Trolls R Us Resurrections

The BBQ Pit
10065

Do we have a thread on dinsdale? I can only assume this was dinsdale’s attempt to troll me…

I wrote (in the GD thread about whether deaths during the Vietnam War were in vain):

Perhaps. Someone (I won’t say who) once (allegedly) described the occupants of an American WWI cemetery in France as “suckers and losers.” Although I don’t care much for that particular characterization, I do think there is a kernel of something in the idea that WWI simply was not worth fighting for anyone, and least of all for Americans, and that the only benefactors (such as there were any) were those wealthy individuals (patriarchs and capitalists, if you will) who personally profited from the war, while sending the poorest, most vulnerable, most easily exploited of their countrymen off to fight it.

So, yeah. I kind of do think American deaths in WWI were in vain, particularly as the end result did not significantly alter the systems of colonization, empire, and exploitation that led to it in the first place. It was not, in fact, the war to end all wars.

ETA: FWIW, I don’t buy into the idea that the Treaty of Versailles was necessarily too harsh (it’s at least debatable) or made WWII essentially inevitable. That lets too many people (mostly fascists, but also their enablers around the world) off the hook for their own willful actions and inactions in causing WWII.

To which dinsdale replied, quoting only the very first part, “Perhaps. Someone (I won’t say who) once (allegedly) described the occupants of an American WWI cemetery in France as “suckers and losers.””:

Getting away from the OP, but especially applies - IMO - to anyone who volunteered to serve after 9/11. They wanted to be involved in an inexcusable invasion, and having your life/health thrown away in not exactly an unforeseeable conclusion. No, I don’t honor THOSE vets. They were willing (or duped) pawns in an unjust cause.

Pretty weak sauce, to be honest.

But it’s always amusing to see such compassion and understanding from someone who is on the government dole, hearing disability claims for a living.

10066

Indeed, there’s not an inkling of trolling in dinsdale’s post, just an opinion which you might not share, but has nothing to do with trolling.

10067

Well, unless he knows specifically that I am a post-9/11 veteran and he chose to zero in on that thinking it would upset me specifically. Oh, and he has previously minimalized my experiences with PTSD (although he has a general habit of ridiculing anyone claiming disability for mental health conditions, it seems).

Because otherwise, it’s an awfully precise statement.

There’s also a wide gap between being engaged in a war that “simply was not worth fighting” (my characterization) and “want[ing] to be involved in an inexcusable invasion.” One focuses on the war, the other focuses on the person and then proceeds to attribute particular motives to them.

10068

Reads as a troll to me. Or maybe a simple asshole. Definitely not helpful for a GD thread. Report it, if you haven’t, especially how you feel targeted by the statement.

10069

Oh, moderator action has already been taken. Not at my prompting, by the way. In fact I only noticed the post because of the moderator action. See, I already have Dinsdale on ignore as being one of those posters just not worth engaging with. Had there been no moderator action, I’d have had no cause to sneak a peek at his reply.

Which, again, I find amusing and a little sad, more than anything. I am actually still chuckling about it.

10070

Speaking from some personal experience, it’s fully possible they were trolling you @ASL_v2.0, while not trolling the board in particular. We have many shades of troll after all.

10071

Well sorry, you have to excuse me that I didn’t know your personal background and that dinsdale knew about it, so of course I change my assessment and agree that he was trolling you. In a board sense, he wasn’t trolling, that was my point, which I retract now.

10072

Except that he said essentially the same thing before your post.

IMO, that supports that they [Vietnam war deaths] were in vain. Same as any who died in Iraq since 9/11, or nearly all in Afghanistan during that period. (Perhaps one could somewhat justify the initial invasion - I wouldn’t. But any after were just pulp for the mill.)

Probably you weren’t aware of this, since you have this poster on ignore.

10073

Well, that must be it. In which case, he’s just his usual shitty self, to the extent he expounded on his thoughts in reply to me, purporting to know specific motivations for individual actors.

I mean don’t get me wrong. Those deaths absolutely were in vain. Just don’t go assuming what motivated people to serve.

10074

My impression from other posts is that Saint_Cad is a right-wing nutjob, not a troll. The “question” about whether certain American cities “prove the failure of progressivism” is in the finest tradition of JAQing off. It’s not a question, it’s a bald assertion by a badly misinformed right-wing nutjob that the answer is certainly and obviously “yes”.

He comes back into the thread a few times with “information” that must have been gleaned from Fox News (or worse) about things like how police departments with rapidly increasing budgets have supposedly been “defunded”. And completely ignores the fact that big cities in progressive countries all over the civilized world prove the exact opposite of his JAQing assertion – they don’t have the problems that many American cities do, or not even close to the same extent. Because the problem isn’t progressivism, the problem is too many right-wing nutjobs like him shaping American society.

10075

Looks like flyingcouch43 is going to examine every aspect of Australian fauna vs. humaN.

10076

Isn’t that the primary purpose of Australian fauna? Not to mention the flora.

10077

I’m just trying to figure out what humaN is code for.

But I fixed both titles already.

10078

Can I ask why you fixed them? I don’t think they were typos, I’m guessing a deliberate … affectation(? Not really the right word but I haven’t had enough tea yet.)
I agree it was silly and annoying, but I didn’t think it was something that mandated a fix. Is there a rule/code I missed?

10079

We fix typos in titles all the time.
That qualifies as a typo and was going to annoy many posters if left.

10080

We have, in the past, had some folks who stockpiled sock accounts, making several at once, and then dusting them off much later, so it’s not out of the question. Though 20 years probably is a pretty long time for that.

That one, I’m hopeful is legit. Yeah, it’s rare for young folks to sign up here, but we don’t want to discourage them: It’s a good thing when they do. And Irish orthography is exactly the sort of quirky subject that this place is best at. So yeah, maybe they did find this to be the best discussion of the matter on the Net.

10081

When I was a sock puppet investigator during my time as an admin on Wikipedia, I’d see that kind of thing a lot.

Actually, that’s one thing I’d look for, if a known sock had a creation date close to a suspected sock, it was good evidence that it was indeed a sock. It happened often enough that I’d regularly check for it. It’s an attempt to deflect suspicion by trying to make an account look established and thus trustworthy.

10082

I don’t think we’re actually disagreeing @wolfpup - the next chunk below what you quoted was:

The behavior of making a blind, unsupported assumption of facts and then demanding other people refute their assertation, after (at a casual count) 4+ requests that they support their own assertation is so very similar to troublesome posters listed here and in dedicated Pit threads leads me to the conclusion.

We can and do have conservative posters, or posters who are more/less conservative on one subject than others, who will provide cites, reasons, and facts. Often shaded, granted, and certainly ones that put their POV in the best possible light, but when they start sliding into nothing but soundbites and JAQ, they are moving into troll or at least jerk territory.

My post was more along the lines that I’ve seen them in other threads where they were mostly in the first category, but that thread felt entirely in the latter. Or As I finished in the quoted post:

10083

I tried to look up the word as spelled that way, but all I get back are responses to the word “human”. Can someone with greater Google Fu see what they can do?

10084

I ran into the same issue and gave up. :slight_smile: