That’s a load of crap - Der Trihs can go many posts in a row in the Cafe without bringing up either - if you’re only going by his postings in GD and the Pit, you need to get out more. It’s not the person so much as the company…
Granny panties.
Finn was talking about gonzomax. If you hop into the thread I linked too in the OP you can see exactly what he’s talking about. I think Finn’s characterization of gonzo as a stupid troll is the correct interpretation.
As for your point about rjung, I agree…in fact I’ve said so myself in other rjung bashing threads. Get him away from GD and he can be an interesting and even amusing poster. I’m just sick of his constant ‘you are a Bush apologist, blah blah blah’ schtick in GD. He usually brings nothing but such drive by comments to a debate and its quite irritating.
[QUOTEAirman Doors, USAF=]
It’s not that nobody is interested, it’s that it has been done over and over again, usually by me. Nobody feels like kicking at the puppy anymore because it effects no changes and has really just started to feel cruel and pointless.
[/QUOTE]
I have to admit I don’t spend a lot of time in here so I didn’t really know he had a lot of threads about him. I was just annoyed by the guy at the time so thought this was the place to vent. You know what happens when any of us loses it in GD after all…and I think I was skating on thin ice with gonzomax already.
-XT
gonzomax isn’t a troll, he’s some other member’s dad. Can’t remember whose. He’s quite new, and quite agressive in presenting his viewpoint, which is fairly extreme politically. I think he just doesn’t quite have the hang of things around here yet. (Don’t know how much of this comes from the sheer horrified guilt of trying to imagine one of my parents hanging around here causes - my parents are both very bright, but they just wouldn’t get this at all, I don’t think.)
Rjung can make worthwhile contributions…if he chooses to. But he’s a fucking idiot in Great Debates. He has one and only one tactic: “Everything you said is discredited because you’re a Bush apologist! There is no need to engage in debate with a Bush apologist, because a Bush **apologist ** is always wrong, by definition.”
If you look up “ad hominem” in Wikipedia, they have a picture of Rjung.
I could buy that…and even sympathize. THIS account I’m using used to be my fathers after all. I inherited it when he had some medical problems that made it impossible for him to do such things anymore.
However, in gonzomax case he has been told…repeatedly…what exactly he’s doing wrong. He’s been offered helpful advice. He’s been instructed on how the board works. In increasingly harsh terms. And its all bounced off and made zero difference to the man. He hasn’t even attempted to modify his style, to engage in the debates he has chosen to barge into, to stop with the freaking drive by links.
At some point one has to conclude either he IS a troll, he IS stupid, or he simply is set in his ways and will never even attempt to change or modify them…which has the same end effect as if he were either a troll or stupid.
-XT
Exactly. In CS or some of the other forums he is quite engaging. But in GD he’s a complete moron…and his schtick is just old. I really had no intention of pitting anyone, but coming home from work last night I got the one two punch of opening the two linked threads in the OP and getting first the whole thing about my BS detector being faulty cause I think Bush is doing a heck of a job ( :rolleyes: ) and that anagram like bullshit from gonzo, along with a flurry of yet more drive by links. After losing it in GD at gonzo, I took a deep breath and started this thing to vent.
As Wiki is user edited you could always, you know, hop in and insert that…
-XT
rjung, I’ll not be as harsh as some other folks here, but I gotta agree: it’s prety iritating to be having an interesting conversation with one of this board’s many intelligent conservatives and to have you pop in with content-free attacks on them for being Bush apologists. It’s the equivalent of Shodan’s irritating “usual suspects” schtick, except that as it’s not directed at me I’m not as viscerally irritated by it. Like Shodan, you can be interesting when not posting about politics; like Shodan, if you’d quit projecting your own partisanship on everyone else.
Daniel
Yeah, but you’re talking about someone’s dad! Maybe I just carry around a bigger load of unjustified parental guilt than most, but I just can’t stand the idea of an old man’s being banned or even being told he’s stupid (which I’m sure he’s not - it’s not like he isn’t following the arguments or anything - he just doesn’t get debate techniques). Even though that “old man” is quite conceivably younger than I am, as at 50 I’m quite old enough to be the parent of a poster. To me the idea of someone’s dad conjures up an image of a guy in his 70s or 80s.
Yes, I have parental guilt issues, not to mention generalized guilt about the elderly. Why do you ask? 
I beg to differ. **Rjung **has a few habits that overshadow any alleged positives he might have. First, he blatantly mischaracterizes other posters’ statements and/or positions. There’s no way you can read XT’s posts as even remotely implying that Bush is doing a heckuva job. No way. The problem is, **rjung **is one of those mindless Bushwhackers who think that if you don’t hate Bush with every fiber in your being, then you’re a “Bush apologist”. Secondly, he’s a blatant hypocrite. He is guilty of exaclty the same things he’s always bashing the Republicans over-- character assasination, and a “you’re either with us or against us” attitude. The guys deserves no slack whatsoever, and I’m surprised that you would cut him any.
Nah, I just did a Google image search on “Condoleeza” and she’s definitely not wearing Granny panties. :dubious:
Oh shit. I posted that last night at the end of a long stretch without sleep, and was posting more to xtisme than with an eye towards the peanut gallery. My apologies rjung if you thought I was talking about you.
xtisme is correct, I was talking about gonzo.
Not mutually exclusive
I could deal with that, it’s just his trollish stupidity that gets my hackles up. For instance, he’ll make a point. I’ll answer it, rebut it, whatever. Instead of engaging in the debate, he’ll then change the subject in his next post. This is especially frustrating if the post he’s ignoring asks for cites or catches him misrepresenting what others Dopers have said.
