A lot of new folks have appeared in comments recently, more than usual. Some of them have been arguing (or perhaps just pasting text) in favor of the conspiracy and legal theories that I debunk on the site. Some write with an arrogant tone that’s hard not to respond to, and the result is a flurry of conversation that can be disruptive to the discussion of the articles. When someone disrupts intentionally, they are called a “troll” in Internet jargon. I identified this problem here back in 2009 in my article: Do not Feed the Trolls (DNFTT).
Some visitors have become so unruly or offensive that I have had to moderate or ban them. I hate doing that, but I also hate that people’s time is being wasted responding to arrogant and stupid comments.
So I will just mention that if you don’t feed the trolls, maybe they will go somewhere else eventually. I put up a sign.
Update:
I don’t think I ever put this in an article, but it was in a comment. I have sort of a “troll test” that I use when deciding whether to label someone a “troll” or not.
- Flurry of short comments
- Comments focusing attention on the troll like “I’m leaving” or “I’m back”
- Failing to acknowledge substantive opposing argument
- Frequent and unjustified claims of having “won”
- Focusing on winning rather than conversation
- Talking about the debate rather than participating in the debate
- Insulting other commenters (particularly borderline insulting language)
- Claiming to be clever, or more clever than anyone else
- Negative generalizations about other commenters
- Failure to state a clear position, but leading others to jump to a conclusion which the troll then denies
- Ignoring the topic of conversation, and blurting in unrelated material
- Appeal to 1st amendment when they are criticized for saying something and focusing the discussion on censorship
- Attempting to needle individual commenters
- Comments designed to strike others as “unfair”
- Intentionally misstating the position of others
- If you remove instant gratification by putting a troll in moderation, they immediately stop commenting.
Just a suggestion. Here is a version of March of the Trolls by Iskra Mantcheva that makes the keyboarding much more visible and has better sound quality, recorded in 2009.
Putting them in Moderation works too.
You’re welcome at Fogbow, trolls. I have a special forum called “Under the Bridge” where we’ll have lots of fun with you.
OT – Thought she may need to up the tempo, lest the lady in the front row pop out a child right there.
I saw that … I think she’s having quadruplets.
I laugh when I read the comment I made on that first troll article:
We’re pushing 126,000 now.
but only until thursday…
[OK, I had to let this one through. Doc]
I have no prediction about Thursday. I think I have a pretty good handle on the facts and the evidence, but not on what Sheriff Joe will do.
Do you have any insights to offer as to why Scott didn’t show for the Reality Check Radio debate last Tuesday?
Scott was “punking” everybody. RC has the story at his blog. I did one too on it. I am also working on a prediction for Thursday, but I am doing it in between reading a really good book called Miss Peregrines’s Home for Peculiar Children. For some reason, a family member thought I would like it.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Well it does drive traffic to your site. But at a point, it just becomes a bunch of rubbish clutter…
Can you repost the link to that one? I think I missed seeing that particular article. Thanks.
G:
http://rcradioblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/wheres-scott-top-ten-reasons-that-scott-erlandson-skipped-the-debate-on-tuesday-night/
It is updated at the bottom.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Oh, I hadn’t seen the update.
All the nuance, subtlety, and skillz of James O’Keefe.
It sounds more like bluster to me. As far as I am concerned, he chickened out. The troll article is certainly an appropriate place for this to come up.
He’s banned.
Kudos on that call! His sickening response to RC after pulling that cowardly stunt made him a permanent Troll non gratis in my book too…
I put Scott Erlandson up some music to befit his actions:
http://birtherthinktank.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/the-chicken-real-dedicated-to-scott-erlandson-birther/
He had a blurb on his blog about more info next week on why the debate didn’t happen, but it is gone now.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Can we all agree those trolls should be stopped a.s.a.p.?
Why should we let vexatious questions get in the way of the prolix letterman in our echo chamber?
Is there any reason Dr. Con and his ilk should be expected to act like adults when asked short simple questions by afterbirthers?
Speaking of trolls, we will not be hearing from Rowena anymore.
Rowena is:
DancingRabbit
DraggingCanoe
E.Vattel
PseudoObama
tallbull
Yes, folks, one of our most notorious trolls from the past. I figured out your real name, didn’t I, Mike? Maybe I should put your picture on the Troll sign?
Your questions get answered and yet your rhetorical strategy remains one-note fake clever. Your questions, and many such, are not vexatious; they are childish.
