Comments on: The First Troll: Identified!

By: David

David — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:58:23 +0000

Two more insufferable trollish types:

Eubulides of Miletus

Zeno of Elea

Ban them!

By: Dr. Oblivious

Dr. Oblivious — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:05:11 +0000

Briefly back to the subject:
I was thinking about the recent “vaguely passive-aggressive post on commenters.”

Any community is a community because of shared values and assumptions. And in an open community there will always be a tension between members and outsiders. But a fondness for binary distinctions and every community’s inflated sense of place make communities built on a foundational association of intellectualism with science more fraught than most. Every man likes the sound of their own bullshit. But as someone once said. “Fact Value! Value Fact!”
Intellectualism should never be defined as purely technical. Sometimes, but only sometimes, annoying outsiders are right.

By: Salient

Salient — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:27:06 +0000

bianca, I don’t visit this site in order to be subjected to a sustained attack, especially one which doesn’t specify what exactly I’ve done to wrong you and/or how you would like for this to be remedied. I’ve tried to ignore/deflect what I can, and be pleasant and continue to engage with your comments in a friendly way, but frankly, these various proxy fights aren’t any fun for me whatsoever, and don’t seem to serve any useful purpose to the community at large. I generally don’t feel I’ve done anything to deliberately or even unintentionally initiate any ongoing hostility, but if there is something which needs my attention to remedy, please at least explicitly clarify what that something is.

Excepting that step toward resolution, I would appreciate it greatly if you’d agree to just refrain from responding to my comments on CT from now on. I will be happy to reciprocate. Thanks.

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:15:56 +0000

Salient, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, and I don’t mean to suggest that “like” in your @55 is no more than aesthetic, but given your caginess about whether you’re a man or a woman, and given your so emphatic defense of women’s speech rights a little while ago: The statement, as you read it, of course denies that women ought to be led by men, as (barring theories of reincarnation) no man has ever belonged to womankind. With which sentiment I heartily agree. But given your past history here it may have resonances you did not intend to be considered as your opinion.

By: Salient

Salient — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:05:40 +0000

I kinda like Dr. Oblivious’ approach to defining trolling, maybe re-characterized pithily as “trolls attempt to lead without attempting to belong.” This variant of troll attempts to appropriate communities for his/her own ends, and feels frustrated when the community won’t oblige. It’s a nice complement to the variant of troll identified by Morin and Claudel.

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:53:09 +0000

That’s not to say that inside/outside (expert/nonexpert) is a matter only of invidious distinctions—sociology, group dynamics, psychological needs to feel belonging by contrast to those who don’t belong—which could be overcome with different social arrangements, people getting over the need to exclude others, and so forth. (Excluding those who exclude others by making invidious dintinctions is not the same thing at all, though sometimes it seems difficult to figure out which elements of their speech indicate that they belong to the group in question.)

By: bianca steele

bianca steele — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:29:14 +0000

If disagreement and argument played no role within groups that share expertise, there would be no reason to operate a discussion group for those people on the topic of their expertise. If this were the case, dividing people up into “inside” and “outside” might make sense. However, that isn’t the case.

By: Dr. Oblivious

Dr. Oblivious — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:48:13 +0000

This shouldn’t be so difficult:
Let’s play alternate history for a minute: pretend the internet was up an running in 1955:
A chatroom or listserv or whatever for classical musicians and discussion of theory, technique, job offers etc. But one violinist, let’s call him Louis Farrakhan, insists on talking only about the fact that he can’t get a job, because he’s black.
Except for mention of the internet, the rest is all true.

1971. A feminist website for discussion and organization, fundraising and strategy etc. Except for one or two women who won’t shut up about Betty Friedan’s anti—lesbian bigotry.

In technical discussion you have collegiality among experts, and you can have relatively simple divisions between expert and non-expert, insider and outsider. But wider culture, even the wider intellectual culture is never a culture of expertise. Most of what anyone writes whether academic or not, within 20 years will become historicized, periodized, or dated. Dated not in the sense that there’s been any advancement, only change.
Some things evolve, others devolve.

“A troll is someone who insists on standing outside a social network while peppering its membership with questions. That’s all.” That’s the best least ideological definition of a troll there is; any other simply picks sides. And if you think that in 2009 we’ve reached the age where history, for the truly morally and intellectually serious [as opposed to the rest, and we know who they are], has stopped…

You’re wrong.

By: engels

engels — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:33:56 +0000

When I go on to right wing sites and try to engage their arguments, throwing every bit of hard data I can at them to refute them, I get called a troll.
Am I?

If by ‘hard data’ you mean stuff like your comment above about how ‘the pathetic limitations of the binary logic of your English so-called language are all too apparent to ME!’ then yes.

By: novakant

novakant — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:16:04 +0000

Don’t worry, Bianca. If I understood you correctly, you were arguing that things have gotten better since the usenet days. Should that be the case, I’m glad I thought back then that it was something for quasi-autistic geeks and never took part in it. (Though I have to be a bit of a geek to do my job, I’m not one by nature really and had my first computer at the ripe age of 25, lol).

By: Jim Buck

Jim Buck — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:07:18 +0000

Yahoo has insisted, recently, that all their groups be open access; so the trolls and trollops are hurrying out from under the bridges. This purveyor of piffle:

http://stevemoxon.blogspot.com/
…is particularly active on evolutionary-psychology@yahoogroups.com

By: chris y

chris y — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:04:50 +0000

Bob, where’s your self-respect, man?

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:53:00 +0000

No self=respecting troll would comment on this thread.

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:04:43 +0000

bianca – argh, the gas price in New Jersey! I think that was another sub-species of troll, though – the guy (usually) who cross-posts Urgent and Important Information to a bunch of groups and watches to see if the locals to say Thankyou. Sometimes they say something other than Thankyou and hilarity ensues.

O my Usenet of old. There are functioning newsgroups out there – I was a regular on soc.history.what-if for several years, and that still seems to be going – but a.f.u is full of tumbleweed these days.

By: Lee A. Arnold

Lee A. Arnold — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:08:21 +0000

The U.S. is falling behind in troll technology:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/7/15465/00373
Good comments there too.