Don’t Feed Our Troll, Please

Is it okay to feed Castor Oil to the troll?

I’d have to say that the troll is probably thrilled to merit a posting dedicated to him. He’s probably busy vandalizing Wikipedia right now…

In fact, allowing comments on the issue of please don’t feed the troll is sort of like leaving out containers of Purina Troll Chow out where he can find them…

PS, Moderated, nested threads like Slashdot’s help with trolls because people can respond to individual posts more easily and trolls get modded down. Unfortunately, your volume of posts doesn’t lend itself completely to that kind of set up, but nesting could be helpful.

Sorry, Dan — I’m guilty of toll-feeding, as I usually respond to his drivel. I’ll do my best to ignore him in the future 😉

Kerry has issued a statement about *outing* the daughter of the Vice President on his opposing ticket:

“I was trying to say something *positive*.”

Now he’s making references to HIV!

Will this outrageous conduct go unpunished by the voters?

Right, *I’m* the troll heaping ad hominems.

Dan, you’ve sat back for the past weeks as the rhetoric against my postings escalated. I’m “masturbating” on the blog, “spilling my seed of foul words”, I’m “brain dead”, “retarded”, “defective”, “challenged”, “sexually conflicted”.

All not without a word from you, asking others to be civil.

Dan, you are a rank hypocrite, comfortable only within your rigidly narrow ideological spectrum, and you obviously attract the same small minded rabble.

Fascinating link–it’s amusing how trollish behaviors are being categorized into some of the same categories of disfunction you see in antipatterns. ( http://www.antipatterns.com )

Very tempting to LABEL people.

Do we have a globally objective test for what constitutes “trolling” ?

Or is it just that we don’t like what he(she?) says?

Dan –it’s your site and obviously your subjective call on the issue. I think you take the high road by keeping the comments section open to the general public. Closing it would serve the ultimate goal of the trolling right-wingers: to stop free speech and honest debate.

When all is said and done, the trolls are most dangerous to their own prejudices and philosophies. They discredit themselves and their positions without yielding anything of substance…a verbal fart, if you will.

My father taught me it was unfair to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent, and I should be ashamed to score points at their expense. Okay, I understand that, and the logic for not feeding the trolls. but, Lord, it is SO-O-O tempting to provoke them when they are so sure of themselves AND unpleasant to boot.

OK.

So where were we on the outcome of Bush-Kerry debate #3?

I was surprised when my significant other (a female) starting leaning towards Bush after #3. Before that, she was leaning towards Kerry.

What did he do, how did he (Karl Rove) do it?

It went right over my testerone-drugged head. I thought Kerry was so much more “Presidential”. In my opinion, a mind is a terrible thing not to have in the White House. Was it the draft? Was it the “tax relief” line?

Kerry was revealed to the American people as the “conservative senator from the State of Massachussetts”.

He gay-baited his opponents, outing Dick Cheney’s daughter on national television to an audience of tens of millions of people, appealing to the prejudices of extreme right evangelicals in the most vile and despicable manner possible.

He played pander bear, promising that big government will cure all ills. “Got a problem? I got a pogam fo it!”

The extreme gap between his promises and his tax plan — so far Left no Congress, not even a majority Democrat Congress, would go for it — was laid plain. The feeble counterattack, characterizing the President’s plan to let Americans keep ownership of a portion of their social security contributions as “new spending”, was eviscerated by Bush’s pointing out the cost of inaction is GREATER.

Kerry’s rhetoric on immigration “earned legalization” fell on deaf ears, as he was revealed as supporting another amnesty. His suggestion that retinal scans (!) were the key to the problem of illegal immigration from the South was worse than pathetic. He seemed way out of his depths there.

He couldn’t avoid mentioning Iraq, opening himself up to the plethora of horrors facing Kerry on the foreign policy front, with his characterization of terrorism as a “nuisance like prostitution”, his Global Test, his berating and belittling of allies. All his worst one-liner slipups, came back to bite him in the behind.