What kind of person goes to a forum called “Great Debates”, refuses to actually debate, and spams the threads he’s posting in? I really can’t find any answers that don’t involve “idiot” or “troll”.
As xtisme points out, gonzo was informed in increasingly explicit (and frustrated) posts just what he was doing wrong. One of his tricks, besides driveby linkage, is to make a post, have someone challenge his assertions/conclusions/etc… and then for him to make a totally different post that doesn’t touch on anything which was challenged.
If that isn’t tossing bait into the water, seeing who bites, and then tossing more bait in rather than debating in good faith, I don’t know what it is… except perhaps being very, very stupid.
Comparison to Shodan.
Ouch.
I’m often surprised at how Dopers insist in being included in groups they say they dislike.
rjung is a mindless partisan. I object to mindless partisans, and give them a name (the Usual Suspects). Left Hand of Dorkness also objects to mindless partisans, and insists he should be counted as one of them.
Go figure.
Regards,
Shodan
In later news, he is without doubt a freaking troll, and I have no idea why he’s being allowed to run loose.
Observe.
He was called on his habit of making driveby posts.
He responded by saying that asking him to do something other than shit out a link with less than a dozen words of elaboration as to why he was posting it was “poisoning the well.”.
I then clear up that nobody was poisoning the well, and point out several deliberate mischaracterizations/fictions about what other Dopers have said. I also challenged a handfull of his points on logical/factual grounds.
I then again fight his ignorance and try to help him understand what “poisoning the well” means. He is either too fucking stupid to understand, or much more likely, is just a troll who keeps repeating it to be a jerk.
I also point out that he refused to respond to a single one of the challenges I made to his points and his ‘mistakes’ about what other Dopers said. Again, either he is too damn stupid to understand what a debate is, or he’s just a troll. I have a hard time believing that anybody is really too stupid to understand that a debate consists of one person saying something, the other responding, and then not just dropping the topic and changing the subject.
“The current government is doing a good job.”
“I disagree, for reasons X, Y, and Z it is doing poorly.”
“I like chocolate milk.”
If that isn’t the behavior of a moron, it most certainly is that of a troll.
Even after I explained to him what “poisoning the well” meant, why asking him to change a specific posting behavior did not qualify, and attempting to engage the points he brought he, he lied through his teeth and continued trolling.
His response to my attempting to debate the points he brought up, to showing why saying that driveby linkage wasn’t “poisoning the well”, to asking him to respond and back up his assertions about other Dopers?
This is ‘blowing up’??? Engaging him on his points, and having him deliberately ignore that I’d just responded to him is somehow me refusing to debate? Him accusing me of that, and lying in order to do so, isn’t trolling in and of itself?
Rebutting arguments with factual/logical points is really “arrogance”?
Attempting to have an actual discussion or ~gasp!~ debate in Great Debates is 'showing off how smart I think I am?"
Either gonzo is virtually retarded, or he’s just a fucking troll.
I honestly think it’s something of a combination of the two.
I’m often surprised at how Dopers have so little self-awareness that they’ll perpetrate exactly the same act they’re whining about others doing.
All this shock can’t be good for my heart.
Wow, that would make a great emoticon. Just a fly swatter smashing a flying insect. And every time a gnat posted, that could be the lone response.
Do you know what you’re talking about? Someone should, and it’s not me.
Regards,
Shodan
Let us not forget rjung’s contant popping into any thread about PCs with a comment about how if the OP had a Mac s/he wouldn’t be having this problem.
We get it. You like Macs. Good for you. Now go away and shut up.
As I’m essentially using this thread to vent from the Moderate Arab thread, as well as to prevent further hijacks (tomndebb is rightfully getting annoyed by all the bullshit going on in the thread), I’ll continue:
For reference, here is his original informative post:
And my reply:
Now, granted I was trying to be funny here (I appearently didn’t pull it off). In point of fact I only bothered to open the link and skim the front page. By this point I was frankly sick of trying to puzzle out just what the hell gonzomax’s point may be from the cryptic ‘The truth is in the middle’ type comments after his posting a link. Its like I’m supposed to figure out both what his debate points MIGHT be, what he’s perhaps responding too, and hunt up the information in the link that substantiates the claims he isn’t making. Oh yeah, AND then I’m supposed to go on and find contrary points to substantiate my own arguements so that he can post yet another cryptic driveby post that may or may not (probably not) actually have anything to do with the original points being debated! :smack:
Later on Larry Borgia had this to say:
This was referencing gonzo’s cryptic link. I responded here:
As I said, I have no problem debating the points. I will either come up with cites or arguements of my own or conceed that its a good point and move on. But I don’t want to try and guess what the frigging point is supposed to be, and then try and formulate arguements against what I THINK he’s getting at…that seems to me to be basically holding up both sides of the arguement.
So, gonzomax…I didn’t dismiss your cite simply because it had a naked picture of Bush wearing a crown on it. THAT part was to be funny and try and lighten the mood a bit with some psudo-avuncular advice. I dismissed your cite because you couldn’t be bothered to explain what the fuck I was supposed to be getting out of it, nor to enumerate why you thought it was important…or even what the hell it had to do with the various debate points under discussion. It would be like me coming into a thread and posting the home page of Wiki and saying something cryptic like ‘Its all in there’…and expecting you to hunt through the fucking thing to figure out what the hell I was talking about.
Do you get it? Probably not, but I feel better…and really, thats all that counts. 
-XT