The difference between trolling and disagreeing
I know I wrote that I wasn't going to post any more threads about trolls, and that I would simply implement a solution instead. And that is my plan.
But I found this to be so excellently put that I simply could not resist highlighting it here. It's from a commmenter, Brad, on the subject of how to differentiate between trolls and mere dissenters:
So confud,
why have I never been branded a troll? I have clearly stated several times that I don't like Bush; that I didn't vote for him; that I was completely opposed to the war in Iraq; and that I never went through any 9/11-related epiphany. Clearly, I don't agree with a lot of what is stated here. Despite this, none of the people who comment here, aside from you, have insulted me or labelled me a troll. And the same is true at other blogs where I comment, across the political spectrum.
Perhaps it is because I don't repetitively post hate-filled mockery, laced with insult and misused epithets (such as your constant misuse of the term "racist"), and inform people that I am once again laughing at them. Having spent a life time in higher ed, around people who either have strong opinions (faculty) or are developing them (students), I have learned to disagree with someone, listen to any response, and move on. You, on the other hand, have barged into a virtual room, screaming invective, shouting down dialogue, attempting to shut down the forum, and then you smugly state that they call you a troll because you disagree with them. Horse poop, they call you a troll because you are a virtual violent bully.
[ADDENDUM: I am planning to be home by the end of the week, and hope to implement some of the promised changes in the blog not too long after that. It may take a while, so please be patient, but it will be done.
But because I'm such a polite hostess, I thought I'd provide this thread to give my beloved and esteemed trolls a place to vent. As I've said many times before, I believe that every time a troll goes about his/her business (I think I'll just drop the cumbersome PC inclusive pronoun designation here and go with the masculine, if you don't mind) he provides further and ever more detailed evidence of his trollish nature. So it's all in the nature of an exhibit of trolldom.
But enough is enough, and as I've said, in a little while, changes will be instituted. Please bear with me till then.]
posted by neo-neocon @ 6:36 PM
27 comments
27 Comments:
Confud, it's not the facts. It's your arrogance. Tequilamockingbird in the Critical Mass Thread disagreed strongly, yet didn't come close to approaching the level of arrogance and insult that you did. That's why he's not labled a troll, whereas you are. I presented facts differing from the majority opinion in a global climate change thread weeks ago, and I did not do so by delivering insults and invective. I am not a troll; you are.
You are the one indulging in the name calling, you are the one indulging in the smug superiority, you are the one looking to deliberately irritate rather than argue, you are the one hijacking threads with off topic posts, and in short, you are the problem. And while you choose to argue against that rather than modify your behavior shows that you are deliberately choosing to be provocative. That is the very definition of being a troll, and it's beyond impolite as well. If you were a dinner guest at a house, you would have been thrown out by now. You are deliberately choosing not to see that, which makes you the problem.
As I said before, you should leave. Take it to Kos or Atrios; quit sullying this blog. Others can contribute contrary facts; you contribute arrogance and insult. That is not acceptible behavior in any circumstance.
I fully expect to take a peek back here in a week or so and see the same thing going on. If you don't have the guts to ban the jerk, be his doormat then.
Here here, Brad.
Well put.
Do not take exception, do not claim hurt, do not try to claim high ground you do not deserve. The fact that your insults are intentional does not excuse them. You have brought ill judgement on yourself. You refuse to modify your behavior. That is not the conduct of an adult. You are no longer welcome here. Leave.
What you think is irrelevant. What you do is what matters. You've already been told what behavior is acceptible, so don't play coy. You know full well what you're doing; your statement about intentional insults shows that. Leave.
That is the last I will say regarding Confud. Neo, my sincere apologizes and sympathy for what the comment section has become. I hope whatever measures you see fit to implement to crack down on the poison has good effect.
If you choose to delete his posts, feel free to delete mine as well. I realize the acid does no one any good, and without context, those posts won't make any sense anyway.
Can't we just delete this fool?
Just say, "fine, we're all dirty evil rotten bastards. You win. Goodbye." ZOT!
I've responded to abuse and stupidity sure, but haven't instigated any.
Check my blog for the archive of why Confud is not telling the truth. I don't know whether Confud actually believes he hasn't instigated any, or whether this is some sort of self-deception going on. But the proof is in Confud's first foray on this site, through this link.
Link
You all take yourselves so seriously that you open yourselves to ridicule.
Ya, Ymir does take himself seriously, but I don't think we do however. Has Confud started telling jokes about Ymir? Dangerous endeavour I say.
Do you expect me to be Gandhi in the face of the intentional insults of your peers?
