Words we could all stand to live by. Heaven knows, there’s enough of it.
Depends on your lore of choice.
I don’t know what game the first link is from, but it’s quadripedal. The oblivion trolls run on four feet and stand on two as they attempt to smash your skull.
These are obviously far more dangerous trolls than what we’re dealing with in the OP though. 
Gothic 3
I always read the name as Fotherington-Thomas, which creates a very different image, as any fule kno.
Wait, isn’t that true, though? Being raped is more psychologically damaging than being smeared in feces.
Freudian Slit, go read it in context–straw man hilarity abounds.
Oh. Being shamed by being smeared in feces isn’t that bad because it doesn’t result in pain and even though it’s psychologically damaging, it’s not as damaging as rape. Huh. Well then…
He’s a really stupid troll. How could anyone take him seriously after he posted this little nugget of wisdom a while back:
I mean, you know, they were accused of being witches, so most of them must have been witches, right?
Well. People in the 50s were often accused of being dirty filthy commies. There were in fact dirty filthy commies in the 50s. So Joe McCarthy must have gotten something right during the Red Scare.
::blinks: No, I don’t know what specious reasoning is, why?
Sometimes I wonder if it is just people who cannot stand to lose their argument.
In this and other threads his arguments were soundly debunked. Rather than a troll I saw it more as someone who was clinging desperately for argumentative life.
So, he backs himself into some unassailable little logical corner then hangs on to it for dear life. I think he gets satisfaction that he somehow has survived the withering barrage of Dopers and scored some debate points.
Thing is we all know that for what it is and he is not fooling anyone.
Some people never learn that when you are in a hole it is advisable to stop digging.
Well, is he in a corner or in a hole? You’ll never prove your case if you engage in such wild inconsistencies. You’re obviously wrong about everything.
Corner of a hole?
What he (or she as the case may be) said.
Let’s put it this way: I haven’t got a hole.
That is, not the one that would identify me as a she.
Actually I think part of the problem is that I was too nice.
I’ve found over the course of my experience posting to various MBs & blogs in which I was decidedly in the ideological minority, that a certain amount of snark is necessary, based on the “best defense” theory. Even if you’re thick-skinned and easily brush off insults, the problem is that the shallow intellectual midgets get too comfortable in substituting schoolyard taunts for actual discussion, and the latter becomes more difficult to achieve.
You can’t cut it out entirely even with some snark of your own - in fact you sometimes add to it in the short run - but you lower the temptation for certain types of losers to fall back on this. Especially the more insecure and feebleminded, who wouldn’t dare go out on their own if they might risk having their poor widdle feelings hurt, but are eager to join a group of fellow punks piling on one guy so they can get in a cheap shot of their own and feel tough and accepted.
That’s what I think based on my observations of others who’ve tried the different approaches. But I personally prefer to avoid snark if possible, so when I signed up here I figured I would try a new Kinder & Gentler Fotheringay-Phipps and see if it could be worked. I guess not.
So enough of that.
As for the merits of the various complaints, in general people complaining about various things I’ve said have misrepresented my words or taken them out of context. Including the examples cited in this thread.
It’s hard to judge for certain to what extent this is due to dishonesty or stupidity/intellectual laziness, especially as I don’t have much experience with the people involved, but I imagine on the whole it’s a combination of both. People encounter something that they know they vehemently object to and instead of paying attention to the logic and trying to respond on point it’s a lot easier to just assume/pretend that it means some silly argument that allows them to conclusively refute it and feel good in the process. Not something that you would do if you can do better, but a lot of people can’t, either because they’re not too bright, or because they don’t have the mental energy to think through an actual argument, or because they happen to be wrong about the specific issue and their arguments are weak. Whatever.
So you get threads like this.
To the broader picture, the truth is that the vast majority of people who post to message boards, even ones that are a cut above average like the SDMB, are intellectually weak and/or dishonest posters, who lack the ability to reason for themselves and generally just recycle arguments that they’ve seen or heard others make. And so when confronted with an argument that they’ve not encountered before their tactic is to pretend that the argument is the “other side”'s standard argument, so that they can then whip out their own standard “refutation” and feel like winners.
There’s a minority of people who are above this, but they’re a minority. They’re the ones who are worth debating and discussing issues with. But you have to cut through the riff-raff to do this, which is not always easy.
Out of curiosity, how do you know in which category you fall?
Well, folks, there you have it–not a troll, just a moron.
Into which you fall.
To answer your question, generally, a zealous concern with grammatical niceties is most widely regarded as characteristic of intellectual prowess and honesty.
These are the words of a man unable to distinguish between
[ul]
[li]X & Y are consistent with each other[/li][li]X follows from Y[/li][/ul]So that’s a good example right there.
These are the words of a man unable to distinguish between:
[ul]
[li]A man; and[/li][li]A woman.[/ul][/li]
Fotheringay, if you haven’t figured out by now that you have no idea how to debate, you’re never going to get it. Now that you’ve demonstrated that you really *are *living in your own little world where your arguments actually work, I feel nothing for you but pity and shame on your behalf.