Back in the D. B. Cooper thread, Michael_Varn reveals himself to either be a conspiracy theorist or a troll pretending to be one.
Either way, not going to get along well at the SDMB.
But he’s a long-time guest! Surely he’s legit! /s
As a 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271452635608277857713427577896091736371787214684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235420199561121290219608640344181598136297747713099605187072113499999983729780499510597317328160963185950244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881710100031378387528865875332083814206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823537875937519577818577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989 dollar bill.
Mmmmm, cake….
How irrational. 
Could simply be a case of continuously posting while one’s mind has been altered by recreational drugs. There was a lot of that amongst conspiracy believers on the erstwhile IMDb boards.
Let’s take two people that I know personally.
The first is someone who truly believes a lot of the conspiracy stuff floating around on the internet. The second is someone who likes to go online and troll conspiracy theorists, flat earthers, etc.
The problem is that if I gave you a random sampling of both of their posts, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell which ones were from the legitimate conspiracy theory believer and which ones were from the troll.
Well, you might be able to tell some of them. The really outlandish ones, the ones that you think have to be a troll because no one could possibly believe them, those usually come from the actual conspiracy theory believer.
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice trolling.
I also thought that the standard was that if someone’s posts were indistinguishable from trolling, they are modded as troll posts, because the mods can’t read minds and know if the person was intended to troll or not. And the disruption is the same either way.
Due to the curse of knowledge, a well-informed individual is likely to find all sorts of legitimate ignorance indistinguishable from trolling.
If in a conversation about Biden’s approval ratings, a new member person posts “I don’t think Joe Biden is a legitimate president, but I’d like to hear why I’m wrong”, followed by stop the steal conspiracy arguments, how likely do you think it is that they are posting this to intentionally rile you up? 90%? 95%?
In some polls (cite: Axis/Momentive, January 2022) only 3 out of 5 Americans think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. Does that statistic change your guess at whether you are being trolled or not?
~Max
If someone is enough of a problem, yes, we can punt them into the cornfield without being certain of their intent.
I was just pointing out that with conspiracy theory believers, determining whether or not they are sincere can be difficult.
Take another point of reference. The majority of Americans believe in JFK conspiracies. It’s been that way for decades. If you’re part of the minority who disavows JFK conspiracies, your first reaction to someone who reveals they believe it may be “you’re shitting me”, haha, pull the other one. Online that turns into “you’re trolling me”.
~Max
That’s similar to Poe’s Law.
Poe’s law is an adage of Internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, every parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
It’s hard to tell the difference between crazy ideas and people trying to parody crazy ideas. The same way that so many news stories about Trump look like they came from The Onion, but no, they’re real.
It’s not only ignorance that goes into the calculation. It’s the fact they happened to find this message board, and picked that topic. It’s that it’s not common for the people who believe Biden didn’t win to go around looking for people to prove them wrong. It’s that people who join a community with something controversial are more likely to be trolls. And it’s ironically more likely to be trolling if you pick something that has a roughly 50% split, since that’s more likely to start fights.
Plus then you’d have to look at the individual post itself, and see how it’s asked. Honestly, that is the bulk of what I use to decide if I think someone is trolling. How do they talk? How do they react? All of the previous paragraph are just signals to start paying attention, but it’s the actual way people post that is the actual tell.
That said, given the information you gave? I’d definitely think it would be much more likely that they’re a troll than not.
That’s a good point, but I’ll add that it isn’t so telling if the controversial first post addresses one of Cecil’s columns because Cecil himself was sort of a glutton for addressing controversy and conspiracy theories. He suffered fools gladly - no, he invited them to write him with questions. That’s sort of his schtick.
~Max
Who’s coming to this board now because of the columns?
Guess you’re right. Looks like new posters in Cecil’s Columns (that haven’t been sent to the cornfield) are rare, and don’t tend to stick around.
June 2022
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coca-cola-torture/329647/4
July 2021
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/browns-gas-for-ice-not-totally-without-merit/945924
April 2020
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stewart-sandwiches/852188
February 2020
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yall-need-to-update-your-column-on-the-difference-between-cell-phone-radiation-and-microwave-ovens/848650
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grouchos-cigar/848298
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-airplanes-fly/847658
November 2019
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cecils-classics-could-you-be-frozen-solid-then-broken-into-a-million-pieces-rebuttal/843502
~Max
I do think it’s unfortunate that the columns stopped. I came to the boards because of the columns and it wasn’t that long ago.
Me too. My first couple of posts were commenting on columns. I don’t think I was trolling. It was a long time ago though so who knows.
I also came here because of the columns (my join date is misleading - I didn’t even lurk on the forums until 2019), and while my first posts weren’t in Comments on Cecil’s Columns I did post there early on.
~Max