So when mom told you to stop touching your brother, you held a finger a quarter-inch away from his nose and said “I’m not touching yoooou!”
I agree. It is highly possible that posting many thing is going to cause some people problems; simply having disliked opinions and expressing them is not trolling. I would define trolling as not just posting things that may cause a quite strong reaction, but deliberately posting things in order to cause that particular reaction. Hence, when I saw this;
…I felt that posting for the sheer entertainment value of causing that reaction, knowing that it will occur, seems pretty in-line with trolling to me.
Pay no attention to the OP!
Sure, knock yourself out. I get the impression that you are trolling to provoke a reaction that will make Liberal pay you to go away again.
Which is fine. I am not going to give you a penny, and I suspect that, since you value your membership as little as that, you will get banned eventually anyway, so I can save my money.
Correct - that’s something you made up.
See, there’s something else you are making up. No one on earth - under a bridge, maybe, but not on earth - thinks that “sheer” means “insincere”. That’s not merely a stretch, it goes well beyond into “stupid”. Territory with which you are intimately familiar, to be sure, but “stupid” nonetheless.
But, even though you are stupid and a troll, you have posted something (no doubt by the merest accident) that is correct. There is no earthly value in trying to have real discussion with the Usual Suspects (yourself included, since you are stupid and a troll). You and the rest of the shit-slingers are not capable of serious discussion on certain topics. Therefore, there is no earthly value in posting to engage you. Because, after all, you are stupid and a troll.
But laughing at you, making fun of your posts, and generally rubbing your nose in the fact that you are stupid and a troll - that has value. The only value that interacting with someone like you - stupid, and a troll - can have.
Back in the 1800s, visiting Bedlam Asylum and mocking the inmates was a popular entertainment. This is the twentyfirst century equivalent. I like to go under bridges, poke the inhabitants - like you, who is stupid and a troll - and mock them when they howl. Then I slap them down hard, laugh at them when they gibber, and move on to the next topic.
So, that’s not trolling, as I said earlier, and you ignored, because you are stupid and a troll. It’s feeding you and people like you, who are stupid and trolls.
We of the Mother’s March Against Cognitive Dissonance have yet to pick a 2009 Poster Child. Your last post inspires me to ask if you have a recent photo available?
40 some posts in this thread seem to support your theory. Some people post just for the sake of arguing, and other people fall for it.
Shodan is not a troll, but Kaylasdad was absolutely right.
I don’t think being hopelessly unprepared to defend certain posited arguments, in particular those relating to legal and constitutional analysis is trolling. I also don’t think refusal to answer opposing points of view and repeatedly stating the same thing as some kind of pretend response is trolling. Nor do I think pretending points have not been made, when those points are damaging to his arguments, is trolling.
They are annoying to me, but hopefully are obvious to all who read. I do think creating frustration in those who oppose him gives Shodan a great degree of pleasure, but that in the end is the problem of those who argue against him. I got incredibly frustrated in a recent constitutional thread, but that doesn’t make him a troll. Just someone refusing to accept that things might be not actually be the way he has decided they are.
About something in this thread? I don’t see it.
See the post to which Shodan was responding that is linked in the OP.
Which is based on the premise (apparently) that if someone says A, B, and C, then they didn’t say A or B.
I’m not buying into the notion that Shodan is so ignorant that he was using ‘sheer’ as an adjective to mean gauzy or transparent (e.g. a sheer negligee), or to mean exceedingly steep (a sheer cliff).
He was, @11, admitting to being a troll, and in what I’ve just quoted, he was practicing the art of trolling.
It’s always fun to study the species in its native habitat. Shall we tag this one with a little radio transmitter?
You may repeat your supposed impression of my intellectual abilities and of my status as a well-known troll as often as you like–I believe you repeated it half-a-dozen times or more in your last post, but those who agree with you and those who disagree are all intelligent enough to get your point with only two or three repetitions per post. Any more than that tends to give the impression that you are repeating yourself for the sheer pleasure of repeating yourself.
