How did you deal with it? Did you retaliate? Ignore it? Find a different IBB?
What’s it to you, big ears :))
Are you kidding? People do this stuff all the time on these boards(In GD especially) when they have an opinion on something that isn’t backed up by any facts, or sources. I nail 'em with ridiculous mockery and move on until they post something that’s debate worthy.
Tell us more, Copaesthetic.
I post regularly on another message board, and so does someone who fired me from a theater group. She harrassed me with dogged enthusiasm and I responded in kind. What happened? We both eventually got older and became fascinated with other things. That’s about the extent of it.
When I was an internet newbie, I got into this ridiculous debate with a new poster (not here–somewhere else) where I obviously had the greater knowledge, expertise, and authority, not to mention a buttload of cites from a broad range of excellent resources. Actually, really, it’s silly to call it debate, as it was a simple question of fact–but the dipwad just kept insisting I was wrong, using faulty reasoning and an apparent misunderstanding of some basic physical principles.
Being young and innocent, I thought I just wasn’t communicating properly, and kept trying to rephrase what I was explaining, and pile on more cites. It took me quite a while to figure out that the fault didn’t lie with me. He finally showed his true colors in another thread (“Hahaha, I can’t believe what gullible idiots you all are, blah blah blah blah blah.”) It was an eye-opening experience. I still do not understand why it would be interesting or satisfying to argue disingenuously just to make people hate you–much less strangers on the internet. Anyway, right there in the very first thread I told him, “There is no possiblity of having an intelligent conversation with you. I will never post a resonse to you again.” And I never did. I lived happily ever after. I rarely even read his posts. (The structure of that BB made that easy.)
I like to think now that I’m a bit better at recognizing when someone is either uninterested in, or incapable of, carrying on a rational debate, though I try not to jump the gun at that judgement. One of the reasons that I love the SDMB is the excellent moderation, so one does not have to put up with incessant trollery.
By contrast, last I checked, that jerkoff was still posting at the aforementioned board, and still, inexplicably, managing to rattle the chains of veterans. When he’s shown time and time again that he will say any damn thing to get a rise out of people, I just shake my head sadly every time he pokes someone’s particular tender underbelly and they make a shrill and indignant post announcing, “THIS time you’ve crossed the line!!!” :rolleyes:
DNFTT. An acronym to live by.
Ok, here’s an example. Now, most of this topic is discussed in a perfectly reasonable manner. We had some posters on both sides of the argument. Being that is was about abortion, we had some guerilla posts without any real expressed opinions. I mocked them. One poster in particular found the need to toss around some wild names like ‘morality-hawker’, as if I was shoving my religion down everyone’s throat. I don’t think I ever once mentioned God in the whole thing, ever stated I was a Christian, and I don’t think this person has ever even read one of my posts before. To top it off, here’s the first sentence in my OP:
That’s the first sentence! You didn’t even have to read the whole OP to get to it. Then, I post a little mockery, which I apologized for later. As far as I can tell from their use in the thread, the words ‘morality-hawker’ equate essentially to ‘Jesus-nigger’ in her vocabulary. Anyhow, judge for yourself.
I should probably add, for the sake of any clarity that might possibly be lacking, that my use of the ‘N’ word in that last post is in no way meant to reflect upon race, but is used solely to help identify with the overall gist of what I felt she was implying, being one of the more frequently used terms identified with bigotry. It is not a word I toss around lightly.
Nisosbar, I have been flamed on another board and my response is usually polite, simply because I’ve been flamed by somebody who completely missed what I was saying and was flaming a point I wasn’t making. I just rephrased my point, and the flamer apologised. I have once been harrassed and change my username on several boards to avoid this.
As far as trolls go, I delete their posts (if I have that ability) or I ignore them. Ignoring a troll is the best response IMO, but unfortunately in a large community like this, there’s always a bunch of people who don’t.
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Copaesthetic, just pointing out that morality isn’t the sole province of God or Christians. There is no reason to equate morality with a particular religion. Many atheists are surprisingly moral people. In fact, many people have strongly held morals that contradict. I think the phrase ‘morality-hawker’ was used more as describing those who wish to enforce their morals upon someone who has different morals, not implying that Christians are against pro-choicers, if that makes sense.
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Goo: I didn’t mean to imply that Christians were the only people with morals 
I just happened to be one, and maybe I’m a tad sensitive. I was really angry when I posted that first post, mainly because I think I was being flamed repeatedly for something I didn’t really say.
Oh, hell. . . it was my fault anyway. I dug into her first. Apologies have been made, mockery recinded on the basis it was unwarranted.
I have posted on another board for over two years. A man I used to date (and broke up with years ago) found this out.
But first some background, lol:
After I broke it off with him, quite nicely I might add, he spent hours and hours every day in adult chat rooms, pretending to be me. He gave out my name, phone number and address. My phone rang endlessly and I even had strange men showing up at my door. He gave out every personal detail imaginable. Long story short, I had to change my phone number and move. Then things were reasonably quiet for over a year.
Little did I know he was a lurker at the other board I frequent. I felt “safe” there because it was made up of mostly coupon clipping Mommies.
Fast forward about a year: My Fiance passes away suddenly. He was an Internationally recognized expert in his field. It makes the papers. I post a link to an article about him that ran with his obituary on this “safe” board. A truncated version of my last name is included in the article, so I feel ok about posting it. This sets my stalker (my ex) off.
Completely unknown to me, he has been dissecting every word I ever posted on this message board on a slander type board. Not only that, he has managed to get a sick little following to go in with him on this hate campaign.
He registers at alumni sites posing as me, then supplies a fake bio to go with the listings. On one he says “I” own an antique shop. On another “I” am supposedly a CPA. Now he is all set to “expose” me as a “fraud” because on this other board I have stated my occupation many times over (I’m a lawyer for a non-profit organization).
So the stage is set for his big “expose”, which he posts on this coupon clipping Mommy type board. The “expose” promptly gets deleted. Since he has been working ever so hard on “bringing me down” only to have his little plot foiled by a moderator, he signs up under several user names so he can now disagree with every word out of my “virtual” mouth. It took a few months for me to determine exactly which of the other posters were actually him, so now I just use the ignore feature for these user names.
I’m hoping that sooner or later he will tire himself out.