How online trolls teach the art of persuasion Over the past decade, even extremely offline people have had to confront a sobering fact of contemporary existence: The bad things that happen on the internet don't stay on the internet. In Dialogues in Dark Corners, Kristopher M. Lotier examines the sophisticated instructional methods and ever-evolving rhetorical techniques of internet trolls, anti-feminists, and conspiracists. Even actions seemingly isolated within the web's unfriendly confines-a message board raid, a cruel meme-can bleed into the offline "real world." The trolls who traffic in online outrage often disingenuously offer this self-defense: It was just a joke; you shouldn't have taken it seriously. When online posts fuel offline violence, however, the consequences of a meme are not laughing matters. * Online knowledge communities discussed in the text include * the internet's first self-identified trolls * pickup artists * the "Red Pill" Manosphere * QAnon Taking these rhetorics seriously, Lotier states, is the first step toward countering them. Lotier argues that these online actors are experts of vernacular rhetoric: They apply systematic rhetorical principles and use carefully developed persuasive methods. They have test procedures and refine them over time-debating first principles, broadscale strategies, and microscale tactics. In Dialogues in Dark Corners, Lotier reveals the rhetorical strategies used to attract followers and inculcate them with these systems of thought.
