http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_01_27_arch...599913399738086

On Trolls


Tanta:


I cannot make anyone stop responding to pointless or nuisance comments. You have to want to restrain yourself, because you understand that the only way to get rid of them is to fail to give them the attention they want. A "troll" is not just someone whose comments you disagree with, or even just a nasty or badly-worded comment. A troll is someone who does not, under any possible set of circumstances, care what you think about him or his comments. He merely wants attention. Negative attention will do. The more you disagree with him, the more he is able to tell himself that he is persecuted and victimized or the only voice of reason or one of the elite few who has the God's-eye view of the world or whatever his current delusion is. If he isn't merely a narcissist who thrives on feeling attacked, he's just some putz who enjoys irritating other people. Therefore, you "feed" the troll by paying any attention to him at all. It does not matter what you say in response. Any response to a troll just encourages the troll.

Besides classic trolls, we have a few resident long-winded bores who believe that the rest of us have never been exposed to some trite, shallow, bombastic rant they just heard on the radio or read in Reader's Digest or saw in a vision, and feel compelled to share with the rest of us. These people lack any possible sense of context or audience; they are incapable of noticing that the bulk of our commenting community has been exposed to the world for a while now and is not interested in any comment that starts "there is one simple answer to this the rest of you aren't getting." It does you no good to respond to this type either; they'll just re-write the same comment again, at the same length, saying the same thing, until you "get it." They are bores with no self-awareness. The cool thing about the internet is that you can just scroll down to the next comment without being "rude." So take advantage of the medium.

There is no more powerful force than the bait of a troll. You cannot ever hope to expect your users to ignore them. it will never ever happen.

I've been around the net and chats for wayyyyy too long. The ignore option has always been there, and it's almost never used.


Fact is, the most offensive insult you can be towards someone on line, in a text only medium, is to ignore them.
Especially considering that 90% of the time there is no right or wrong to the argument.


However, we all must recognize there is a place to realize when enough is enough and quit a pointless "discussion".

Here, day old spooge;

You befouled, vitiated poltroon. You blighted, malodorous, mephitic recreant. You are a festering boil on the ass of all humanity. You have all the backbone of a jellyfish. You moribific, feculent simpleton. Would that I could change my species, just so that I might not be associated with you. The stupendous, confounding magnitude of your insipidness astonishes me.

I cannot believe that anyone could muster such a prodigious, astounding level of stupidity. If you were any more asinine or incogitant, you would surely have been put to death long ago. Your vapidity has gone so far beyond any previous boundaries of puerility and nugacity as to banish any and all chances of an intelligent thought from your head. Even the most hardened of regulars unquestionably cannot believe your fatuousness and illogicality.

Your opinions do nothing but lend credence to the overwhelming fact that you are such a driveling simpleton that you cannot find your ass with both hands and a road map. You are the very pinnacle of insensateness. You are the model of banality and subnormality. I am aghast
at your apparent ability to insert your own head into your own rectum at will.

There cannot be even a fragment of intellectuality or perspicacity to be found within the gaping void which should contain your brain. It amazes me that you are able to perform even the most facile of everyday functions with your exorbitantly disadvantaged and gormless lack of intellect.

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As they say in Texas, "I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel". You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be
seen with you.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you.

You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum, and I wish you would go away.

You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed
themselves in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?

If you aren't an idiot, you made a world class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more
rapidly.

You snail skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs. You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one handed slack jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock hard stupid. Dehydrated rock hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans stupid stupid. Meta stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid.

Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success.

True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.

P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self destructive, abusive, socially retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good.

Just a little "constructive criticism", I hope this helps...Bushbot.

I think you could probably get everyone but Sky to ignore the trolls. On a good day.

Blowing up troll logic is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, the trouble is then the fish don't realize their dead.

That's both unkind and unfair, you troll!