His demonstrated a failure to comprehend the impact of the dot bom bubble, and the detonation of a tactical nuclear warhead-size weapon in the center of the U.S. financial districct, as contributing to the loss of jobs, and he failed to commend the President for the rapid pace of recent job creation, the pace of economic growth, the significant recent accumulation of unexpected tax revenues bringing down the deficit, and the host of additional Bush
accomplishments — a dramatic aversion of a threatened depression, and a strong recovery now that the tax cuts are in place, which no Kerry Administration could possibly hope to keep going apace.

And, of course, the American people saw the Kerry vision of bigger government, oppressive high taxes on small businesses, an aversion to real reforms of social security and medicare — all sorts of disappointing policy positions worthy of the 1970s, not the 21st Century.

Kerry was also revealed as a pro-abortion absolutist, who opposes restricting partial birth abortion, and intends to apply a strict litmus test for government. This reinforced the view he propogated at the last debate, where he criticized Bush for characterizing Thomas and Scalia as his favorite justices. (Of course, this is an extraordinary flip/flop for Kerry, who voted for Scalia’s confirmation to shore up support in the Italian-American community before a tight re-election contest).

The list goes on and on. A complete government takeover of health insurance with a “single re-insurer” plan for catastrophic coverage. Kerry compared Bush to Tony Soprano, then himself said that “you can take my plan, or you can keep yours with your high premiums, your shrinking coverage”. One of the audience members of the live-blog in which I participated last night said, Kerry’s plan is “the offer you can’t refuse!” ROFL everywhere.

Kerry offered Karl Rove a full panoply for a full scale counterassault for the rest of the month. Kerry is toast.

If this is a normal “query” post, I don’t see why (s)he’s being called a troll.

I do tend to snarl back when a handful of vile post-ers here — who Dan *won’t* police because they are ideological fellow travelers — accuse me of retardation and serial masturbation, etc.

Dan never criticizes the extreme Left for outrageous misconduct. Not here, and not when the standard-bearer of his party resorts to unabashed gay-baiting, appealing to homophobia, to drive support from his opponent.

Hey, pb, you must be Canadian.

In Canada, for those of you who don’t know us, the rule is, The exception is the rule. Americans get the point of a pattern, and it becomes a rule. It’s a rule of thumb, right? In Canada, however, whenever you point out a pattern, someone points out an exception. So there’s a real lack of common ground on what is a good rule of thumb on anything you can think of. Try it on the next Canadian you meet if you don’t believe me.

By the way, I’m an exception. 🙂

Nice to know he was not refering to me. I am the pleasant, informed, kinder gentler troll.

Dan deserves to be called out on some of his flat out bias. But you cant point out how he is wrong without acting like an a******.

“But you cant point out how he is wrong without acting like an a******”

You have it reversed. The extreme Left fellow travelers, the drooling mindless boobs with which Dan feels most comfortable and intentionally surrounds himself, act consistently like arseholes to anyone who breaks the party line.

They’re digital brownshirts, or redshirts.

He let’s them run rampant here, and he *doesn’t care*. In fact, he encourages them, goading on with threads like this one that encourage a mob mentality of hate.

At a time that Kerry, hiss standard bearer, is flaming the fires of hatred against homosexuals!

That’s right, we’re the “trolls”. Pathetic, isn’t it?

That’s it. I’m going home…no troll food for you.

Dan names a thread “Exploiting Terror, Degrading America”, then accuses *me* of “reflexively ultra-right positions on just about everything”.

What a “reflexively left-wing” hypocrite!

Query is burning more energy than everyone else.

Let him (her?) keep going. Just keeps building a longer list of mis-truths.

Query: Even the Higher Son got that first “talking point” more correct than you did. Karl Rove told him (via the back bulge?) to label *Ted Kennedy* as the conservative L-word from Mass. The point was to place Kind Kerry even more to the Left (on the outer bank). You were supposed to have understood that. Didn’t your Puppet-of-the-Neocons Talking-Points pamphlet arrive this week? This week’s sound bark is the “L” sound.

Look:

… JK … L … MN …

See? John Kerry is to the “L”eft of the Mean Neocons (er.. I mean compassionate coo coo’s)

If you gobble this one up, you’re a troll. Let it go.

Got you to *read* it, didn’t I?

LOL! The Left is so predictable.

“If people become abusive, they can be banned from discussions. Not everyone has a right to speak on everyone else’s site or be part of everyone else’s conversation.”-We the Media,184

Wanted to check out what was going on over here after reading Dan’s book for class. Found the current topic interesting 🙂 But I’m sure you all have better things to get back to…

Yes, Di, it was that very personal tribute by Dan in his book, no doubt intended personally for ME, that has kept me coming back.

Very interesting. Put out troll food and they come scampering in from the dark. Dan was right.

“He gay-baited his opponents, outing Dick Cheney’s daughter on national television to an audience of tens of millions of people, appealing to the prejudices of extreme right evangelicals in the most vile and despicable manner possible.”

Outed Dick Cheney’s daughter? Hardly. This wasn’t a secret or anything. It has been reported that Mary Cheney “publically ‘declared’ herself a lesbian, and has worked as the gay and lesbian corporate relations manager for Coors Brewing Co.”

Prior to this, Alan Keyes also called Mary a “selfish hedonist” because or lesbianism.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040901-093347-1067r.htm

Dick Cheney’s daughter has discussed her sexual preference privately, never — EVER — on the record.

It is indisputable, and the Kerry team’s internals show it, that most of Bush’s evangelicals supporters did not know this.

Kerry outed her in from of 50 million Americans.

Fortunately, if the latest polls are any indication, this outrage sliced at his own jugular.

Kerry, with his damned insensitive remarks re Vice President Cheney’s daughter, simply proved once more he is “Unfit for Command”. See the Swift Boats and the “Stolen Honor” web sites.

James O. Dirden
CSM, U. S. Army
’44-’49/’50-’73

James Dalton Bell put together an idea for a distributed system of political control called ‘ assassination politics’. It was such a good idea that, like Inslaw’s PROMIS software it was stolen by the government. ( renamed PAM )
We know just a handful of hateful individuals are guilty of much of the spamming and virus propagation we all have to endure and as trolling fits that profile and Jim Bell suggested his system might be used to control car thieves one day, I would like to suggest the modified use of this net based P2P anarchistic system in this case.

Lunar right Troll’s permanent retirement by Xmas?

‘ I’d buy that for a dollar! ‘

“Kerry, with his damned insensitive remarks re Vice President Cheney’s daughter, simply proved once more he is “Unfit for Command’.”

No, I would put it as, “The evangelicals, with their damned insensitive response re Vice President Cheney’s daughter, simply proved once more that they are ‘unfit to be American.'”

I like many posts Dan makes but why do so many liberals try to squelch speech that disagrees with their point of view, often attempting to demonize those with alternate points of view. I thought liberalism was about openness and hearing all points of view (indeed, even relativism)? That’s one of the things I like about what liberalism is supposed to be.

But it seems like we’ve let emotion get the better of us and have gotten personal with this stuff. So what if query posts opposing ideas – skip the post for godsakes people if it bothers you that much. How are you any better than some supposed troll if you have to get down and sling mud and insults, etc.

Anyway, can’t we all get along? 😉

I wish Dan would make this blog more about technology and less about politics. As it has become more and more political, I’ve read it less and less.

VoIP Dude

There is politics in everything.

You can’t hide your head in the machine because the politicians are going to come around sooner or later, snatch your machine, and decapitate you in the process.

Remember that old song, “Where Have all the software jobs gone? Gone to outsourcing my son. When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn … “

If you didn’t know Cheney’s daughter was gay, you live under a rock. And her sexuality was also covered in the VP debates, so to say Kerry outed her is just silly.

