I was waiting for a new post here.
I dont post in P&E much because I dont feel I have much constructive to add.
Would that M felt the same.
It doesn’t take much. Only a little bit of interaction is required for Magiver to reveal his modus operandi and show his methodological hand.
His stupid, stupid hand.
It’s not so much that he talks like an idiot, it’s that he talks as if he believes we are idiots.
Yes! That’s it exactly - when the obvious idiot treats everyone around him as if they are the idiots.
I would say he was gaslighting if I thought he had the mental capacity to pull it off.
Yes, I had noticed his antics in that thread. I’m never quite sure if he’s trolling or if he really is as fucking stupid as he seems, but the evidence tends to point to the latter.
Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt at all that he’s one of the most fantastically, hilariously stupid people on these boards. The only question is what kind of stupid he is.
Take his current behavior in the Kimmel-Kirk thread. He’s doggedly, tenaciously sticking to the GOP line that Kimmel’s comments were outrageous lies about the assassin, and he’s stubbornly refusing to acknowledge* any factual counterargument that Kimmel actually said no such thing.
*“Stubbornly refusing to acknowledge facts no matter how laboriously explained or clearly cited,” incidentally, is his consistent throughline, if you re-read the thread above.
But what is the nature of his stupidity?
Has he, himself, uncritically swallowed the GOP talking points, and he lacks the analytical capacity to reexamine or reconsider them in light of actual evidence?
Or is he aware that those talking points are false, and he’s knowingly attempting to sell us the same bill of goods that’s being forced down the throats of the rest of the country, foolishly believing that we’ll accept the lie if it’s repeated enough?
Ultimately it doesn’t really matter, because either way he’s a brick wall. But it is a question.
He has uncriticallly swallowed the GOP talking points. For example, he keeps trotting out the misleading stat about Kimmel’s ratings, even though it was already debunked in the thread.
Twice, I started responding to him and then realized that I was wasting my time and deleted my response. If only others could find that trash can before posting responses to that MAGA moron.
Stupidity in itself isn’t necessarily annoying, especially if it manifests as ignorance coupled with a desire to learn. Magiver’s particular brand of stupidity is the arrogant kind. If anyone makes any kind of statement about something even remotely controversial, Magiver will soon be along to pompously tell them why they’re wrong.
Mercifully I’ve had few direct encounters with him, but one I did have I mentioned early in this thread. Remember the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes of the new 737 Max? Do you know the cause? Magiver did, and wasn’t shy about telling us. It was caused by the incompetence of pilots in third-world countries, who were undoubtedly brown-skinned and Muslim. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the 737 Max. Never mind that it was subsequently grounded for nearly two years while the “absolutely nothing wrong” was fixed, exhaustively tested, and the fix retrofitted to every aircraft.
Magiver is an annoying ass, and apparently also a bigot and right-wing nutjob.
I disagree. I think he’s trolling and he knows perfectly well he’s trollin
I tend to agree he’s deliberately trolling. But that does not preclude drawing the obvious conclusion that he’s also remarkably stupid. We have too much evidence those aren’t mutually exclusive
As @cervaise said:
I have no dog in this fight, as I seldom come across the poster in question, or at least I don’t notice if I do. The posters in this thread do make a pretty compelling case (although I have not read very much of this thread, folks are remarkably consistent about their evaluations of his performance). That being said, how is it that this poster is still among us? If both stupid and a troll, how is he somehow able to skate that close to whatever line the mods have, and not get burned (to mix metaphors)? Question addressed to anyone, not just the person I quoted.
I apologize if this is a stupid question, I am curious about this real-world instance of getting away with trolling.
No individual act rises to actionable trolling so, apparently, there isn’t defendable grounds for a banning.
But I’m reasonably certain that his history means that that one post over the line (sweet Jesus 
) guaranties an immediate banning
That seems to refer us back to @Cervaise ‘s question, what kind of stupid is Magiver? It sounds like he’s at least smart enough not to get warnings or banned, while still riling up the countryside.
Magiver is ‘top left’.
As much as I despise it,
AI Overview
…
The “top left” Dunning-Kruger Effect refers to the overestimation of skills by less competent individuals, who suffer from a “dual burden” of incompetence and ignorance of their own ignorance. This lack of metacognitive skill prevents them from recognizing their own deficiencies.
AKA The Peak of Mount Stupid.
At least on this point, he’s gotten warnings and several mod notes, so not that smart.
While I respect the job they do, the mods aren’t all-seeing and all-knowing. It’s not uncommon for them to sometimes find, even in the cases of long time posters, that they didn’t realize some have long histories of riding the line or even crossing it on occasion. They don’t keep little files on each of us, ya know?
Maybe, but how smart does that make someone? Like, surely not plastic-figure-atop-a-cheap-trophy-for-smarts smart.
His behavior in non-political threads is similar. He’ll get a fixed idea about [whatever], then defend it to the death despite all evidence by better informed folks to the contrary.
He seems to have a very hard time telling the difference between commonly agreed facts he happens to know, and random shit he figured out all by himself that might actually be right or actually be nonsense. To his mind all of those are absolute positive indisputable facts.
The fact that on top of the above he’s at least MAGA leaning, if not fully MAGA barking at the Moon loony, makes for a difficult presence in political threads around here.
In my case, he’s so aggressively stupid that I muted him in order to not draw warnings myself in response to his shitheadedness.
So, he at least hasn’t had any reports from me for years. But he would routinely take what I said and argue as if I’d said the opposite, and go off. And if I’d point out that he has it backwards, he’d double down. That, or he’d just flat-out lie. It was constant.
It’s basically now the four year anniversary or close to it that I put him on my ignore list.
That was one of the last posts I ever made to him in the “Rand Paul and Fauci” thread in P&E (which was eventually locked). Magiver was trying to claim that Fauci was a liar about masks, and was trying to selectively quote everyone; Fauci’s public statements, posts from other folks in the thread (including me). When I realized he was being a disingenuous, lying asshole, that was when I had enough of the Magiver Dipshit Show.
I don’t believe that he is a troll. Given the clear consensus that he is stupid and boneheaded, there is no proper basis to go on to infer that he is a troll.
Doing so offends both Hanlon’s and Occam’s razors. Do not attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.
IMHO it is all too easy to assume those who disagree with us are trolls and I think the mods are correctly not doing so.