Truer words have never been spoken. Reminds me of the days of Jeff Gannon. We had a wing-nut from Conservative Underground defending him. After we had throughly and completely debunked/exposed his efforts to defend the indefensible, he ended with "Well, it looks like I'm the only person here who doesn't have a problem with gay people".

Didn't something similar just happen with a Paulist?

Yeah, but I don't know if I'd really qualify him as a troll. Maybe I guive him too much credit. Or maybe I'm gettin' soft in my old age.

and, on a side note, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.

I don't suppose any of you on this board have run into a T-1000 android assassin, shape shifter troll, complete with a potpourri of sock puppets? Nasty things.

Like an entomologist that studies insect defenses, or a zoologist that studies animal defenses, I study Troll defenses. There are many species of trolls on this board and each has a method of disingenuous argument. They carry on a psuedo-discourse that really has no purpose other than to poison the channels of communication.

Just as some insects protect themselves by vomiting, bleeding, excreting, defecating, spitting, and squirting toxins, or animals that burrow, use camouflage, run in packs, or have body armor, so it is the same with trolls. Ultimately, all trolls use the squirting toxin defense.

For example, the troll who defecates a post within a thread. I remember one troll who vomits song lyrics in a thread. And another who has a combination of excreting, pack running, and mimicking. The shit slinging monkey variety of troll is the worst (I couldn't find a picture of a monkey slinging shit).

So I found particularly cleaver and interesting a NeoCon troll and decided to categorize his troll behavior. He used a combination of animal and insect defenses.

The first trait of the NeoCon troll is mimicking. Some caterpillars mimic the appearance of a snake when they are about to be eaten.

This one troll tries to presents himself as an intelligent and perceptive defender of right-wing economics. In fact, he even has an economic system named after him entitled “Neo-liberal Economics” also known as voodoo economics. He mimics credibility. Mimicking is also used by this species to simulate triumph in an argument, and counter argument exchange—the possum defense in reverse by faking life instead of death.

The second trait of the NeoCon troll is to camouflage his positions and arguments. This is in my opinion the most superior form of defense; thus, my interest in this species of troll life. A NeoCon troll presents an argument and counter-argument and then immediately changes to another position or interpretation of his own statements. He is the ultimate troll chameleon.

I can say that the NeoCon chameleon defenses are much less unpleasant than the other defenses of vomiting, and defecating, but as I said before, ultimately all trolls squirt toxin.

Spitting cobra.

Indeed, Anti, hence my: T-1000 android assassin, shape shifter troll, complete with a potpourri of sock puppets. Have you noticed when you get a fix on the argument shift tactic, and are about to exterminate one, it suddenly morphs into a gang of Rodeo Clowns?

If they morph and do the sock puppet thing and what not, how can you tell it's a T-1000?
How will I know when I face one? And will I need my nieces pokimon(s?) cards when I do?

It's hard to tell, it could even be a more advanced version than that! I haven't managed to dissect anything beyond a T-1000 yet.

Hey, is someone calling ME a day-old spooge ???!!!

I resemble that remark !

Seriously, Antifascist and Ren, I can see you guy's had a hard run on Thom's board, (Whoo !!, that was a drone ARMY...) and can appreciate the "back-to-the-wall" mentality you have here, but it's also maybe a little hard sometimes when you leap of the wall at a comment or remark that maybe wasn't clear.

Tragically, not everyone has a Classical education, nor the time to build the anti-dronebot armor, power it up and set it to "Stun"...

Both of you have great posts, and I value the devotion of gathering together data for the next aeon, "Lest we forget..", that stuff, but coming over a bit too "intellectual Champagne-socialist" hi-falootin' grinds with some on this board.
I speak only for myself, and hope you stick around.
Most of the stuff you post is known about, and has been for some time, and your posting it in easy (!) to digest blocs is good. Depressing, but good...but, again, getting peoples backs up with "Let them eat cake..." remarks is poor strategy, especially as you have some truly valid stuff.