A vexatious questioner is one that asks a question that has already been answered. I must admit, though, that thanks to you I learned all about Larry Sinclair’s extensive criminal record and convictions for fraud.
Still, no ice cream treat again for you tonight.
I don’t think the problem is with the QUESTIONS. I think it is more that when ANSWERS are given, with cites to the cases, etc, that the ANSWERS seem to encounter some sort of strange, dense substance which causes the ANSWERS to bounce back off into space.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I’m glad you used that phrase, because it’s right on topic and something I’d been thinking about already.
The kind of questions that get asked by [after]birthers and their fellow travelers tend to be short and simple, but usually require much longer answers.
“Short, simple” questions have much more emotional impact than longer answers:
“Why did Gore say he invented the Internet”?
“Why did Obama talk about his “Muslim faith”?
“…57 states…”
“Where’s the BC?”
“…his grandma said…”
“MinorMinorMinorMinorMinorMinor”
…and so on. Decent, longer, answers assume the questioner is even going to listen, or follow a link, or follow a train of thought and too often the questioner is just happy to have asked the question, and the answers are blown off, ignored or quickly forgotten.
Or, to be short and simple: trolls are minions of Satan.
(Note that this call and response serves as its own example. You’re soaking in it!)
For your entertainment …
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
Norway
Once upon a time there were three billy goats, who were to go up to the hillside to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was “Gruff.”
On the way up was a bridge over a cascading stream they had to cross; and under the bridge lived a great ugly troll , with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.
So first of all came the youngest Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge.
“Trip, trap, trip, trap! ” went the bridge.
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” roared the troll .
“Oh, it is only I, the tiniest Billy Goat Gruff , and I’m going up to the hillside to make myself fat,” said the billy goat, with such a small voice.
“Now, I’m coming to gobble you up,” said the troll.
“Oh, no! pray don’t take me. I’m too little, that I am,” said the billy goat. “Wait a bit till the second Billy Goat Gruff comes. He’s much bigger.”
“Well, be off with you,” said the troll.
A little while after came the second Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge.
Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap, went the bridge.
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” roared the troll.
“Oh, it’s the second Billy Goat Gruff , and I’m going up to the hillside to make myself fat,” said the billy goat, who hadn’t such a small voice.
“Now I’m coming to gobble you up,” said the troll.
“Oh, no! Don’t take me. Wait a little till the big Billy Goat Gruff comes. He’s much bigger.”
“Very well! Be off with you,” said the troll.
But just then up came the big Billy Goat Gruff .
Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap! went the bridge, for the billy goat was so heavy that the bridge creaked and groaned under him.
“Who’s that tramping over my bridge?” roared the troll.
“It’s I! The big Billy Goat Gruff ,” said the billy goat, who had an ugly hoarse voice of his own.
“Now I ‘m coming to gobble you up,” roared the troll.
That was what the big billy goat said. And then he flew at the troll, and poked his eyes out with his horns, and crushed him to bits, body and bones, and tossed him out into the cascade, and after that he went up to the hillside. There the billy goats got so fat they were scarcely able to walk home again. And if the fat hasn’t fallen off them, why, they’re still fat; and so,
If you ever want to start a thread on the Sinclair nonsense, I would definitely go into the failings of that idiot in great detail. Been following that saga for years! Neonzx also knows that one very well.
However, I wasn’t about to further derail the hate group topic or respond to the person who raised it.
*Raised the Sinclair topic*
I apparently can not do two things at once and should pay attention while posting. 😉
He didn’t. What he said was:
“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”
Vinton Cerf, Nicknamed the “Father of the Internet:” “I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator.”
Cerf said: “Al Gore actually deserves a lot of credit. In about 1986, he started asking questions like, ‘Why don’t we take these supercomputers and these optical fiber networks and put them together. Would that do anything?’ Well, guess what? That eventually turned into the National Science Foundation Network, which became a core element of the Internet.”
Marc Andreessen, the Inventor of the Mosaic Browser: Marc has credited Gore for making his work possible. Andreesen noted that while he was a student at the University of Illinois, he was able to access a federal grant program that was funded through Gore’s High Performance Computing Act, which allowed Andreessen to work on the technology that led to the creation of the Mosaic browser.
I actually wrote an article on that back during the 2000 election. That brings back memories.
Dr. Con,
You are certainly welcome, and thank you for access to your blog and your like-minded community of scientists and deep thinkers.
I hope to be able to help you learn more about why the pretensident, his administration, his documentation, and you and your community of scientists and deep thinkers are regarded with such profound skepticism.
Well, let me get you started!
Click on this link:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2008/12/barack-obamas-birth-certificate-is-a-forgery-part-1/
and read what’s there, then click in the next article link and so on.
That article is quite interesting for the comment left by “Heavy” our first and longest-lived troll. Heavy was never banned; he just wandered off after several months, or perhaps ran into a large goat. AXJ, who also commented on that article eventually became so obnoxious that I did finally ban him.
If you would like to write a guest article (objective and well-documented) I’d be happy to publish it.
He is the one that got me started in all of this nonsense. And it was by accident since I was trying to Google about the 2008 election at the time. He weaved a good yarn, but it all fell apart when the lie detector tests were not good and his criminal background came into question.
tl;dr
Sorry; couldn’t resist.
I of course have known from the beginning what he meant, and seethed as people continued to slap his face with their malicious twisting of his words.
I’ve had to the opportunity to work with many, many people who sincerely appreciate what Gore did to help them bring us this wonderful medium that allows us to see the accumulated knowledge of the human race, amazing realms of thoughtful discourse, and kittehs.
Last question before sherbet:
Do Obama’s confessions of illegal drug use mean he has a criminal background?
A “yes” or “no” will suffice.
Not necessarily. A criminal background refers to someone having been convicted of a crime. Do you have any evidence that our President has ever been convicted of a crime? Under your ‘standard’ most Americans would have some form of criminal background.
Well done!
The key part of the moral of the story, as told through your excellent analogy, bears repeating:
Good. No loss there.
Ugh! That vile racist scumbag! Was he trying to use a different IP address? I thought he and his scorched-earth sockpuppets had been kicked to the curb from here long ago…
Well, again, good riddance to bad rubbish.
Wow! Heavy… yeah, he was the first troll I remember too. I actually spent the first few months just lurking and reading the commentary, so I don’t even remember if I ever interacted with him online…. but I do remember his posts.
Unlike most of the other trolls, which tend to pop-up all over other forums (often in other sock forms), I don’t recall seeing anyone that came across as “Heavy” anywhere else after he left here…
AXJ seemed to be a whole franchise and their socks…crazy stuff. Definitely one of the first that really came across to me as already hooked into some bigger paranoid NWO conspiracy style thinking…
Interesting question. Usually a “criminal background” is a synonym for “criminal record” and that implies conviction of a crime and so in that sense the answer is “no.” To my knowledge Obama has never been convicted of a crime.
If you want to take the opposite extreme position, then the 41% of Americans who report using illegal drugs at least once all have “criminal backgrounds”. If you want to add traffic violations, I’m sure you will have a huge majority with “criminal backgrounds”. However, if you take that position, you remove any significance from the meaning of “criminal background” and that would make you guilty of a semantic crime.
You’re obviously just trying to get a rise out of us. I frankly don’t appreciate such things.
OMG… What a loser…
The freepers also dropped him (DraggingCanoe)
While I’d love to see guest articles by RuhRoh or any of the many of the other fine contributors here, I have ZERO interest in seeing this site lower itself to cover such bottom-feeding sewage trash smears like the whole stinking Larry Sinclair nonsense.
Another good reason not to waste time on it – that story went bust and was failed old news 4 years ago. Let’s not waste time on irrelevant moldy oldies…
Agreed. A hefty percentage of the population has experimented or used “illegal” drugs at some point in their life…and during their youth and young adulthood, such things are fairly common.
His insinuation is about as stupid as considering those who have merely exceeded the speed limit and/or accumulated some traffic tickets to be “ineligible” or “untrustworthy” candidates for office.
Face it, pathetic troll Kenneth Olsen is obviously just bitter and desperate to have some sort of poo he can use to sling and bad mouth the President.
It is deader than a doornail at this point.
Have you stopped molesting pre-pubescent orphans yet?
A yes or no will suffice.
Yeah, I’d say someone is trying real hard to end up in Moderation soon themselves…
Why can’t these folks learn to just express their concerns like adults instead of always coming across like unintelligent pr*cks…
I don’t mind having an actual discussion with someone who passionately has “different views”, as long as they are sincere and can handle a real conversation.
But when it is clear they are just here to throw a tantrum and piss all over the floor, they should get maybe a swift warning or two…but then deserve nothing less than a big boot to their rear…
criminal |ˈkrimənl|
noun
a person who has committed a crime:
No. Does Bush’s DUI mean he does?
