[Wasn’t sure where to put this-not Pitting anyone, isn’t really a Debate or GQ, seemed too weighty for MPSIMS, didn’t want it to go unnoticed in ATMB, so it goes here]
Seems like every 2 weeks or so, someone (sometimes a poster who had never posted before who shows up out of the blue) will throw up (yes term intentional) an OP in GD which will invariably attract tons of responses. It will soon become obvious, at least to me (YMMV and all that) that the person in question is not interested in a fair discussion, does not care to learn anything from anyone else, and may just be jerking everybody else’s chain. One such thread may be going on here right now, 382 posts strong at the moment.
The question is: why don’t such threads die a quick death, while the putative troll goes on and rants unto the void? Why the need to constantly engage these people when it is perfectly clear all they really want is to get a rise out of you? I’m not even necessarily going to make a distinction between an actual troll and a person who is so totally committed to his (or her) viewpoint that nothing anyone else says will make him change his mind (hence the premise of fair debate is out the window at the start).
I’ll be honest. At first, it was just fun. But now, Lacunas Quell has started with Creationism. It’s our duty as Dopers to counter the lies and ignorance of Creationism with truth and information.
It’s human nature. You get a large enough group of people in a place like this and the odds of being able to not feed the trolls rapidly and exponentially approaches zero. DNFTT is a nice policy, in theory, but almost absolutely impossible in practice.
Exactly. If rational, educated people sit back and say nothing, the lunatics and frauds will just keep on spreading their nonsense.
First, I have no reason to think he’s a troll. He seems like a typical proslytizing True Believer to me. And second, he’s still spreading nonsense regardless of his motives.
There’s nothing new here. These threads pop up from time to time, and there are so many people (myself included) who feel the need, the burn, to find out, just this one time, if this particular poster can rationally justify his beliefs (it always seems to be a him). Deep down, we know it won’t happen, but there’s also the vicarious thrill of prodding the evangelist, to see if even greater depths of ridiculousness can be exposed.
For me, it’s also because I really do want to try to understand what is behind his beliefs. They’re so passionate, so all enveloping; what has caused them? But the threads all end up the same.
More seriously, IME you’re never going to stop behavior like the one going on in the thread you cite. Especially in cases like the thread you cite, since I agree with Der Trihs that the OP in that thread isn’t a troll.
I just avoid threads like that myself. A long time ago, I used to enjoy beating my head against a brick wall because it felt so good when I stopped. Now, not so much.
What she said. I try not to do it too much, but I’m sure I have. It’s the internet, and responding to stupidity usually costs you nothing.
I agree that Lacunas Quell is witnessing and not really interested in a discussion, but that’s not the same thing as trolling.
People often talk about trolling as if it means the same thing to everybody and is equally obvious to all readers. It doesn’t work that way. We try to interpret trolling to mean deliberately being inflammatory and being a jackass, not just saying things that are unpopular and being confrontational. The poster in question has been warned a few times for being insulting, and he’s gone across the line of debating and witnessing a few times that I’ve seen, but that’s not necessarily the same thing.
This is where I differ from you. I don’t think he is being, by his lights, stupid. And towards the end of the thread he is definitely entering into a discussion, and is debating.
I wouldn’t begin to pretend that I know how his mind works, but I do believe that he is being genuine, and what we see as stupidity is deeply rational, natural and obvious to him. The trouble is our mindsets are so far apart that never the twain shall meet, and all discussions will, and have, proved to be pointless. Which I consider a shame, because I’d like to understand.
This is the problem with engaging with people who are only arguing from the standpoint of their beliefs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s about religion, UFOs, creationism or anything else. I’ve never seen a discussion that has ended to the satisfaction of all concerned, because the definitions of proof are so different as to be irreconcilable. Even being able to *understand *their viewpoint can be very difficult. So it would be foolish, in my view to enter into a discussion with a ‘believer’ with the expectation of either side giving way - or even meeting half way.
I guess sometimes we, the Doper family, behave against our better judgment and best interests. I usually ignore threads featuring either trolls or religious moonbats. However, just once in a while it’s tempting to try and bring them face to face, nose to nose, with their own undeniable silliness, just to see what happens; just to see what sort of contortions and evasions they need to resort to in order to reconcile their own mutually contradictory pontifications, inconsistencies and deranged attempts at logic.
I agree that it’s never worth the time and effort and we shouldn’t. But it happens.
Very true. But the result is always the same. We expect contortions and evasions, but they know that, for everything, there is one final, irrefutable answer: the word of their god (or whatever). What we see as circular, they see as the straight path to the truth. Belief has its own logic system, and neither reasoning nor insults (which many people in the depths of frustration resort to) can affect it.
Nobody’s mind gets changed in most of the debates here, I would wager. That’s probably how the “long-running discussions” part got into the Great Debates description: if people’s minds were changed that easily the debates would have been resolved and not been all that Great.
Because deep down, sometimes we think that we have just the perfect thing to say that will either drive the shining light of truth into the hind brains of the beasts, causing them to realize the error of their ways and head over to MPSIMS to start the next “Ask the…” thread (maybe “Ask the Troll?”), or perhaps the light will just drive them away. In either case, it’s like when you’re playing volleyball, and whoever has the ball tosses it to the other side so they can serve, and everybody along the path has to swat the ball to speed it along its course.
I think people have been doing a really good job of not feeding trolls in the Pit recently. I can think of one recent example where the troll was completely ignored, he kept trying to bump the thread, and it just eventually died. Good work, everyone!