K-Punk on GV’s, trolls, and Troll-Masters

“But make no mistake about it, there is no more Real level to human life than that of energy and its distribution. As Burroughs more than anyone else realised, persons and the social are just masks covering up a terrain populated by energy predators and propagators.”

This is one of my many favorite passages in K-Punk’s latest contribution to the theme. Burroughs noted that you should simply avoid anyone who makes you feel like you’re losing two pints of blood every time you speak with them.

The Troll-Master is not an arbitrarily concocted subtype, but one I immediately recognized when reading K-Punk’s description. Any departmental tyrant will tend to fit this type, and they not only suck energy, but have the power to turn others into grey vampires as well, often gradually. K-Punk says this about them: “they are village despots, whose charismatic tyranny seldom works outside their own turf.” Yes, and this suggests a method of identifying them: look for a discrepancy between the psychological tyranny exercised over one piece of turf by a person and the lack of interest or outright contempt with which they are viewed outside that turf. These are dangerous people, and I feel fortunate to have had an instinct for steering clear of the three such cases I have known. The key is not to care what they think about you. They’ll try to suck you into their lair by withholding recognition and trying to get you to compete for their approval, but you simply have to ignore that lure, which can be difficult for the young, who by definition are probably somewhat unsure of themselves at a certain point. [ADDENDUM: One correction. I know a fourth case of a Troll-Master, and that time I did fall into the trap, but through good fortune I was soon elevated to a position where the Troll-Master couldn’t do much more than grumble about my departure from his turf.]

It reminds me of a graduate student I once knew– and hence not a Troll-Master, just a student, but a Troll-Master “type”. Despite being a fairly repulsive, Charles Manson-like figure (or perhaps precisely for this reason) he had a kind of guru status among younger female graduate students. This always puzzled the rest of us, but I managed to catch glimpses of him at work, and finally figured it out. What he would do is begin by flattering them, telling them that they were universally regarded as brilliant and promising students. Then later, he would pretend that others had been somewhat disappointed by their work so far, that their intellectual stock had dropped, but that maybe it wasn’t too late to prove themselves. There’s no evidence that he ever got any tangible dating rewards out of this technique, but he certainly established a psychological tyranny over these young women that was sickening to observe.

There’s been some grouching about categories such as troll and grey vampire, but they are hard-won through years of experience, and it feels to me like they are eventually headed in the direction of a full-blown ethical theory.

K-Punk is also right that the standard modus operandi of trolls is to try to enter and corrupt thriving networks. The multifariousness of networks means there are always weak points that allow them to succeed, but also means that networks have no essential center and therefore can recover fairly quickly by rerouting their damaged electrical lines. This sometimes involves a few sacrifices, but ultimately it leads to a stronger network.