IP addresses change in the normal course of affairs. I’ve posted here from over 300 different IP addresses. In this case, however, the IP address hadn’t changed; somehow it was deleted from the list. By the way, Mike is another American ex-pat.
Yes, that was transparently obvious from the beginning. However, it was a semantic trick, not a legitimate argument. And with that, you’re in moderation.
As I said before, I hate putting people in moderation. And when people who are in moderation post messages, I have to deal with them, and that irritates me because my normal inclination is to let people say what they want. I’m not yo mama. And when I’m irritated I apply very tough, even arbitrary, standards on what gets approved and the slightest smarmy insult, or arrogant attitude, or just something that strikes me the wrong way gets thrown in the trash. It’s all so very unfair, but then as Scott Peck so famously said: “Life is difficult.”
I think he was just trying to pick a fight. He zeroed on the fact that this blog doesn’t cover the topic and then started chipping away. The dead giveaway of his intent was his cartoon with my picture on it. I’ve been online a lot longer than there’s been an Internet. I’ve seen it all before. Still I don’t shut folks down as soon as I should.
No conviction, no crime. Please list all of Obama’s convictions.
I’ll help you get started: “Bush pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor DUI charge…”
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/george-w-bush-dui-arrest-record
Dick Cheney has two DWI convictions:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/dick-cheneys-youthful-indiscretions
“Does Obama’s criminal background consist of crimes that advanced his…self-interest?”
Does creating WMDs from whole cloth, then invading a country so your cronies can get their paws on oil, constitute war crimes, especially since ~100K civilians were killed in the crossfire?
Santorum: “Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, whose strong base of evangelical Christian supporters has thrust him into contention in Iowa, said on Monday that he believes states should have the right to outlaw birth control…”
He is encouraging people to ignore the Supreme Court decision of Griswold v. Connecticut, in 1965. Is that the crime of sedition?
Before Mr. Olsen fades into obscurity, did you get the joke about his web site?
http://www.lysanderspoonerlawschool.org/
Lysander Spooner never went to law school. He started his anarchist career by challenging the preference Massachusetts showed for college graduates over those who apprenticed under an attorney. (Spooner won, by the way)
Spooner was quite a character. He was an advocate of what he called “natural law” and denied that the Constitution had authority.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36145/36145-h/36145-h.htm
The Wikipedia has an interesting article on this fascinating American crank.
I find it ironic that Olsen was arguing that Barack Obama was a criminal because he used illegal drugs. Lysander Spooner would have not have agreed, writing:
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/VicesAreNotCrimes.htm
Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
— Lysander Spooner
— from Vices are Not Crimes 🙄
Interesting semantic trick which would make all of us criminals. If that is your purpose, fine. It appears that you are less interested in an honest exchange based on logic and reason.
Such a lightweight…
Hung by his own petard… Well done Dr… As I said, such a lightweight.
Of course he’s just trying to pick a fight. I think that was fairly obvious to most of us from the get go. The tone of these trolls posts pretty much outs them right off the bat.
Due to the Dunning–Kruger effect, these dimwits actually think they are playing some witty con game here and view themselves as “clever” in their attempted snark. That they can’t grasp how quickly folks are on to them and unimpressed with their childishness, only reflects poorly on them.
It is no surprise that we see a surge in low quality Trolling emerge out of nowhere after one of their Great White Hopes spectacularly goes down in flames. They are smarting and angry and their petty little lizard brains are looking to lash out. The only retaliation they are capable of or “brave” enough is to intentionally Troll in places they perceive as “the enemy” – like this site.
So yes, they are hear intending to goad and pick a fight right from the get-go. It is so childish and immature, that I have almost zero sympathy for it and agree that it deserves very little tolerance either.
As soon as you see it happening, you can predict that it is just going to derail and downgrade the level of conversation on whatever blog topic you had going. I’m sure that turns off your casual lurking readers even more than anything else. There are a lot of places where I just read but don’t invest the time in commenting on. When it gets cluttered with trolling stupidity, I quickly lose interest and patience in bothering to read further and click over to something else.
I also disagree that he actually “chipped away” at anything. His silly positions sure didn’t score him any points and he failed pretty much all of his meaningless arguments. It was a fruitless and meaningless exercise from the get-go and just left an annoying mess of irrelevant and useless clutter and generated a lot of ill will.
I mean really, his whole argument is “hey guys, there is a whole cottege industry of sewer level smears that you aren’t covering! ZOMG! Why won’t you love it like I do?!? Eleventy!!!”
