
Just a note here; you should have a few social accounts in reserve if you need them, as per our technical guide to social media, as trolling results in multiple bans. Try to put some organic activity on each account first, ideally unrelated or tangentially so, to your cause.
Generally, these days, a conservative or alternative-right persona works best, because conservatives are assumed to be more counterculture, outrageous and un-PC. Why not identify explicitly as someone who exposes and corrects hypocrisy in liberals? After all, MAPs suffer a great deal from liberal hypocrisy and liberals who are complicit in carceral state politics and lawmaking.
Liberal or moderate personas do actually work, if there is something uncannily radical and emotionally triggering about them, such as a sex educator supporting anonymity for students who are in sexual relationships with adults. My most successful viral threads - those exceeding 1M impressions used liberal or moderate personas to bait conservatives, but then I only ever used liberal personas to avoid offending MAPs, who I am well aware lean left. While there is no shortage of (often, completely unironic) woke pedo ragebait out in the wild, I maintain that some of the best unexplored opportunities for the pedo troll, are those perpetuated by purported traditionalist pedophiles in order to inflame liberals' awareness of their own reactionary hypocrisies, and even seed infighting among conservatives. While MAP rights is always destined to be a radical, or at least socially libertarian struggle, I feel this counterintuitive strategy would add a new aspect to the culture war - one where both sides are fair game. Where both sides are vulnerable to accusations of pedophile ideology, our struggle for visibility then transcends conventional radicalism; the pedophile himself transcends the political and is thus humanized. Literally anybody could be a pedophile.
We might also consider that online, actual mainstream liberals are more suspicious of imposters because their accounts aren't getting banned every weekend like the alt-right. This may change as Twitter evolves into X, under its new leadership, but for now at least, liberal and "SJW" type leftist accounts tend to have more followers, more connections and more shared "respectability" codes to conform to in polite and plausible company. In this sense, unless you want to get banned inside 2 days, an SJW persona is more of a long-term project, and may require some understanding of key tenets such as standpoint theory for example.
Another classic activist troll pose (and a politically neutral one) is the "Researcher", since it is harder to pin a researcher as that "anonymous person with too much knowledge on a topic". This type of persona has been used extensively by Newgon-supported vols.
A word about dishonesty. If you are employing exaggeration, be plausible in your dishonesty by employing hyperbole and sarcasm. This way, you "pitch an invisible middle ground" by making extremism look like common-sense and forcing your readers to concede at least some uncomfortable truths.
Who and what is our target?
Middle or low intelligence targets are bread and butter for a troll, as they are easier to bait and manipulate. These tend to be people with biographies indicating an involvement in sports, gaming, "consumption" of popular culture, or cultural/political topics covered by the corporate media. With this in mind, the persona you project should be anathema to your primary target. They need to viscerally hate you, so make the right signals in your bio, such as pagan "witch" symbolism, or MAGA, even Boomercon values. Have a game plan as to how far you will argue towards a certain point, and stick to it.
Remember, people hang out in online bubbles - both conservative and liberal. They do this for group-reinforcement catharsis - simply hearing their own ideas repeated in soothing metronomic fashion. It gives them a sense of certainty that allays the insecurity of living with an average intellect, and also helps them explain away their failings as injustices. Humans are group animals, and each group creates their own culture, in which they are the "good people", and only "their own people's unique perspective" can attest to this. For this reason, you should expect to be heavily down-voted, "ratio'd", etc, and you shouldn't care one bit about this as your aim is to play the underdog, puncture their comfort bubble and draw in non-participant viewers.
When it comes to threads/trends, discriminate, but don't be fussy. You can easily throw out the same or similar message a few times, and see who bites. High profile targets on relevant trends are preferred, as are discussions high up the thread. Try to catch fresh trends, not exhausted conversations, and ride the wave from there. If a thread isn't working, just switch over - disengage and reengage - don't get bogged down with point-by-point rebuttals. If engaging with deboonkers, first mock them - the idea they are trying to explain their shit to imbeciles online, and losing is inherently funny. Then cut back to the fundamental absurdity of your target's position, using new angles and reference material.