As to the meaning of the word “sheer”–it means "complete and without restriction or qualification " or “complete - having every necessary or normal part or component or step” or “not mixed with extraneous elements; unmingled, unmixed, plain, pure”-- get the idea? When you claim, as you self-destructively did here, that you often post provocative things for the “sheer” entertainment value of watching the results, that means that nothing other than that entertainment value need be present for you to justify having posted the provocative things. As often as you persist in calling me a troll and calling me stupid, that won’t change the definition of “sheer” to mean “wholly sufficient in itself” to ID you as a troll, by your own testimony. Whether I’m a stupid troll or a noble and wise poster is utterly irrelevant here, because the subject, which you seek to evade, is your having admitted to being a troll in the post I reference above. This is the subject I bring to your attention, and which I’d like you to address, whenever you’re done dishing out extraneous abuse, which is as boring to me as it is fascinating to you.
Now, it’s your turn to discharge some of that pus you keep stored in your cranium and rant and carry on, ignoring my simple and direct point in the previous paragraph. I’ll help you get started: mention that you don’t like me, mention that you believe I’m very stupid, that I’m a troll, and spew general abuse and shit around in such quantities as to make the very dim-witted of your fans believe you wrote anything responsive to my crystal-clear point about the meaning of the word “sheer” in your post above.
No, if you are just going to repeat shit, it isn’t as much fun. Three paragraphs of horseshit, where you simply repeat the lie that “sheer” means “insincere” is unimaginative.
See, that another of the things that drives maroons like you crazy - I don’t fall for your bullshit. You can troll away as hard as you want. As long as you are amusing me, I will poke you again and again, for the sheer fun of laughing at you.
Now, if you weren’t stupid, you would realize that 'sheer" in that context means just what it does in every other. Obviously, it does not mean that I am not laughing at you, or that I don’t think you are a complete dolt. Obviously, I do.
But that’s only if you weren’t stupid. As it is…
Troll fight! Troll fight!
Hit him with your pink hair!
*Now, I’m not saying 1…or even 2 and 3. But I am saying 4, 5 and 6. (confused, angry uproar)
Dog eat dog, not cock and bull
Isms are the game
Ism this and ism that
Ism it a shame? *
- Bonzo Dog Band
We really do overuse the word “troll” around here.
The vast overwhelming majority of the time, Shodan is not being a troll. In fact, as a mod I’m pleased that we have very few real trolls on this board (I have no interest in the uncontrolled anarchy that is a 4chan-type board).
Posting unpopular opinions is not trollish, unless they aren’t your real opinions, or you’re doing it specifically to get a rise out of people. When I state that fortunetellers, astrologers, and dowsers are fakes, I know with certainty that Peter Morris is going to show up and start discoursing about James Randi. But that’s not why I make such posts. I make them to answer questions, debate subjects, fight ignorance, and (of course) express my own personal opinions.
I think that Shodan believes what he posts. I also think that he is aware that many of his opinions are controversial and that they’ll engender debate, discussion and even ridicule on the SDMB. You can have debates without being a troll. You can disagree with the majority without being a troll. You can even get angry and argumentative without being a troll.
That’s hot.
I’m sincerely curious what you as a mod think of think of this statement.
It threw me when I first read it. I’ve always considered the “just to watch the meltdown” factor an integral part of what makes a troll, and the Shodan posts that I do consider trolling were probably posted for that reason. Another factor that distinguishes trolls is that they tend to incite riots and watch, rather than being active participants all the way through. A really good troll can do a “hit and run” that goes on for days after the troll leaves.
The first time I read what you quoted, I took it to mean that Shodan composed a post and then stopped to think about whether it would piss people off. He figured it would and decided to post it anyway. It was still his opinion, and pissing people off wasn’t the reason he wrote it, so I didn’t think of it as trolling.
Rereading it now, I wonder if I misread it. Mayhaps you’d better jump in, Shodan, and explain that post.