Pardon me for asking, but in real life, what kind of person *is* a troll?

Or they just think it's funny.

unlike some raging assholes.

http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/TypeEight.asp

I think they're just individuals who have a hard time connecting with other human beings on any genuine level, so feel the need to construct this... exaggerated personna. This, combined with a general lack of empathy for others (unable to see the effects on others of their "bit of fun").

lol pop psychology

-- Dom Passantino (juror8@gm

I've met a few people off the internet now, all of them were exactly the way I expected them to be from their manner online.

-- Norman Phay (vietgrov...), December 21st, 2006.

i've met a few and... i kind of don't expect them to be like on the net! so it sort of works out. and tbh only rjg is anything like his online persona (and spookily so).

xpost

"You a troll"
"I no a troll, you a troll"

continue for 1000 posts

sort of thing.

Hahaha, yes. I was going to say a better qn would be what sort of person *is* a troll-enabler, but then I thought about how much I don't give a fuck. You put it better.

on one of the last big n*d* sp*ck threads, "I shoved a wine cork up my left nostril and really fucked up my nose", I alluded to some troll guy who got an entire mail list shut down and the archives deleted from the list owner's server. The guy self-googled, found the thread and now sends me regular hate-mail about it! Based on this, the answer to the original question would be "a nutter".

haha i know right -- i haven't met any locals here either!

I suspect I've done a lot of this on ILX, simply by not recognising bait for what it is, and rising to it.

How is Grout a troll enabler, though? By asking questions so simple or simplistic that they cannot be taken at face value?

haha, I can just imagine "No we don't use a designer called Mrs Enrique and are you sure her hubby's first name is Temporary?"

(Oh, BTW, MarkH, since you were asking sede vacante = stevem now)

are we making a distinction between a troll-enabler and a troll-encourager? Coz I have definitely been a troll-encourager back in the day with that b3cky luc4s. I thought "if this person wants war then she's got it" and duelled with her on a thread for the best part of a day. She got more and more ludicrously offensive making all sorts of outlandish claims about how she had the IT skills to sabotage my blog and I thought "Yeah, right. Bring it on!"

Thanks for the new stevedentity, Kate. Sounds a bit LATING to me.

We're all different IRL!

From time to time, soe self reflection is a good thing.

I dont *think* I've made enemies here, and don't have a high enough profile to be that well known.

I do post with my real name, as a mark of honesty. That's not a reflection on those of you who do not, I know there are many reasons why you might not want to.

-- C J (CJ_The_Unruly@ho

Wrote deranged letters in green-ink to local newspapers, maybe?

Honestly Mr Grout, you should be on the stage!

I suppose a lot of it is to do with wanting or enjoying attention. I'm quite an outgoing fule and have never made any secret of the fact I like bantering back and forth with folk and am not shy in the attention-seeking stakes, but I don't think negative attention via arguments sounds like much fun. Other people don't feel that way, obv. Each to their own though.

I hope I don't deliberately wind people up or upset them, because that's never been my intention. I'm only here for the craic. And the free beer on Hawaiian Shirt Fridays.

I don't think Grout is a troll at all, though he may be perceived as one. He's more like a big, enthuasistic puppy that comes bounding in, full of energy, and just genuinely wants to have a good time, and everyone else to have a good time. And other people view that as destructive, when there's no malice there, just boisterous high spirits.

Some people are just wind-up artists, it's that sense of trying to get a rise out of others - either for pure puerile enjoyment, or to create "dialogue" or "challenge people's notions" etc. (the former Calum the latter Momus)

Some people are genuinely malicious - those are the ones that I find hardest to understand. Their intention is clearly to hurt, or "score points" off imagined or perceived enemies. They'd be writing letters to the council or the local paper if they didn't have the internet.

And then there are people like your N*de Sp*cks and your Marissas who are actually genuinely mentally ill, and I don't think they ever realise or understand what it is that is going on to get them into the messes they find themselves in, until it's too late. Then they perceive themselves as being attacked, and freak out.

We're not, either. I've had the pleasure of socialising with both Dom and Lex at FAPs and they are both fine and splendid fellows. You really ought to come to one sometime.

I think I'd be a little taken aback if I were considered troll-y. It's certainly not my intention.

i don't understand these ones either, because i find it hard to believe anyone could be hurt by an internet thing! they don't achieve their desired aim, so...it all seems a bit pointless innit. it seems odd when they are (apparently) nice in real life too, like when matt & gareth were trying to convince me that i should drag myself south of the river for the hstencil fap.

(Gah, look at me, I'm even categorising trolls.)

I know I can be given to bouts of Type 4 behaviour, but I've got better at containing them over the past year or so. Still not perfect, but working on it.