Again, people, read the link as it archives Confud's first foray on this site, and it is the proof of why Confud's justifications for his belief do not exist in anything other than his mind. I was answering some of Confud's questions concerning Americans and our political perspectives, including my own, and when Confud realized that I disagreed with him about the Palestinians, Confud started calling me a racist and arrogant. And I did not throw any insults at him at first, though I did impugn his character after Confud showed himself such an unfairish boor.
Be honest. Have a go at Sally Ymar and wasp and I'll take you seriously. Seriously. Until then you are a hypocrite.
Tequila likes to have a go at me every now and then, but it doesn't go well for him. However much Tequila dislikes me and jumps to conclusions based upon, I don't know perhaps prejudices, Tequila is self-honest to admit his mistakes and not try to weave a web of deception. Confud has much to learn from Tequila, and I say that with all frankness, as surprising as that may seem even to myself telling someone to learn from Tequila. Which I normally would try to avoid and say the opposite.
What is weird, is that I, Sakar, already had a go at Wasp and Sally, although they decided to drop the matter for their own reasons.
By Confud's rules, he should take me seriously. But he doesn't. But neither does he make jokes about our triluminary either, so it is a bit of a mystery going on here with Confud's behavior.
To repeat a point I made before, that backs up mrswhatis' contention, people become very uncomfortable when they encounter beliefs that are diametrically different from their own. Republicans and conservatives literally cannot read Daily Kos or Atrios as often as Confud reads neo-neocon. Neither can Democrats read Ann Coulter, regardless of the satisfaction they might get from saying "yes, I read your book, will you stop belaboring the point now at every liberal that disagrees with you".
Mentally, it is painful to try to grasp what other people who disagree with you are saying, because it feels like an attack on your very self-identity. And people that have adhered their identity matrix to their politics, have even more problems with differing opinions. Politicians can agree, obviously, because they are interested in power. Power is the blood that they deal in, and power is their identity, politics is simply a way to acquire power, to do whatever they wanted to do in the first place over the issues. Some politicians fall prey to ideology, and those are not very good politicians.
In the end, there has to be some very extreme benefits for a person like Confud to keep reading such comments and opinions, that he himself has obviously labeled as diametrically opposite of his.
I think mrswhatsit did a very good psychological grilling and profile of Confud.
Contrary to popular opinion, I don't agree with people just for the sake of agreement or because they made a compelling case that I've never heard about. All the elements are present here, and are the same as I knew existed, it just has a different interpretation, color, and orientation since it came from mrswhatsit.
It is this different interpretation, color, and orientation that I seek, not any fundamental agreement or disagreement. Some people have specialized in other bypaths however.
To source Sun Tzu again (that guy has some age old wisdom that has stood the test of time and war), if you become inflexible like Confud, that simply broadcasts your weaknesses to your enemies, and prevents you from defending your weak points and also prevents you from exploiting your strong points.
Once a person gets beyond agreeing and disagreeing, to something more enlightened, then they will achieve a greater understanding of things. And that benefits everyone, not least of all themselves.
Oh, please, not more troll psychoanalysis.
These jokers need to be deleted, not to be given therapy.
Guilt, a lot of rich people suffer from it. It's annoying.
"Goose, gander, pot, kettle etc"
Still and admission of being covered in soot.
No one bothers arguing with you anymore because when they take you apart on facts you simply insist you're correct but can't find any info or links to back you up right now... or ever. 100,000 dead in Iraq, Depleted Uranium...
Confude eviscerated with facts here
From that exchange:
Confude: "On the numbers. It may be far lower than 100,000 but am I supposed to accept that 40,000 is acceptable?"
Me: "No, what you believe is 'acceptable' is up to you. You're supposed to realize you bought a line (hook and sinker included), because you didn't bother to research something easily disproved because it fit in so nicely with your preconceptions. This says something about what you believe in general, and your abilities to discern fact from propaganda. But you're not gentleman enough to admit you've been had, and concede the point."
That Monty Python script is hilarious, although it might not be if I actually had heard it instead of hearing it in my head.
I was wondering why Orwell created the torture scene with the rats and strapping old winston in, in order to torture him with brainwashing. Liberty is tyranny, and it is also the right to tell people what they don't want to hear.
His kidz read this site and laugh about it as well, if you trust Confud's testimony. So it is a great big family get together it seems.
Confud has a lot of posts, and I don't catalogue all of them. As I recall, somebody was talking about his family member, or as you said a family friend, reading this blog and laughing about the playful seriousness of the people who comment here. Confud used this as an example of why his ridicule found play with supporters, and why we should be demoralized by this fact.
Confude did mention his sons before this, but I don't remember if it was in the same comment-cluster.
