On an anonymous message board you can’t possibly know whether anything someone posts is their actual belief or if they’re just trying to piss off others, and I don’t think any attempt should be made to distinguish between the two- then its like Bob make a ridiculous offensive post, but its OK, because we know he has an IQ of 60, but Joe make a similar post and he’s banned because the board is of the opinion that he knows better and is trying to start shit.
Sure the board is here to provide insight for those who don’t understand another culture or opinion, etc. but there a way of posting even the most controversial thought so that it doesn’t come off as offensive. Similary If I word a thread “why don’t women like to be called cunts”, does it really matter if I’m just clueless or trying to annoy?
Yet, that is exactly what is happening. Anyone with any sort of unpopular opinion will always be considered by some people to be trolling/shit-stirring. And instead of giving the poster the benefit of the doubt, people will just continue to call the person a troll and report their posts until they are eventually banned. It’s an effective ban on people with unpopular opinions, just not an official one.
Even if I could read the mind of a person making a post, and say for sure that they are only posting to piss people off, I prefer those posts than this idiotic witch hunting. It’s very much the lesser of two evils IMO.
Yet, you expect others to be able to read minds well enough to determine whether or not they actually hold the ridiculous opinions they’re spewing.
Dude, how many warnings, formal and informal, does it have to be before you acknowledge “giving someone the benefit of the doubt”? It isn’t like he was never told to ratchet it back. You’re out on a limb with that assertion.
No, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. You are the one so sure of your mind-reading powers that you think depriving them of a service they paid for is appropriate.
I would second what Wee Bairn stated and reiterate: it depends on how the subject is presented. VCO3 was warned more than once that what and how he was posting was inflammatory. There are ways of introducing subjects that are controversial and difficult without being an aggressive asshole about it. In fact… here. Have an example. From the OP:
Very controversial subject. Very open, engaging OP. It can be done. VCO3 never did it. Why? It is my opinion that he refused to because he liked the controversy he stirred up. And that is trollery. And yes, being a jerk and a troll is a bannable offense.
Feel the same way about this as Bob Knight leaving Texas Tech. There are worse people, but he should’ve known how the damn system worked, and I’m sure as hell not going to miss the clueless cretin.
And just speaking as someone who’s been here since '01, made quite a few posts of I own that I later regretted, saw two new boards come into being, saw the point of The Pit and later made some OPs there, come under fire for things I wouldn’t in a million years consider inflammatory, and been begged on more than one occasion to get off a particular soapbox, I can say with total confidence that it’s possible to have interesting, engaging discussions without descending into trolling. Let alone the kind of foaming-at-the-mouth rage that was the hallmark of TDLR-whatever’s* posts. If you can’t spark a discussion without this type of madness, you’re no good at staring discussions.
Ah well. Another one bites the dust. And the world keeps turning, the show goes on, and you still can’t stop the beat. As it always was.
BTW, that insanely unwieldly username thing? Incredibly jerkish and completely uncalled for. Nobody thought “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince” was a good idea, goddammit.
I guess our difference here is that I consider opinions too subjective to ban a poster unless there is more concrete evidence. I’d consider that too subjective even if it wasn’t a pay service, and doubly so since it is.
It seems equally likely to me that he just lacked the language skills to dance around controversial subjects like many of us do when we are trying not offend. How are you so sure this is not the case? How are you so confident in what you admit is just an opinion that you cannot even give the benefit of the doubt?
Okay, I’m very cautiously going to wade in here, because I think posters have a right to ask for the reasons behind a banning or similar moves and get some answers. (I’m new at this and I may quickly be disabused of this notion! :p)
I’m not speaking for anybody else, but here’s my take:
Some people think the question of “Is somebody trolling” is very central, but I’ve always tried to avoid it because it requires you to guess at somebody’s intent (however well-informed the guess may be), which always devolves into psychologizing. Trolls are a subset of jerks, so to speak, and I think TLDR/VCO3 was definitely a jerk who went out of his way to irritate people over and over, which he was repeatedly warned about. Venting is always going to be allowed here and so is hyperbole, but I think he went someplace else with it and was trying to provoke people. Even when the case could be made that he wasn’t trolling in the Pit threads, I think they very clearly went into jerk territory very often.