I am really surprised to hear this from the Lex who always struck me as a quite cerebral person and that comes across as really flip. The fact is that people can be hurt by *anything* people say or do to them in *any* medium. That's what it is to be human - it is part of our essence. The salient thing about the playground chant "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is how breathtakingly false it is.

Indeed, Mark - it was just a horrible period in my life, full stop, not that that's an excuse for some of the rubbish I came out with at the time.

That whole Denise Lambert period is a very strong argument for not republishing the old ILx threads on nu-ILx.

The Lex, Type 2b. I think a lot of people don't quite catch his playfulness.

Marcello, type 4 without a doubt and I'm not even going into it for fear of provoking it.

it wasn't very good, but just a bit of fun

i only really think of internet communication as real when it's with people i know in real life, or at least have some sort of understanding of who they are as a real life person. there are these weird types like hstencil and hoosteen around though who continually post these vaguely insulting things, and it's like...eh? who ARE you? why on earth did you bother? i don't know you, i don't care &c.

and then there are all the people who try to 'zing' with pictures! who on earth bothers with images on ilx?

Even Phil/Esteban would doubtless be a very nice bloke if our paths ever crossed (I really ought to have remembered the Doomie precedent - once you've met them, then you get it).

What was Type 4 again? *looks up rest of thread*

Absolutely on the money.

People who say "how can you possibly be hurt by something said ON THE INTERWEB" are as off the money as people who would claim "how can you possibly be hurt by anything someone says to you on the telephone?"

noodlevague OTM.

(def: something quite removed from yr real name as opposed to something quite close to it)

it's like if someone random stranger phones you up and say "hi you're a cunt!" and then hangs up, you just have to laugh innit.

I am not participating in the backtracking and denial all over this thread or trying to "zing" anyone. Just stating my opinions and experiences, like I said. And now I'm done.

This one time he wanted to kill Tori Amos' daughter :(

OTM. I have the worst hoax caller ever, he can't even get my name right, but he brings some sunshine and light into my life.

Nobody got The Departure's back :(

http://cdbaby.name/r/o/royal72.jpg

well do you? I'm not so sure.
I'd probably think "Who is this?"
"Why are they doing it?"
"Is it a mate trying to be funny?"
"Is it a mate whose drunk?"
"Whose voice does that sound like?"
"What have I done recently that might have offended someone?"

&c

http://www.dreamzrreal.com/graphics/Industry-Co-Sign-2_f.jpg

xposts

(and Merry Christmas!)

yeah, you go through all those thoughts, then, it's like, well, i dunno who it is, or what it's for, so, erm, i'll think about it next time when they try harder.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ooh please do!

OTM

I am uncategorizablez.

You are a kitten of the genus Panthera

Is it me or has kate done nothing but troll on this thread?

I have to agree with this a bit but a thread like this is very personal! There's a difference between stating something dispassionately than getting the dig in! That said I can see she has suffered more from trolls than most people on ILX so I'd give her a break and allow the spleen to be vented rather than rekindle past history as some people on this thread seem determined to do.

The fact that they have managed this is a credit to you all.

(I'm making myself poorly now.)

lol you're new here

teh_kit, I have met you IRL, but I was very drunk so in no way qualified to pass comment. You don't seem terribly different to how you do on here (this is a Good Thing, btw).

I'm a cantankerous old git in real life, so I think I pretty much come across here as an honest representation of reality.

http://www.users.bigpond.com/kceg/artimages/wasteland.jpg

crosspost

yeah but you hate christmas, ya miserable cnut.

gis for wasteland, i think.

Americans are generally superior to us in every single way. Esp. after kicking our asses in the war.

In ur thread etc.

No one remembers Radio TipTop except me :-(

lionel blair or liza goddard?

1.
1. To fish for by trailing a baited line from behind a slowly moving boat.
2. To fish in by trailing a baited line: troll the lake for bass.
3. To trail (a baited line) in fishing.
4. To sing in succession the parts of (a round, for example).
5. To sing heartily: troll a carol.
2. Slang To patrol (an area) in search for someone or something: "[Criminals] troll bus stations for young runaways" (Pete Axthelm).
3. Music
1. To sing in succession the parts of (a round, for example).
2. To sing heartily: troll a carol.
4. To roll or revolve.

This thread is far too boring and tedious for so great an end.

xpost

Ouch.

The easiest way for me to imagine a troll mentality is to imagine myself posting to some forum I felt really contemptuous of, like conservative message boards or Hipinion -- the style would come pretty naturally, I think. The question becomes why anyone would want to devote lots of time and energy to winding up and messing with people on boards he felt contemtpuous of, rather than finding one he liked. And I can imagine a few pretty juvenile reasons: (a) still thinking you're so clever that anyone who disagrees with you is amusingly dumb, (b) thinking of other figures on the internet as amusing playtoys and not actual people out there somewhere, (c) having some big single-issue resentment where you feel like someone else's orthodoxy or privilege is keeping you down, or wanting to take revenge over the feeling that you've been barred from someone else's discourse (just like you were once ostracized in the middle-school cafeteria)*, or, yeah, (d) just being the kind of person who's frustrated or angry or drawn to that kind of conflict.

(* Ultimate in real-life trolling = school shootings??)

Marcello, please elaborate; I'd think the analogy is pretty straightforward. Feeling barred from discourse --> taking grandiose revenge on participants in discourse = kind of a similar dynamic.

Calum's first few posts to ILM were actually about music. Unfortunately, they were so ridiculous -- mostly claiming that forgotten Britpop bands were the peak of recorded music, and defending that position solely by noting that American bands suck (by which he meant Weezer and Red Hot Chili Peppers) -- that he was basically laughed off. It was at some point during or after those arguments that he turned into a real troll.

hasn't ILM always been the sort of place where naive, cliched or somehow 'conventional' opinions would be mocked in this way tho? in my personal experience, ILM's cynical reputation always preceded itself. But this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

though I am guilty of the second part of this statement myself, not thinking this is "real" as I probably should.

thinking of other figures on the internet as amusing playtoys and not actual people out there somewhere,

Likewise "Emo" once meant one particular thing: http://www.fourfa.com/history.htm but now means many: http://www.fourfa.com/styles/index.htm - even beyond what is listed there; encompassing choadish NME pop punk shit! Even the US/UK divide on the term is pretty small compared to the difference between the original and current meanings in the united states.

has anyone seen NITSUH and MOMUS together? Photos? or are they a regular JANUS?

phew, because i thought that was exactly what nabisco was saying.

If you ever had the pleasure of watching MUSE fans discover your favorite band, you would stop feeling like these people's feelings matter.

xpost, or MUSE?

(x-post I haven't seen Momus post here (sandbox) at all?)

-- temporary enrique (miltonpinsk...), December 21st, 2006.

I guess what I mean here is that Nabisco's thoughts that trolling leads to school shootings are way off base and I don't think ever happen in real life, and have no basis in fact.

PLEASE TO ADD TINY IMAGE OF KEN C DANCING!!!!

deliberately confrontational intro

(* Ultimate in real-life trolling = school shootings??)

deliberately provocative/idiotic assertion

You'd think anyone with a minimum fourth-grade reading level could tell the difference between "similar dynamic" and "leads to."

characteristic condescending sneer

Classical for a troll.

XPOST

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/NabiscoOTM.jpg

(xpost to Marcello)

bai

80-90% untrue in my personal experience

xxxpost

97% true in my experience with meeting ILXors. (Sample size: 7)

ok what i really meant was that the vast majority of people who act like cunts online do not really do so offline. but 80-90% of people on ilx are both okay online and in person. sorry 4 confusion.

Hahaha interesting metaphor!

(P.S. "frustration with discourse" does not make one a troll, but I think the decision to try and disrupt that discourse, or try to make the people engaged in it miserable, or somehow try to sabotage or destroy the place where that discourse takes place ... that's where it becomes trollish, right? At some point people give up on penetrating the discourse directly and just start, you know, bitterly lobbing bombs into it, bombs that have nothing to do with the ideas in question, and are just a kind of disruption/sabotage/revenge.)

(P.P.S. The "orders of magnitude" difference should be taken as obvious and given in the analogy I proposed there. And I suggested schools as an example because (a) they're a closed small social system, like an individual message board, plus (b) the mentality of trolling seems a pretty juvenile.)

Oh, and I finally met a longstanding online sparring partner, Nitsuh Ebebe of Pitchfork (Nabisco is his online moniker), with whom I've recently crossed swords over the legacy of Betty Friedan and Bush's Middle East plans. I'm hoping we can do dinner soon, because our differences are very small ones.

Re: "The Real Dirty Vicar" = I probably haven't been paying close enough attention, but I thought that he called himself Dirty Vicar, and then when he was informed that there was already a Dirty Vicar who sometimes posted to this board, he changed his name, somewhat cheekily, to The Real Dirty Vicar. I haven't noticed any malice in his posts.

i think so yes

Nabisco, does it ever get tiring to be so consistently on the money all the time? Like, doesn't your change pocket ever get frayed? ;-)

in a nutshell! should be engraved all over the internet, really, just to remind some people

http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/news/images/0505/Wasteland.jpg

I can't tell if you're trying to be funny and failing, or trying to be clueless and succeeding.