There are like 10 or so steves I've seen on the net blog comments sections.
It's like Michael, there are like a lot of variations.
Steve should have read brad's post, since he quotes part of it, yet he still asks questions as if he is ignorant of that fact.
So the answer is no.
Btw, why is people like steve and Confud not even putting quotation marks, since they don't use bold scripts, when they quote other people's words?
I can't pass up the opportunity to demonstrate Confudes lack of a basic understanding of logical argument, as well as his inability to read and comprehend or his intellectual dishonesty- you decide.
Here's his repeat attempt to use an opinion article referring to the Lancet study to justify it's findings. Pathetic.
Confude 2:55 PM, June 21, 2006: "Well actually, I've replied with this each time aand you are yet to acknowledge it. The figure may be in dispute but it hasn't been rebutted.
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=9349
The report stands on its own merits and the 'rebuttal' was dishonest it seems.
I'll save people the trip to the other thread:
At 5:51 AM, May 26, 2006, douglas said...
…
100,000? Get with the times, that's long ago debunked. Where, pray tell, do you get your info? This article at Slate slams the [Lancet] survey, and they're no fans of the Bush admin. He goes with Iraq the body counts numbers, but they're dissected here. You won't like the source, but I'd like to see you refute it with logical argument.
Of course, then you'd have to explain why a more complete survey by the UN puts the number FAR lower... link
They say:"War-related Death
The number of deaths of civilians and military personnel in Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion is another set of figures that has raised controversy. The Living Conditions Survey data indicates 24,000 deaths, with a 95 percent confidence interval from 18,000 to 29,000 deaths. According to the survey data, children aged below 18 years comprise 12% percent of the deaths due to warfare."
One then has to also keep in mind that some of those casualties are 'civilian' combatants/insurgents, many were innocent civilians killed BY insurgents, or used as human shields, victims of crime would be indistinguishable from those of warfare, intersectarian violence, etc. Also, subtract all those who weren't killed by Saddam since he's been out of power... It actually doesn't leave all that many for our helicopter gunships and smart-bombs, does it...
Are you starting to see yet why we don't simply take all you claim as fact at face value???
At 1:56 AM, May 28, 2006, douglas said…
www.citypaper.com
“We assumed that most of the deaths were going to be from typhoid” or other disease, Burnham says. Instead, more than half the reported deaths were from violence, particularly coalition air strikes."
just a few paragraphs after justifying the nuber this way:
"The study, which was carried out over four weeks by a team of seven medical researchers in Iraq, did not say that U.S. soldiers killed 100,000 noncombatants. It said that 100,000 excess deaths occurred since the start of the ground war. That counts the people shot or buried under rubble—and it also counts the people who died of malnutrition or starvation, who became sick and died from drinking polluted water, and people who died from all other causes directly and indirectly related to the war, including the skyrocketing crime rate."
"More than half" would be over 50,000- still wildly out of range of the UN report numbers... try again.
Oh, and if you want to try to tell people again that you've not really been refuted, I'll post it then, too.
A bald faced liar to boot.
Non sequitur
Declarative with no substance
Non sequitur
Typical (non)response.
If this was a party, it's time to get out the knives and start um... the meals.
Just an observation, Ariel, but Confude's been revealed before, notably right before you started speaking to him on that earlier thread.
The thing that affects people's psychology when it comes to ignoring trolls is that it has to be unified, otherwise it becomes fragmented. Since on an usual basis, people come to this site and regularly comment with Confude, it creates this "futility" argument. People here are of course, courteous. And we don't tell people who are new here what to do, like "stop feeding the trolls". This is not a criticism of your remark, but it is an explanation for why not everyone kept telling you, Ariel, to stop feeding Confude back when you were talking about him like a week ago when he wasn't insulting you.
It seemed to me at least, if people want to talk to Confude, they should be warned that he will blow up eventually, however it is best to let them see the results for themselves as that is the most convincing argument available. However, this negates some of the justifications for not feeding the trolls. Because newcomers and others will "always" start talking to confude, given the amount of posts people like him post, there is a perceived futility to the regulars ignoring him.
An agent provacateur can be ignored some of all of the time, or all of some of the time, but never all of all of the time.
Neo said she is working on a solution, but she won't mention it since it will be a surprise.
People have said that blogger can't ban people, without some modifications.
Well, technically assassination of the person's computer hard drive is the most effective, but Neo would have to have friends in the cyber-hackers for that.
I'm no expert in computer infiltration or data manipulation and safeguards, so Neo will have to just take the advice of her family and implement whatever tech solutions current technology allows.
Other bloggers have tried different registration and comment systems, that allows them greater control. Perhaps Haloscan.
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