If it was that easy, we’d ban more trolls and/or there would be less dispute about whether or not someone deserved banning when it happened. DSeid isn’t making it clear who he’s talking about even though the t-word usually gets thrown at the same couple of people these days, so I guess it’ll remain his opinion, because it’s hard for anybody to make an argument for or against somebody being a troll when the person isn’t being identified.
I still can’t find anyone I dislike enough to give a mention, but can I just say that olivesmarch4th is a great judge of character! 
Dio really wasn’t the inspiration for this thread in any way. Honestly. Not at all. He is not an idiot, I have no sense of him being an attention whore, and my experience has been that he posts just fine in most threads. But just by way of a specific case to discuss for proper use of terms, I offer up his behavior in this thread. Please note: the issue is not that I disagree with the points that he makes, but comment #18:
and his quick admission that no, no one in that thread was saying that, and that he doesn’t really believe what he said, that he was just
(Post#25)
An honest question: was the first post an attempt at satire or trolling or something else? I don’t think it is trolling even though it is indeed staking out a position that he does not believe in order to provoke a reaction because I believe that he intends to obliquely make a point that he does believe, even if it had no bearing on the thread.
Now when he follows that up with a variety of posts that declare rockets don’t count as attacks unless they threaten the very existence of the country, that he believes that intending to harm civilians is the same as unintentionally and unavoidably harming them (and a host of other inexplicably bizarre positions) are we to believe that he really holds those positions or that he trying to satire in some way or is it trolling?
And again to make clear, no, this is not the sort of behavior my op referenced and I kind of like Dio. I mean attention whoring and even if Dio is trolling he is honestly trying to illustrate something he does believe by doing it - which is not the kind of thing that bugs me.
Sometimes it’s just a release. Plain and simple. That’s what cyberspace is for.
Lame pitting, IMHO. As written it implies some sort of inner sanctum knowledge of who the “trolls and ignorants” are…which is really BS for many of the aforementioned reasons.
Got a beef? Bring it. Because as you likely know, “Beating Around the Bush” is just so 2004.
…
Yeah yeah not to worry, I’ll stick to my real job and let 'luc and Vinyl take care of the jabs. More of a hammer guy myself.
Later…
But you’re making the same argument that I just responded to that you commented on that DSeid had made. You’re claiming that there’s a whole bunch of posters on the Dope who think the poster is wrong. That doesn’t make that one poster wrong. Again, the Dope has some views that are very specific and are not necessarily mainstream. I’m not claiming nefarous motives to the group, just that they generally agree on a number of things so a bunch of posters agreeing is common here, but that doesn’t necessarily make them right.
But again, I don’t know what you’re talking about, so I can only guess that this is content-driven and not style-driven or not tone-driven. There are huge differences there as well.
All those words. . . evasion, lies, downright disengenuousness. . . are motivation- derived. No one on a message board can tell someone’s motivation. We can only guess.
The one person may be creating havoc because people here disagree with them. But that doesn’t make them wrong.
Interestingly, last night I actually did a quick scan of some posters’ last few posts from this thread that have noted that they have been having problems. I didn’t see anything. Then again, I don’t know what I’m looking for, so maybe I passed right by without noticing.
Please note that there have been several posters in this thread who hang out in GD who have not noticed any trolls. If they’re so prevalent, one would think they’d be noticeable.
And now that I’ve seen some posters posting names, I’ll stand by most original post and say that I disagree with any of the list of names so far that any of them are trolls.
Now you’re really cutting it too finely. When you’re talking about making points that you don’t honestly believe for a couple posts, you’re saying that no one can play devil’s advocate or try out an idea or investigate alternative ways of thinking. I hope that’s not your point.
But since you say this is not what your OP is about, it’s still unclear as to what it is about.
(Sorry for the double post; missed the edit window)
I was just thinking about Idle Thought’s post and the trolls he listed there that are no longer here. Those don’t go on the list. They were trolls. But since they’re no longer here, we can’t be talking about them. I pointed them out as trolls when I saw them and engaged them only if it was entertaining.
Nevermind. I solely came in here to support DSeid’s thesis and apologize for being one of the one’s duped. Since I simply was observing the same things that apparently the folks here who have noticed something, by attempting to explain (following the same guidelines as outlined in the OP) and obviously failing, I’ll withdraw from the discussion and perhaps another person might with to attempt it who can easily do a better job.
Heffalump
My sole motivation for bringing up the specific of Dio’s post is to try to gain some sense of what people think is trolling, what is attention whoring, etc.
Dio is most definitely not playing devil’s advocate or trying out an idea. He consistently takes a similar stance in every thread regarding Israel and he has readily admitted on more than one occasion that he takes his extreme positions that he does not really embrace in response to some perception that he has of simplistic black and white positions taken by some in other venues on the other side - “mirroring” that behavior that he finds offensive in others in all threads about Israel that he participates. He clearly really does lean in that direction as well but the extremism is insincere. It doesn’t bother me much as he is, when asked, honest enough to admit to it.
What is the proper thing to call that?
Bein’ a jerk?
Rhetorical hyperbole.
That would be fine if you started with the hyperbole and gradually narrowed in on a workable realistic proposal. Instead, I’ve noted that you start out wacky, and when that (surprisingly) doesn’t work, you go even wackier and wackier.