Why can’t the right focus on bigger issues then whether the dems are talking about Cheney’s daughter being a lesbian? Just sheer stupidity. Why not talk about ideas instead of a he/said she said about something completely irrelevant.

Aren’t there three levels of conversation? Look what level your stuck at.

I am a firm believer in freedom of speech. Why can’t opposing view points be heard?

It would be pretty boring if it was just a one sided talk with everyone patting eachother on the back.

If this is an ongoing piece of advice for commentators, you might want to link to this blog entry right in the comment form, next to the ‘Comments:’ textarea box.

BlogGirl –You hit the nail right on the head. Yes you are correct.

There are 3 levels of conversation.

Karl Rove (RNC psych ops master) knows it all too well. Two of the conversations are with the more primitive, limbic and reptilian parts of the human brain while only one is with the higher-thinking, cortical part. The “mixed messages” get through to all 3.

For many Americans, the final vote is decided by the lower 2. But we do not phrase it that way. Instead, we say “I have a gut feeling that I like _____ better” (pick Kerry/Edwards or Cheney/Bush) as we pull that voting lever.

If you cannot articulate the reason, then you are probably voting with your limbic and/or reptilian brains.

The reptilian brain reacts to fear & hate.
The limbic brain reacts to love & loyalty.

That is why the Cheney/Bush team has wrapped themselves in the American flag and proclaimed war against “those who hate our freedom” and security for the children of all soccer moms.

Now on the issue of Loving Lynn and her Left-behind Lesbian daughter –I was listening to a radio talk show this morning and all the pro-Republicans were calling in with rage and rag in their arguments. They were angry for having been “outed” –as Hypocrites.

How can those who “Love Life” and who “Leave no child behind” not agree that the Vice Pesidential daughter has a right to “be who she is”.

Kerry kicked them where it hurts with that one. It was slightly below the belt –yes– but I’m sure they understand because they are such “compassionate” people.

Karl Rove wanted the “L”-word to be a code for “Liberal”. But as seen on NBC’s Today Show this morning, the Democrats have re-directed that arrow to mean Lesbian rights. The Republicans have been temporarily beat at their own game.

Tomorrow’s Sesa-mean letter will be “H”

Haughty Hate-mongering Hypocrites

“Step Back,” you seem like one angry person, so filled with hatred and contempt for others. That’s a shame I think, and I hope you someday come to value the thoughts and opinions of others – even if you happen to disagree with them.

Yo Dude –no hate
in my heart of hearts
… honestly

Everyone (even lesbians and neocons) is/are equally entitled to express their thoughts and to partake in rights that are given to other Americans.

That’s what makes America, our collective America, so great.

I don’t want to see that America destroyed by brain washing tactics. I’m outing the brain washers.

Instead of talking about taking daughter Cheney’s name in vain, let’s get back to the BIG issues, the real issues:

1) How are we going to get out of the mess in Iraq?
2) How are we going to kick start our faltering economy?
3) How are we going to fix our collapsing school systems?
4) How are we going to combat eco-destruction and global warming?

These are the big issues, not what color of clothing Laura is planning to wear for the next outing.

VoIP Dude, did you miss the headline? “Don’t feed the troll”.

Can’t respond on the objective issues. So you try to make it personal –eh ?

Let’s add to the list of unanswered questions:

5) How are we going to cure diseases if the Fed. govenrment will not fund R&D due to faith-based concerns?

6) How are we going to keep Social Security alive if the administration funnels all taxpayer monies (our money) to Halliburton and other friends-of-the-family ?

This is not trolling, this is sinking you under the weight of unanswered and fact-based (not faith-based) questions.

You want truth ? You can’t handle truth.

“Why can’t the right focus on bigger issues then whether the dems are talking about Cheney’s daughter being a lesbian?”

Because right now they’re losing on every important issue. (And that’s not my opinion — it’s what every poll is showing.) If you can’t run on your record, you spend the campaign trying to tear down the opponent.

