Can You Spot the Troll?

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

Have you ever looked at a social media profile and wondered if it’s a real, legit, person, or not?

This quiz put together by Clemson University and Interactive Knowledge will help teach you how to tell if an account is a real person ho just happens to have opinions, or a fake account that is trying to influence followers into any particular set of beliefs.

I took the quiz, and it’s not as obvious as you might think. I got 6 correct, but I will also say that one of my answers was really just a difference of opinion of what a troll is. I would define a real person who purposefully spreads false information as a troll, but the quiz is trying to identify completely fake profiles, who are not even real people.

To-may-to, to-mah-to. It’s all fake to me.

Some other interesting tidbits from reading the results, there’s been a lot of work put in to studying our behavior, and what kinds of things will get our attention. Outrage, yes, but pay attention to the account photos, and the oversimplified comparisons, and other things too. Those are not by accident. Every detail is designed to get someone’s attention, on all sides. It’s not just one side the trolls are supplying bad information too, it’s an attempt to get everyone riled up and sow division across the US.

Seems to me that it’s working too, at least on social media.

Check it out yourself, and think about some of the accounts you follow. Are they real, or not?

Also, if what you’re sharing on your profile looks pretty similar to the troll profiles, maybe reconsider where you are getting your information from, eh?

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