To which our responses pretty much came down to: “Yep. Aware of it. *barf* Pure nonsense filth. No interest and not a good fit for here. Also, all of it is really old news, long past its expiration date. To the extent that it needed any mention back then, it received probably more coverage than it deserved….”
That pretty much sums up the extent of it. So yeah, a meaningless exchange that went nowhere. I mean really, after saying it several times, what more was worth being said?
I’ve decided that I will not click onto his site and dignify it with traffic clicks. He’s a desperate and obscure kook who doesn’t merit the attention.
Your short write-up and links explaining crank Lysander Spooner as a reference was far more interesting in those few paragraphs that Mr. Olsen ever was or ever will be.
The afterbirthers are a joke. About you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAjORAflVk
And as I wrote in the earlier thread SO WHAT if Obama used drugs and was even convicted for possession (which he wasn’t)?
If he’s been elected, he’s the President, end of story. After that, I’ll judge him on his performance, not what he did 15 or 20 years ago.
It’s a completely moronic point.
So Scott is saying that he lied to RC and had no intention of showing up. Having admitted that he is a liar, why should we believe him that he never intended to show up?
DUH.
In other words was he lying then or is he lying now and why would I care?
Could be both, and you shouldn’t.
That’s what I am playing in the Bernadine pool. 😆
Scott really punked us now. he has up Tracy’s video and a page called “Fogbow.us”. http://www.washingtonamerica.com/TheFogBow.html His other great work is just the results of a Google search for “fogbow obots”.
You would need be talking truth, then. But, as it turns out, the only value your childish exercises will ever have is if you learn something. Don’t start trying to school people before you learn something yourself. That is the banal truth that matters.
[my emphasis added]
And he’s saying other folks should act like adults? Maybe I should just ban anyone that says “Dr. Con” outright.
In Memoriam to Trolls Gone By:
“A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.” – Dr. Seuss
What does it take to earn an ‘ilk’ badge? Are there secret handshakes and decoder rings? Encryption keys serve nicely as rings, but handshakes might be tough in a written forum, passcodes will have to do. Please tell me when I can expect the ultimately swag, the 3D X-ray specs that allow one to see what that PDF really says. I understand these are only entrusted to the inner circle.
Besides, this is precisely why the Founders stated that a President could only be Impeached for HIGH Crimes and Misdemeanors. They plainly didn’t mean a sitting President could be Impeached for jaywalking or smoking something that was, in fact, legal at the time, even if it isn’t now.
Although it should be.
Please don’t forget Cheney’s two DUIs…
I said at the beginning Rowena was a man.
Apparently, Mario has decided to come out of retirement.
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/02/attorney-mario-apuzzo-of-jamesburg-nj.html
This should be good.
So has Phil Berg: http://ujsportal.pacourts.us/docketsheets/CommonwealthCourtReport.aspx?docketNumber=186%20MD%202012
And here they are:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/dick-cheneys-youthful-indiscretions
Bush has one DUI; Cheney has two DWIs. DUI is a misdemeanor; DWI is a felony.
Canada will not admit anyone with a misdemeanor conviction. They made an exception for Shrub and his sidekick. Israel will admit with a felony conviction, as long as you are Jewish or Don King. King also gets invited to Bat Mitzvahs:
http://whyihatedc.blogspot.com/2003/06/when-aol-was-god-big-feature-story-on.html
and
http://blackchristiannews.com/news/2009/05/don-king-says-i-love-israel-and-the-jewish-people.html
Yeah, that seems to be quite a clue that one has come here only desiring to start fights…
LOL! Good.
Then again, not much of a surprise here. Mario has always been on Kerchner’s dime…
LOL! That should be a hoot!
From everything I had read before, PA is one of the states with the least amount of reason for these types of frivolous ballot challenges to succeed. So of course, they’re throwing their money at it full bore… LMAO!
I love the part where some muppet over there spews that Mario the Putz should stand in not as an attorney but as an, and I quote “EXPERT CONSTITUTIONAL WITNESS “.
H’mm lets see, when you go to court and want to be placed on the stand as an expert witness, I’m wondering if the court will take his blatant BS and meanderings on a censored, self published blog as evidence of being an “EXPERT CONSTITUTIONAL WITNESS”.
I kinda thing the Daubert/Frye standards will be a little higher than that somehow….. 😎
Yeah, even Mario is aware that would be the quickest way for him to have his law license revoked…
Actually, I just learned about Cheney’s two DUIs. It’s Why I Come Here™.