THIS.
I find it kind of ironic that a web site that has the motto “Fighting ignorance since 1973” seems to have a lot of posters that don’t want to fight ignorance so much as make it all go away.
If simply having incomprehensible posts that contribute nothing to the goal of fighting ignorance is the litmus test for trolls, then we should have banned Scylla a while ago. IMO.
Oh, please. I posited that we ban this fuckhead because he’s deliberately trying to troll negative responses in that thread, insulting members and refusing to acknowledge the answers he’s been given. Not because he has some “wrongheaded ideas” - he knows the truth as full well as we do, he just likes pretending he doesn’t because it pisses people off and he likes watching the fireworks. He’s a single issue nut, as well - if he’d contributed or even appeared to read to other parts of the forum, I’d have a more varied image of him.
It’s been SEVEN YEARS since the attacks - anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that a 757 flew into the Pentagon today is deliberately ignoring the mountain of objective evidence and cherry picking their own out of thin air. And anyone like that won’t let themselves be talked over. About anything. He wants to learn? Banning doesn’t take away his ability to read the forum. We’ve had myriad threads on that topic before; they’ve invariably been locked or died when the polite dopers finally recognize that people like this aren’t interested in facts contradicting their little bubble.
Well, thankfully you won’t lose any more sleep over him posting totally ignorable posts in any forums HERE. Jeez. You sound like this guy posting here caused you irreparable harm. Take some deep breaths.
I wonder if I started a tirade against Scylla if I could get him/her banned, “because he’s deliberately trying to troll negative responses in [any] thread, insulting members and refusing to acknowledge the answers he’s been given. Not because he has some “wrongheaded ideas” - he knows the truth as full well as we do, he just likes pretending he doesn’t because it pisses people off and he likes watching the fireworks. He’s a single issue nut, as well.”
Seems like a pretty good description to me. Let the widespread bannination begin!
So you’re calling Scylla a troll?
Do you care to point out which threads or posts in particular you’re thinking of, as examples? Hey, I showed you mine 
Fighting ignorance is always worthwhile – but it’s almost impossible to do anything about willful ignorance. Either Reef Shark doesn’t believe what he’s saying (or rather implying, since he refuses to state any claim or proposition), in which case he’s pure troll, or else he does believe it in spite of all facts and logic, in which case he’s putting a lot of effort into maintaining a particular worldview that doesn’t accord with reality. It’s like the Moon landing hoax people.
Back off, Trollslayer!
Scylla can be a lot of fun when the topic is not one that triggers his conservative reactions. His “Evil Nazi Groundhogs” thread is what drew me to the SDMB in the first place and his “Horror of blimps” one is one of the reasons I joined up.
No, since jessesheeran wasn’t banned because somebody went on a tirade.
Good luck with that.
BAN MARLEY23!
If only a moderator could see this blatant trollery…
wait…
nevermind
You do raise an interesting point - how can we fight the Ignorants if we kick them all out? On the other hand, there’s fighting ignorance and there’s pissing into the wind.
On a different note, I nominate you for the custom title of The Banninator!
So you’re really trying to get that one person to see your point of view? So if say, Rick Warren came to the Dope and decided to start a thread on God exists, then we’d either have to convince him that God doesn’t exist or he’s a troll that’s pissing in the wind?
I was thinking of this example before I read another Pit thread just started about stopping a poster with an intelligent design thread. So it’s already happening, I guess.
I suppose that’s better than being the Pissinator…
Let me get this straight, you don’t have much of a case against him so you claim he is violating board policy by being underage, with no proof?
Looks like you’re getting your lulz as well.
Is it forbidden to proclaim, in a GD thread, that someone is willfully and obstinately ignorant, and to discourage posters from further responses?
Yeah, it always makes me think of a doctor complaining about all the damn sick people that keep bugging him.
Agreed. I never heard of this guy until I saw this thread. Of course, with a name like “Let’s just ban the troll”, it drew my attention. If anything, this thread is just feeding him–assuming attention is what he wants in the first place. Me, I think he’s just an idiot, and again, that it doesn’t matter anyway since he’s not polluting the rest of the Board–just that one thread.
You’re right; since fascism is technologically inconvenient for now, we’ll have to settle for controlled sanity.
That’s good and fine, but the troll thing is Revtim’s pet peeve; he shows up in every thread where the word “troll” is mentioned and practically insists that there is no such thing as a troll. At this point, he can’t be caught admitting someone is actually a troll.
And on the other hand, you have some people who will immediately shout “TROLL!” whenever they encounter a poster that annoys them for whatever reason. That’s kind of what I was getting at regarding Scylla; I think his/her reasoning and arguments are silly at best and annoyingly narrow-minded at worst, but generally speaking, I don’t think he’s a “troll.” To me, a troll is one whose sole purpose is to rile other people up with the intention of causing disruption and gaining attention for attention’s sake. Now, there are posters who sometimes drift into troll territory but it’s not like they came to troll on the boards. I don’t think that jesseheeran was here to troll; he might have drifted into troll territory. Maybe he’s guilty of a binge of drunk/high/stoned posting. But at no point did I think to myself, “ah, another troll! Off with his head!”
I’m a little confused. Wasn’t this thread about reef shark? As I participated in that thread I came to feel that he was a classic troll, baiting people for his own amusement. Jesseheeran is a completly different case. I think that was just a whole lot of crazy.
I was trying to use the jesseheeran situation as another example of someone I believe is falsely accused of trolling. You’re right, I shouldn’t further confuse the issue by dragging that situation into this thread.
I admit it’s my pet peeve that every wingnut and/or unpopular new (and sometimes not so new) poster is accused of being a troll. I think I’d admit a troll is a troll though, if there was actually reason to believe so. I guess I’m not blessed with this telepathy-like power so many posters seem to have that allows them to somehow know when the idiot/nut doesn’t really mean what they are posting and just getting getting their lulz. Handicapped as I am without this Heroes-like ability, I have to simply take them at their word, and take a couple minutes to realize that, since lots of people really do hold those views, probability-wise it’s at least as likely they are genuine.