I think you need to view the warning the OP received in tandem with this one. The staff at this MB have increasingly reflected their leftist viewpoints in determining what’s being a troll or a jerk, but Hari Seldon is taking it to a new level, ISTM.
While that post on its own didn’t necessarily look like trolling, it was part of a set of posts. He went from saying that Biden should have stayed in his basement instead of having a town hall, to saying staying in the basement just means not being asked hard questions, to saying that Biden had never been asked any hard questions. It was weirdly contradictory and seemed like bad faith arguing.
Also, leftist probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. I also used to think it meant anything on the left, but it actually refers to something further left than progressives. And Biden is a liberal, which is to the right of progressivism.
Making an absurd suggestion without the slightest factual basis for the apparent purpose of getting a rise out of people is the very essence of trolling.
Language doesn’t work like that. Words mean exactly what most people think they mean, even if the dictionary hasn’t caught up yet. So yes, leftist can mean anyone on the left.
The left of what?
A chart like this:
Still rather vague. As a point of reference, where would you put yourself on that chart?
This is way beyond the scope of ATMB. There are quizzes you can take that give you a position on the chart, why don’t you start a thread somewhere more suitable with a link to one, and then lots of people can take it?
Usually anything left of the speaker.
Where do you put yourself?
Not my chart, so I don’t.
But it is Ok for you to demand others use it?
To silly to respond to.
Definitely works for me.
Referring to this and follow-up posts, let’s drop the hijack about what exactly is leftist and where individual posters fall on the chart. Take it to another thread.
What suggestions are “absurd” or have “the slightest factual basis”, and by extension what the intended purpose of the suggestion was, are highly subjective judgments, and in the case of political/ideological issues tend to be heavily influenced by one’s views as to the underlying issues.
It’s too much to ask for moderators to entirely remove that influence, but they should at least be cognizant of it and try to do their best. And those who are completely incapable of that make for very poor moderators.
Your claim here is false. Facts exist regardless of someone’s political opinion. We can very well determine that a claim is wildly inaccurate. And we can look at statements like “let me have my fun” as clear indications that the wildly inaccurate claim was made intentionally as a form of trolling.
They can also tell when someone has made multiple contradictory statements, as I pointed out in my post. You can’t argue both that Biden is stuck in his basement because he’s not been given hard hitting questions, while arguing that he’s out of his basement and should go back in.
You want to argue bias, then you’re going to have to find examples where posters do the same thing but are not moderated. And you’ll have to at least give the mods a chance to mod them.
But I don’t think he did so.
Trumpists have been claiming fraud for months, before and after the election. Trump has stated that hundreds of thousands of thousands of ballots were faked and entered in one night. Millions of people believe his claim.
Is there any reason to think that Velocity did not believe in his prediction, or that he made it deliberately to cause annoyance?
Ever heard the expression “Don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by error.” ?
I think that error is a likely explanation in this case. Rather than assume him to be a troll, let’s assume that he is one of millions that have been bamboozled by Trump’s lies.
I have never heard a formulation of Hanlon’s Razor that used the word error. The usual version is “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”, though incompetence is also used. Both seem a good bit stronger than error. Also keep in mind Grey’s Law, which says that sufficiently advanced incompetence or stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
I am not accusing the OP of either stupidity or incompetence, merely pointing out that stupidity and incompetence should not be defenses against against accusations of trolling.
Accusing someone of “stupidity” might be counted as an insult, and earn me a warning under SDMB rules. Accusing someone of “error” probably isn’t, I hope. I changed it to a safer word.