Conventional leftist/moderate woke bait for conservatives
As described above, this (while conventional and boring) is the most common form of bait served up by MAPs and their supporters, and also confirms the worst fears of conservatives. This bait strategy may work as a pinned tweet on an active account, as well as in replies to fresh/highly active threads.
- Keep it simple; most people are stupid. If you use fancy language, or terms that most people don't understand, people will continue scrolling when they see your tweet. They won't read it, won't feel anything, and won't retweet it.
- Try to confirm their beliefs in the first two sentences. This is the hook, the bait, that will make them continue reading. Then continue with something outrageous in sentence 3 and 4.
- For example, the captioned tweet starts with "It is incredible how strong MAPs and their allies have become. I see them everywhere now." [Many people believe that pedophiles have a lot of support and are becoming stronger, so this is confirming their beliefs]. It continues: "It is only a matter of time until the sex fascists will be driven out of society and this insane pedophilia hysteria will come to an end." [This, of course, goes against their feelings and triggers them. The word "sex fascist" is also an insult to antis. They will feel like they need to object. So they will quote tweet]. The tweet finishes: "Freedom, at last!" [Again, huge trigger. Because they, of course, don't agree that MAPs should be free].
- The term "Minor Attracted Person" (MAP) is also a trigger for antis, who see it as a neologism intended to soften the severity of an "heinous crime".
Politically conservative personas baiting other conservatives
MAP Activists and the Alternative-Right generally have very little in common, other than the kind of knowledge we are positioned to take advantage of. Alt-righters, 4channers and many besides, have nevertheless been able to use a good grounding in MAP-awareness in a variety of successful trolling campaigns. Let's first look at triggering "Agecuck" 4channers by pointing out they are behaving like blue-pilled "normies" (see graphics right). This has been a particularly useful strategy for some of us and mirrors the kind of tactics used by Federal Agents to sow division in hostile groups by playing the "authenticity" card. They might do this, for example, by posing individuals as the most "extreme" white-nationalists who diverge from others in their group by supporting Israel. Naturally, this undermines the solidarity of the far-right on that topic, in effect moving them back towards the center while all the time maintaining the illusion of radical nationalist conservatism.
Politically conservative personas baiting liberals
Baiting Feminists
Baiting the religious
Impersonating antis
Tagging people is the simplest baiting strategy
In 2022, Jamal Ross used this to great effect by running 2 accounts that conversed with one another.
You can also run one "pro" and one "anti" account, thus driving the right kind of traffic to your content.
Some in-thread strategies
These are for consideration, and depend very much on your target opponent and the platform's moderation norms.
Abrupt and insulting behavior
Make an entrance, but be sure to respect any language sensitivities/ToS, as this may result in your de-platforming. The politest way to do this is with a myth-and-fact type rebuttal, using a meme and link to a website. If you think you need more impetus (and don't care so much about risking an account ban), you can make personalized insults at the start of your response, as is the norm on chansites:
- Your opponent is mid-witted, has drunk the kool-aid, has an IQ between 80 and 110.
- They have an "in-group", and consume media that is directly promoted to said group, posed as "alternative" media. Said media, you will claim, is actually controlled by elites who are part of the "out group".
- They support ideologies that undermine their self-interest, and repeat the talking points of groups hostile to them. Conservatives supporting the un-conservative idea that all women and child accusers should be believed, can be painted as feminist sympathizers; quisling enemies of masculine virtues such as strong leadership.
While a dramatic entrance gets eyeballs moving, you risk coming off as an asshole. So if you are linking to supporting material while making such comments, make that material "authoritative" and "neutral" - i.e.academic, not ballast from some fringe blog or trashy news site associated with your in-group.