(Rousseau blushes, then wipes nose....)

around here the trolls and bushbots are pretty much allowed to disgrace and hang themselves.
Just leave them alone and soon enough, they can't help it. And in the mean time the lesson is quite obvious to all of us.

Thanks Rousseau.

A little confusing as to which of us you are talking to, I haven't posted near as much as Anti, my style is so different, at least to me. He's more of a Hedgehog and I, well I think a Fox.



I don't tend to start that many threads, I like to work off what other people come up with, mostly. I do follow things and watch them evolve, I've been following the UET for about two years now.

I'll work on dialog for awhile 'til I get a better feel. I like to joke around. I've been splitting my time, here and Thom's. Can't quite abandon my friends there yet, maybe I don't need to.

The troll thing is kind of like a soap opera for me. I think they were just a nuisance to Anti.

So what's the deal with Hartmann's forum then?

Is it a victim of a bushbot invasion and dead?

Ha! Very good Ren. I have to take that unattractive title of hedge­
hog.

Πόλλ' οἰ + ̃δ' ἀλὰπηξ ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἕν μέγα.
'The fox knows many
things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'.

Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky,
Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedge­
hogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus,
Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.

How cute!

Yeah, but you're in some pretty good company, don't you think? I don't even like Aristotle. One of my online character's is dedalus, though. I really like Joyce.



By the way, you might want to check on this in a few days.

It's in transition, Jesus, and I still think there's some hope. A bunch of new folks have shown up, and I've been sort of acting as a babysitter for the Bushbots while the new posters get settled in to know each other. Some good talks have got started in the old style we used to have a couple years ago, and the bushbots are staying out of those for a change.

Looks like they have finally figured out a way to bring all the old posts from the old board to the new board, but we could be about to witness a major melt down when they do that. Who knows. The software is already pretty flaky.

I'm feeling extra-nice today, so I'm going to avoid that site and concentrate my liberal-bashing here.

Thom welcomes everyone. That's what gives it some juice from time to time. Variable reinforcement is the most effective to keep a habit alive, the Skinnerians tell us. The "something for everyone" keeps us returning, I guess. Meanwhile Nurse Rached passes out the quaaludes and keeps the deck chairs neatly arranged in hopes of keeping the Cuckoo's Nest from tearing itself apart.

How does Skinner explain defiance?

Don't know. You could try Beyond Freedom and Dignity

This case would require Freudian psycho-sexual analysis, not Skinner.

That always seemed to be the weak point in behaviorism, to me. It fails to explain those who stand in the face of all negative reinforcement, and spurn all positive reinforcement, to follow their own paths.

True. Operant Behaviorism can't explain ethical behavior but then it's really designed to avoid any political and historical content. If fact, it is a school of psychology the denies the existence of the Mind! The belief in "Mind" to explain thinking, perception and, emotion is called by them a hypothetico-deductive "mediating" theory! Psychologists that deny the existence of the psyche!

By "this case" are you referring to Hartmann's Cuckoo's Nest?

Logical positivism and it's psychological offspring, behaviorism, pretty much lost the battle for a legitimate place in science by the end of the Twentieth Century. In that sense, Plato has won the argument with Aristotle, so far. I'm sure Aristotle and his adherents aren't about to give up, though.

Chomsky brought behaviorism to it's knees in his debate with Skinner in the sixties, when he challenged him to explain how language was learned. It's never recovered.

Yes, the Hartmann Trolls.

Chomsky brought behaviorism to it's knees in his debate with Skinner in the sixties, when he challenged him to explain how language was learned. It's never recovered. But psychology just removed the brand name. Logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle also failed in the 1920s and Wittgenstein even disowned it, but it's the dominate scientific methodology in many social sciences today.

If that's the case, then that's how social science has derailed itself. Anthropology went through a transition, however, with folks like Claude Levi Strauss, Gregory Bateson, Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz, and joined the revolution that included Chomsky and the neuro scientists. I haven't really paid much attention to the other fields, they never much interested me.