I’m not new and it discourages me too. I participate and read a lot less than I used to. I maintain a healthy ignore list but that doesn’t prevent the usual suspects from derailing threads.
We have lost many of our good friends on this boards in the last few years because there always seems to be a handful of hardcore sexists, racists, and hardcore trolls that constantly bring things down.
I typically stop reading or posting (I mainly read and don’t post too much) once a thread gets hijacked by one of the usual suspects. Helps keep the BP down.
No, you can’t make him defend himself. But you can choose to not come up with a defense for him that he himself has not given.
My argument is fairly simple: when someone does something apparently wrong, we should not come up with an explanation that they themselves have not given. We should not be giving them an excuse they can use to get out of something.
If they really have a good reason for what they did, then they will be able to tell you without needing anyone else to help them figure out what that good reason is. We can be sure of a more honest answer if we wait, rather than make excuses for them.
And I say this as someone with a huge tendency to want to come in and defend people. I’ve had to make a conscious effort not to come up with excuses for them. When I don’t, I’ve accidentally defended some garbage people and helped them get away with being garbage. (Hell, I defended Kanye West at one point.)
I reject the idea that defending people online is wrong. But I do try to be more careful about it. I don’t make up excuses for people, and I think this is a good rule of thumb for everyone who chooses to defend people online.
What the epic fuck? Just gibberish and lies.
Well, no shit, moron!
Oh man, the mods closed the vaccine and autism thread. I thought there was a lot of chemistry between Dopers happening in that thread.
*yeah, just wanted to get that last joke in
Well you’re not going to get any reaction from me.
That’s because you’re not part of a solution.
What do you base that on?
Please don’t compound the issue.
That’s a pretty acidic answer. And here I thought we were bonding.
The chemistry here is terrible.
Chem students do it on the table periodically.
We’ve already done that one. Or were you planning on a periodic return to the same jokes?
It is pretty ionic, isn’t it?
I didn’t want to react to these terrible puns. But to clear things up: this was heating up rapidly, so they could no longer just keep an ion it.
Giving this more thought, I think people like Will Farnaby and UrbanRedneck are part of the right wing propaganda machine, which heavily relies on trolls to swamp the public discourse with nonsense.
They spout ridiculous nonsense and lies and never allow themselves to be dragged into a genuine conversation. We ought to seriously consider banning posters like this as a matter of routine, because they are making our world a worse place to live in and by giving them any platform we are just facilitating their machinations.
I think I agree. Contrast Huey Freeman. Whatever the guy’s issues, he will engage; and the controversy over his behavior has led to productive debate on substantive issues.
If somebody won’t engage in debate when their views are challenged, I think our tolerance for bigoted provocation & trollery should be much stricter. UrbanBlight is firmly in this camp of dropping drive-by turds and disappearing.
Will Farnaby - I don’t know, I don’t put him in the same category as Urban. He does seems to be willing to engage, but his views are always loaded with unstated underlying principles that he seems to take for granted as axiomatic natural laws, but most sane human beings think are preposterous nonsense. With that underlying disconnect, you pretty much can’t have any kind of coherent higher-level conversation with the guy. And it you step back to try to discuss those underlying principles, the entire thread just gets hijacked and disappears down the rabbit hole of his crazy.