The absurd proposition
Very much an optional tactic. This is a proposition or counterargument that you can only just about defend within the confines of conventional western logic. Or an absurd, mocking caricature of your opponent's presumed position, taking it to an almost illogical conclusion.
The aim here is to pitch an invisible middle ground to your actual (non-participant) audience. It's important that you don't defend or source your absurd proposition in your first reply - just throw it out there in all its nakedness, coming across as plausibly dishonest or mocking in tone. When another round of discussion has passed, then use your source material (which again, should be authoritative). As well as looking ten times cooler (i.e. disinterested), this strategy might also force other people to ask for your citations, as if you had to "put in the work" to find them. This not only makes your source material look more authentic, it pitches said material as the discursive "middle ground" between your absurd proposition and your target's moralfaggotry.
Play the target
Study your target and make personalized attacks on their ideas as "typical" of their in-group - identifying why they are angered by something, in order to provoke that anger. See, for example, one classic example employed against a feminist.
For example, with American religious fundamentalists you might try to paint them as possessive and parochial small-world inbreds who treat their children as property. Point to the ironic history of clerical abuse and incestuous family relations among those outraged by the idea of progressive liberals and gays finally crossing the Rubicon and getting their hands on *other* people's kids. This is not so much a Media Matters/Occupy Democrats-level "republicans are the real pedophiles" argument, but an alternative version where the proponent is himself an unrepentant pedophile, surrounded by pedophiles in denial. In the case of a God-fearing woman, suggest she is just icked out at the idea of a boy getting his dick sucked *outside* of sacred walls, where she can't conveniently deny it happens.
Moving on to a liberal target, why not attack the historical dishonesty of the LGBT Movement, by associating with MAPs for many decades, passing motions against the age of consent, and then breaking with them for completely expedient reasons? This potential alt-right attack on liberals has been covered elsewhere in this essay.
Try mind-reading as an extension to the above historical argument; begging as to why sexual preferences have changed downstream of an in-group's political values. For example, on social media channels frequented by gay men, post images of mature male and teen boy models and ask them to declare their preference for one or the other. There is no way they can come out of this looking any better, since the only options for your target will be obvious denial, partial concession, or silence.
See a nonce-hater/woodchipper/bullets for pedos type meme? Identify the posters as vain men who are just imitating potted machismo to impress petite girls in their mid-to late 20s. Accuse them of being "fake ass" "low testosterone pedos" lusting after barely legal females with the most childish mannerisms and features, insisting they remove intimate hair and refer back to them as "Daddy". If pedo-haters deny this and recycle boomer-tier comments about preferring a "real woman", you have pretty much roped them into conceding the entire debate. Most readers will know it's BS.
Ironic Lolicons (men who enjoy drawn images of girls, but deny they like real girls) are kind of easy to mind-read, as they have already said the quiet part out loud. We know they are basically pedophiles:
Interesting, isn't it, that the one person on here protesting the most about the MAPs, is also the perv with a timeline full of kiddy sex pics. Almost as if you are trying to prove something... to who?
Identify "copes"
Identifying coping strategies in your targets is just mind reading in reverse. It's a frustrating tactic, as it constantly distracts from the debate and puts a burden of presumed mental distortion on your target. Virtually every argument they make can be a "cope" for something which undermines their position.
Dissing in plain sight
Instead of responding directly to your target, bad mouth them to another person who is engaging with them. Explain how your target will never come round to their way of thinking, pointing out the causes of their fallacious reasoning and inflexibility. This kind of proxy attack can be very triggering; it reeks of snobbery and forces your target to take the initiative in engaging with you.
Why "Newgon vols" sometimes infiltrated chansites and impersonated conservatives
- The complaints are overblown
- As described, more MAPs and pedo trolls should impersonate conservatives, not less.
- Impersonating conservatives undermines conservative stereotypes of MAPs, undermines liberal inaction on our topic and their usual "hoax" defense.