Poison pen trolls
There’s a particular type of troll I’ve had visit here off and on over the years, and I’ve noticed a few more lately. Their modus operandi is to come onto a blog on the right and say something that sounds like a caricature of what they think the right is all about – something violent and/or racist and/or hateful in some basic way.
But the statement doesn’t ring true. It just doesn’t sound like any commenter here, nor does it sound like comments I’ve read on the right side of the blogosphere for years. It is as fake as a Halloween costume.
The purpose? My guess is that the idea is to slip it by the blogger and then accuse the blogger of hosting a hate site if enough of these poison pen comments accumulate. Maybe these days, just one is enough. Bloggers aren’t usually thought to be responsible for the comments on their forums, but I’ve seen enough to know that’s not always the way it works and certainly not the way it always will work.
If you have the time, engage one likely troll as an experiment.
Let him know that while your blog is not a spleen dump, that you will give him a chance, and consider leaving the comment up if he is willing to engage in a dialog with you personally on principle and facts in order to demonstrate his bona fides as a sincere commenter.
The rules are he must answer questions directly, not by dropping links.
He must make an argument, not just deposit assertions.
He must be prepated to explain the principles by which he arrived at his premisses and defend them.
He must continue to respond to your questions until you are satisfied … your blog, your rules.
Well, like I said … an experiment.
What will it prove? Probably only that that trolls don’t care to invest much time in trying to examine their assumptions, and that a cackling nihilism has taken deeper root in the souls of many Americans than we might otherwise suspect.
There certainly have been cases of bloggers classified as “hate sites” because of things in their comments. It bears watching.
Neo, I saw that comment. It was in stark contrast to the general tone here, so I figured it was a troll. Is there a way to flag such comments to call them to your attention?
Baen Publishing had to take down their web forum (Baen’s Bar) because some internet troll went fishing for wrongthink.
Oh, there was some precipitating event recently? A presence that you suspect which imagined it was acting as an agent provocateur?
Didn’t see it.
Well, you get their e-mails. Use it ….
DNW:
It has happened intermittently for many many years.
And what makes you think they use bona fide email addresses? Not that it matters what email addresses they use.
I saw a comment by someone called ‘apple’ something that was clearly a troll.
I saw a comment by someone called ‘apple’ something that was clearly a troll.
Griffin:
I saw that too. I couldn’t tell if it was a troll or misguided humor.
Haven’t seen Montage in a while. Maybe all the happy music talk put him off. Or that his recent slam-dunks on the election weren’t so slam-dunkish after all.
They are wearing an Edgar suit.
Montage is despairing the potential departure of Emperor Hair Gel? What good is a one party state if voting is still allowed?
Or possibly the resemblance of President Harris to a certain woman from Oz ( …. and your little dog! cackle cackle cackle) has Montage worried about houses falling from the sky?
In my experience there is at least one one, maybe two or even three, resident trolls on any given solidly non-liberal site, with the site’s focus on worldly politics, religion or education. Some of these trolls only show up during a period of time given the circumstances or show up to gloat after they see a collapse of the other side; it’s akin to sports fans trash talking after their team won a rivalry.
Leftists, try as they might, tend to fail at posing at conservatives but not the other way around. And if the leftist does manage to fool people the leftist oddly doesn’t understand the people or concepts they have mimicked any better than before.
@ Neo,
Why in the world would they use a fake e-mail address. That would, you know, be, well, dishonest.
Actually, you would have to have a pretty empty life to bother going to all that trouble just to annoy others.
Of course if you are a conscienceless nihilist with no sense of personal honor and nothing better to do with your time this side of the grave, then for that kind, I guess it is a question of “Why not?”
Why, “Those little devils”, as Granny would say; saying more than she knew …
@ Huxley, et al.
There is an applebetty [ prox] who comments here. Never noticed anything untoward in her manner. Perhaps just a bad day for her, or someone else.
@DNW:
I’d respectfully suggest that just about now would be a good time for you and anyone else to start commenting on conservative blogs using fake email address and Brave Browser in alt-shift-n TOR window mode.
There are plenty of sophisticated ways to be tracked without knowing your email address — and Big Tech and Five Eyes can do this at unimaginably massive scale — hoovering up all likely stuff and doing data mining and ML on it at leisure, but why make things too easy for them by handing over your email address?
Which I think means it’s an appropriate time to express appreciation to our gracious host…Thank you ma’am!
I wouldn’t put up with it…and I’m glad you do.
Folks like you & Bill and the Professor…and a few others…do good work. It is appreciated.
I am invisible zaph.