And I stand by that. He expects most people to dig what he’s saying, even if he knows there are a few killjoys (from his perspective).
The board moderation staff rejects your definition. We reject your entire rationale. You are tilting at windmills because it is the moderation staff who adjudicate what is and is not trolling. Your view carries zero weight in this regard.
So you are revealing that ATMB is basically just a place for people to think they may impact moderation, while the moderators laugh at their impotence? OK then. :dubious:
You need a critical mass or a very compelling case. I agree that trolling is relatively a subjective call but if that dude wasn’t trolling than I’m not sure what could be called trolling.
When they’re pretty much alone in their opinion, yeah.
This is a real thing.
How hard is this for you? *Being *not a good person may not be trolling, but “cheerfully” *posting *all your shittiness on a message board is a deliberate act - one of either a moron or a troll. You’re either *oblivious *to what normal people’s reactions will be, or you *want *those reactions. ***He was on record ***as posting for the lulz, and I see no indication he was particularly dumb (unlike some clueless posters of the old-man-yells-at-cloud variety I won’t name here), so … troll it is.
So you’re saying “decent people” are in the vast minority on this board, then…
No, I am saying he is oblivious and is not great therefore at reading the room. I have said this several times.
Especially heinous. On the SDMB, the dedicated men and women who investigate these vicious trolls are members of an elite squad known as the Moderation Unit. These are their stories. * Dun Dun *
His own words give the lie to any notion of obliviousness. He was aware some people wouldn’t like what he posted. That he thought more would like his posts than not, is no defence. It’s still trolling even if you’re only trolling some of the people.
Then all of us are trolling all the time. Who among us thinks that everyone will like every opinion we post? 
I think Abraham Lincoln said something about this…
He had a post where he explained the process by which he decided if he would engage in behavior that was likely to get him kicked off of any given message board. Oblivious my ass.
Cite? I fully admit that I have not read anything IIRC from him beyond the warnings listed on ATMB. If we have ever even posted in the same threads, I don’t remember it. But the warnings listed in a ban announcement ought to speak for themselves in justifying the ban.
There’s a difference between posting something someone else may not like for other purposes such as debate, and posting something for the purpose of getting a negative reaction from someone.
It’s been posted multiple times in this thread. You even responded to it. Are you not reading the posts in the thread you’re participating in?
…which SM’s warnings do just fine. They speak very loudly indeed.
I don’t agree with the characterization of that post. It was a thread about deciding whether to post in controversial threads. I make the same kinds of calculations — I don’t think that’s some great admission, certainly not of trolling. I expressed my hesitation and concerns in a previous post right here on ATMB, and was reassured by the mods that I should feel free to engage on those topics.
You are shifting the goalposts. In the comment I responded to, you said:
There is a world of difference between “He was aware some people wouldn’t like what he posted” and “posting something for the purpose of getting a negative reaction from someone”. Words have meanings. So do phrases. And those phrases do not mean the same thing.
ETA: I will illustrate with an example. I just started a thread about how Medicare For All is a bad idea politically. I was “aware” when posting it that my take would rankle many people here. But that’s not the reason I posted it – the reason is that I believe it, and I think it is important to try to convince people of that.
Come on. SM posted about writing a bunch of lies in high school specifically so that he could make someone else violently angry, because he thought that would be funny. But you’re like, “Oh, no, he’d NEVER do that here!”
Yes, I’m aware.
No, I’m expanding on my argument. Not the same thing.
The two are not incompatible.
Only if you include an assumed " but he had other good reasons for posting it" to the first sentence. But given he admitted posting to get as close to the moderation line as possible (in multiple online forums), I’d say that’s a completely over-charitable reading.
You realise you’re comparing your actual topical debate thread with his “tricking jocks into kicking the shit out of innocent people is funny! hyuck hyuck!” and "why do these ladies talk so ghetto?"and “my body gas sure is smelly!” fiction posts, right?
I believe those are nonfiction, and do not therefore paint him in a terribly flattering light.