(The irony is that Cheney’s daughter *has* publicly discussed her sexual orientation, and has even used it to campaign for Cheney. Lynn Cheney and Dick Cheney have both discussed it in campaign speeches. The right’s whining on this issue simply has no basis in reality.)

What seperates a troll from legimate discussion? That is the true question on this topic.

For me a troll is a poster of any opinion that is over the top in their posting. Constant ad hominem attacks, disrespect for other’s opinions and general over-the-top behavior characteristize a troll. No change of opinion or politenes occurs. Confrontation is the only goal. I apply the Daffy Duck rule: if you can picture Daffy Duck jumping up and down yelling quoting the message while you remain calm, it’s probably a troll.

What I don’t understand about trolls is their seeming compulsive need to be heard. After a while I tend to avoid places I am not welcome, but trolls seem to enjoy it.

step back: I am not sure I reach your third level often, but I am aware of the issues you mention and the distractions you cite. That really concerns me and quite frankly, scare me.

A Z: There is another issue going on at this “Don’t Feed the Troll” site.

Suppose I tell you that this has been an experiment by a psychology class.

We want to see how an ostracizing LABEL affects free speech.

Instead of labeling someone as a “liberal” or as a “neocon”, we use the “troll” label.

A certain percentage of the public is composed of ostracism-phobic personalty type. They are horrified by the idea of being identified as a “troll” and of thereby being shunned by the community. So they will instantly cease particiapation for fear of being labeled a “troll”. That is one bullying tactic. Create a repugnant label, attach it to one member of the community (Yes you query, even though you’re probably not a troll and you don’t hide under the bridge teasing the toads), and make an example of that one, picked out individual.

Luckily query has guts. He was not fully intimidated by the “troll” label.

So next bullyng tactic, is a sign on the lawn: Don’t Feed the Trolls. Now anyone in the group who talks to the to-be-shunned member is himself a no-good troll-feeder who is to be harranged.

Did this bullying tactic squelch free speech?

I think the answer is yes. At least here.

P.S. In the fairy tale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, the third and biggest goat comes off the mountain and boots the troll off the bridge. The smaller goats live happily ever after.

PPS Blog trolling is a real problem. There are technical solutions. It has to do with how much energy readers have to expend to circumvent a posting that they deem as “troll-some” and move on to the next.

One last thing.

Note the connection to Dan’s next Posting: Ugly Accu-sation

Should O’Reilly be shunned by all men (the mark of Cain is upon him) because one person has called him a sexual-troll ?

Good question.

step back wrote:

>Let’s add to the list of unanswered questions:

>5) How are we going to cure diseases if the Fed. govenrment will not fund R&D due to faith-based concerns?

John Kerry is the candidate whose program promises drastic reduction in R&D over faith-based concerns.

Democrats, including John Kerry, have an overwhelming *faith* in the power of government, one that extends so far that it considers the private sector satanic.

Under Kerry, we know that drug prices will be subject to rigid government controls (a “negotiation” you can’t refuse), while junk science lawsuits against drug manufacturers run rampant. New drug development will collapse, and we’ll be stuck with drugs whose R&D began in the last *millennium*.

The elderly will be hit the most, because the government will control what drugs are covered and what constitutes a “fair” price.

We’ll lose out on drugs for Alzheimers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and that’s just for starters.

Walk again! Vote for Bush!

I agree with query. It was *horrible* of Kerry to try to use the evangelical right’s hatred of homosexuality for political gain.

Good thing our President would NEVER do anything like that!

The next thing you know, Kerry’ll be accusing the Administration of trying to pass pro-homo Constitutional Amendments, just to rile up the right-thinking people on the right-most wing of the Republican party.

GO GEORGE BUSH YOU PRO-HOMO FAG-LOVER; DON’T LET JOHN KERRY GET AWAY WITH SLANDERING YOUR LOVE OF LESBIANS!

Trolls need love too.