concern troll

• concern-troll

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concern troll (plural concern trolls)

1. (Internet slang) Someone who posts to an Internet forum or newsgroup, claiming to share its goals while deliberately working against those goals, typically, by claiming "concern" about group plans to engage in productive activity, urging members instead to attempt some activity that would damage the group's credibility, or alternatively to abandon group projects entirely.
   • 2013 August 2, Dana Nuccitelli, “It's climate scientists, not concern trolls who champion the scientific method”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Contrarians aren't "champions of the scientific method," as Pearce posits. They might more accurately be described as ‘concern trolls’, feigning concern at every little climate uncertainty or issue they can use to manufacture doubt and delay the action necessary to solve the climate problem.

   • 2015, Vox Day [pseudonym; Theodore Robert Beale], “Counterattack”, in SJWs Always lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, Kouvola, Kymenlaakso: Castalia House, →ISBN, page 91:

     Various concern trolls repeatedly explained why #GamerGate needed a leader and how #GamerGate would never accomplish anything or be respected without a leader, concerns that were generally blown off with multiple GamerGaters declaring that they were the leader of #GamerGate or denouncing the concern troll as a shill, which is GG parlance for an individual who is not to be trusted.

concern troll (third-person singular simple present concern trolls, present participle concern trolling, simple past and past participle concern trolled)

1. (ambitransitive) To troll as a concern troll would.
   • 2007 April 30, Matthew Yglesias, “Smells Like Team Spirit”, in The Atlantic‎^[2]:

     I think I agree with just about all the substance of David Brooks' concern trolling about the GOP (see, e.g., my final American Prospect column which made some similar points), but this minor aside strikes me as wrongheaded in an interesting way: […]

   • 2015, Max Longley, For the Union and the Catholic Church: Four Converts in the Civil War‎^[3]:

     Foremost among the critical governments were the expansionist northern Italian kingdom of Piedmont, which had territorial designs on the papal domains, and Piedmont's ally Great Britain, whose policy was to concern-troll for alleged papal misgovernment in order to delegitimize Pius's rule.

• "From the diaries. More cute concern trolls by Republican campaign workers -- kos"
• "Making Mischief on the Web, Time Magazine, Dec. 16, 2006 Definition of concern troll published in mainstream media.