I admit, it’s entertaining and all, watching you take your credibility out back and shoot it over and over.
It’s over your head.
No, it’s actually beneath me.
Well, as long as you’ve named names D…
Yeah, but adopting a position you don’t actually agree with that you create because you erroneously believe it mirrors your opponents’ positions, order to ‘throw it back in their faces’? That’s rather clearly trolling.
I mean, fuck, look at how Dio is reduced to making up definitions for words as if he was Humpty Dumpty. Definitions that make things like the Blitz “not an attack” and would make random carpet bombing of Gaza as, also, “not an attack”. He just makes shit up as he goes along so that he can frustrate people. His recent trolling started, for instance, by accusing people of using a “lie” in stating that Israel had been attacked by Hamas. He’s not a stupid person, although he is pig headed.
He’s certainly not stupid enough to believe that people were using a “lie” to describe hundreds of rockets launched by the government of one nation against the people of another, as an attack. And he does that to troll white people by insulting them as overly sensitive liars who invent claims of racism and to troll people who aren’t anti-Israel by calling suggesting that they’re lying when they claim that high explosive ordinance is an attack.
Dio knows full well that nobody was lying and that his definition of the word “attack” is at odds with the English language, poli sci, the rules of international conflict, etc…
So he was pretending that his made up definition was accurate in order to call other people liars. That’s trolling.
The difference between trolling and playing devil’s advocate is twofold. The first is that if you’re playing DA you should let people know that fact. The second is that in playing DA, you don’t adopt positions that are designed pretty much solely to piss people off.
And for the record, I do wish that people in that thread hadn’t been feeding him quite so much. Mocking his startling stupidity was funny enough, but more than a few people were acting as if he was interested in honest discussion rather than crafting dishonest positions to piss people off. His trolling pretty much completely hijacked the thread for dozens of posts. I wish more people really would ignore his bullshit, because it’s usually along the same lines. He takes something that has an actual definition, like “racism” or “attack”, and then pretends that racism isn’t racism if it’s directed against white people and attacks aren’t attacks unless they can topple an entire government.
There’s absolutely no point in feeding him once he decides that he’s going to go all out and troll the fuck out of a thread.
Okay, his head is beneath you. We accept whatever relationship you two have. Moving along (and the aside that you must realize that it only polarizes discussions Dio, when these subjects could really use some appreciation of the real complex dynamics and motivations) it does fit the definition of trolling even if it annoys little. And it hijacks real discussions as well (as Finn says I see on preview)
Thing is that your trolling is at least an honest trolling of a sort and if anything ends up helping the other side of the debate some by painting your side is such an absurdist light. You are rarely nasty about it. And you also have many other areas in which you provide real and significant contributions. I believe that your trolling is tolerable. I’d like a different word for that sort than for those who make no significant contributions other than to whore for attention - and fill in whoever you have as your personal example there.
I know that we all have our own opinions about who meets or doesn’t cross that line and that my refusal to open up another Pit thread devoted to the same poster makes this a lame pit. I’ve gotten my answer to why some persist in feeding the trolls/attention whores by now - some just can’t resist poking at the troll, some just can’t let the troll get in the last word, and some are amused by the idiocy. Okay, my ignorance is hereby reduced.
If you ever think I’m trolling, report it
ETA, above is said to Finn, not to DSeid.
I swear I tried, but the edit window was over by the time I found the exact page (was waaaay older than I thought it was). I considered doing a new post just for the link but … yeah.
I don’t know. His style of argument is beyond me. I am not normally aggressively certain about my positions to the extent that I would risk offense to others. To someone unaccustomed to this style it may certainly look like trollish behavior, but given my opportunity to observe him over the last couple of years, I conclude he’s just partial to a style of debate not my own. Many other posters do the same thing, he just captures my attention most likely because of his valuable contributions in other contexts.
I think part of the reason the whole ‘‘troll’’ accusation gets thrown around lately is because people have a tendency to take these strong opinions very personally. While Dio’s position in that thread certainly elicits a ‘‘WTF?,’’ as does** Jesse Leigh**'s in the other GD thread, as does curlcoat’s in the child-pet GD thread, the troll aspect only surfaces if you come to believe that the poster is intending a vicious assault on the very principles you hold dear, means to insult you personally with his/her stated position, etc. I don’t think that’s the case for any of the above examples. In Dio’s case, he’s just trying to make a point (which I’ll admit I still don’t grasp even though you’ve explained it more than once) in a less-than-usual way.
When there are instances where people let their guard down and take these things personally (as I will fully admit I have in the past), that’s when the ‘‘DNFTT’’ accusations come out. But in most cases it’s just two or more people getting really caught up in their emotions about a subject they vehemently disagree on. I do believe that if the majority of posters on the Dope find an idea repugnant, it’s probably a fairly accurate reflection of mainstream thought… however, I think the lone dissenters have a right to express their controversial views without being accused of trolling.
On preview I see you were addressing your comment to Heffalump and I’m interested in her interpretation as well, but I’ll let my own remarks stand.
I’ve bolded the part that bears repeating, which undoubtedly goes a long way towards explaining why DSeid hasn’t called anyone out and wished to have a hypothetical discussion instead.
Just sayin’.