I wasn’t a fan of the guy at all, and my personal view is that he might be mentally illl. He was kind of obsessed with black people, and I thought some of his irrational anger was real even if the way he expressed it was phony. But even I didn’t believe he meant what he said in the Pitting of the dead woman, and for whatever it’s worth I felt it was one of the dumbest and most callous things I’ve seen on this board. I think it’s too bad he apparently couldn’t understand what the problem was (I always feel that way), but I think it was clear he wasn’t going to get it and was going to keep doing what’d been doing.
Was the guy entertaining? More than I realized, apparently! I admit I opened a lot of his threads, although as time went on I more often found myself writing up a reply and then deciding not to post it.
I’m in favor of a robust SDMB where people don’t get run off just for being abrasive and not having the right posting style. That’s a legit concern that I’ve seen raised very well by Revtim a few posters in a number of threads. I’m not looking for brownie points, but people made a better case for TLDR/VCO3 in this thread than I thought they could. But I don’t think that’s what happened to the poster in question.
To address the side question of posters being judged based on who they are instead of what they say, which I’ve also seen raised elsewhere: I’d say the same post can mean different things coming from different people, so every post is read in combination of those two elements. This is a message board and we’re known based on what we say.
He was clearly over the “ban” line. Way over it, so I don’t get the surprise.
Now you may not like where that line is drawn (I don’t particularly; if it were up to me, guys like december would still be around), but he was definitely past it.
I have had my doubts as to the sincerity of several of VCO3’s posts here (like does he really think Orange Juice is the best musical group ever?), but none more blatant than the last- I cannot fathom anyone becoming outraged at a woman for trying to rescue her daughters from a fire. No way any reasonable person would read that article and have that reaction. Woman ABANDONS husband to try and save child? Puh-lease.
Because he was given multiple warnings and still refused to change his MO. Doing that implies intent. Either he knew he was being provocative to the point of being a jerk and couldn’t find another way to phrase it, or he was being provocative to the point of being a jerk and just didn’t give a damn. Either way, it was up to him to stop. He didn’t have to post those subjects here. Nobody forced his hand. Hell, there are about a million other free message boards where he could spew that ridiculous crap to his heart’s content and not even get warned. But he got warned here. And still did not stop. If you come to work late every day and get warned that if you don’t stop, you’re going to get fired, do you keep coming in late? If so, then it’s on you when you get fired, not your employer. You were told to knock it the fuck off. So was VCO3. He chose to ignore those warnings (six of 'em, fer fuck’s sake! Not including the unofficial warnings) and got banned. It’s on him for ignoring those warnings.
Seriously. He was already suspended once. That seems to be forgotten, along with the warnings. This is not a sudden, out-of-the-blue banning. Dude got a hell of a lot of leniency.
I suspect those warnings were the result of people simply being offended by his unpopular (and blazingly stupid) opinions, and the mods seem always give the complainers the benefit of the doubt, and not the person being complained about.
I must admit I have not gone over these warnings, as Sarahfeena did earlier, to verify this. In light of that, I realize my opinion stated above may be unsupportable, and I admit it may be wrong. I’ve already spent too much work time on this thread, so I’ll bow out for now and possibly review those warnings later tonight if I have time.
What? No more pay for post? Nobody tells me anything…
What did his moniker stand for, anyway? Or do I want to know?
He might have been a troll, but a very junior troll. Trollette, if you will. There are others here who spew venom and hate and are not called (by the mods) on their jerk behavior. I used to live and let live, but I think I might actually click on that button (does my computer light up or anything?) one of these days. (not a threat to anyone, just an observation).