The meme bored office workers seems to be the elephant in this thread's sitting room.

i don't act the same way in real life as i do online because typing is a different method of communication. it's harder to XPOST and still follow a decent conversation for a start, and it's harder for people to GET things sometimes in speech.

if not i think Marcello may be the biggest troll in ILX history, in the end. countless unconstructive, unreasonable, dismissive and indeed abusive remarks over the years. and to a number of different people.

no doubt this will be considered trolling by him also. but it is actually the truth.

i think that's where 'but he's fine in person' holds no truck, for me.

King Troll.

Yes, huge.

conversation skills lol

That's kinda real life, innit?

i have never banned anything 'awesome'.

if not i think Steve may be the biggest troll in recent ILX history, in the end. countless unconstructive, unreasonable, dismissive and indeed abusive remarks over the last few months. and to a number of different people.

no doubt this will be considered trolling by him also. but it is actually the truth.

whether 'but he's fine in person' holds any truck here i am not qualified to comment since he manfully avoids any direct communication with me in real life situations, so it is difficult to establish the basis for his equivocal assertion.

particularly as i get on perfectly well with ilxors in real life except for the two who noticeably and continually make the loudest noises on ilx. no doubt they do so thinking that the squeakiest wheel gets the oil.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/screwtroll.jpg

crosspost

I think that Nabisco is also getting at something else important - my dichotomy of trolling was based on ideas of "intent" which you can never accurately judge - some people are not even aware of their own intents, let alone that of others.

But that thing where trolling crosses the line and becomes intrusive, and actually becomes a way of stiffling discourse instead of participating in it... Hrmmm. It's all very interesting food for thought.

There are some people who are able to disagree without making a personal issue or a last stand or whatever out of it. And there are some people that the moment you see them turn up on a thread, you know, that's it, it's time to stop participating or sometimes even reading.

That said, I'm sure there are some people who feel that way about me. :;shrugs::

"Obscene" speech is "unprotected" speech as ruled by the Supreme Court. "Unprotected speech," means speech that does not enjoy First Amendment protection and may even be criminal to express.

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it . . . "[1]

This quote, and the intent behind it, is well known as summarizing the irony and difficulty in trying to define obscenity. For at least fifty years, the Supreme Court has been struggling with defining what speech is "obscene".

It is surprising that the difficulty in defining obscenity in our history did not fully begin until the mid-1900s. Supreme Court Justice Brennan, who served from 1956 to 1990, who was one of the great, and often liberal, legal minds of the 20th century, attempted repeatedly to define obscenity. The task was much more daunting than he had anticipated.

Background

The book The Brethren[2], by Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, outlines the behind-the-scenes battles of the Supreme Court during the 1960's and 1970's and provides an interesting background to the obscenity cases decided during that period. The most important case during that time was Miller v. California, which still defines obscenity today.

The Brethren describes Supreme Court "movie day" – when the law clerks and the Justices sat down to eat popcorn and see the porn films for the cases awaiting decisions. Justice Hugo Black, who served from 1937 to 1971, always refused Movie Day by saying "if I want to go see that film, I should pay my money." Justice Black and Justice William Douglas, who served from 1939 to 1975, at the time were the only two Justices who believed that speech should be entirely free of restrictions.

According to The Brethren, the law clerks that drafted the Justices' opinions created the following short hand for how their bosses decided if material was obscene:

Justice Byron White's Definition: "no erect penises, no intercourse, no oral or anal sodomy. For White, no erections and no insertions equaled no obscenity."

Justice Brennan's Definition, The Limp Dick Test: "no erections. He was willing to accept penetration as long as the pictures passed what his clerks referred to as the 'limp dick' standard. Oral sex was tolerable if there was no erection."

Justice Stewart's Definition, The Casablanca Test: " . . . I know it [obscenity/pornography] when I see it." In Casablanca, as a Navy lieutenant in World War II and watch officer for his ship, Stewart had seen his men bring back locally produced pornography. He knew the difference between that hardest of hard core and much of what came to the Court. He called it his 'Casablanca Test'."

These were the opinions of the more liberal Justices.

The First Definition

In 1957, Brennan crafted the first Supreme Court legal definition of obscenity in the case of Roth v. United States. Although indirectly addressed in the law to this point, Roth's formal legal holding on pornography was a case of first impression for the US Supreme Court. Brennan held that the First Amendment did not protect obscene materials.

The definition of obscenity set forth in Roth was:

Speech which " . . . to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest" and which is "utterly without redeeming social importance..."

By 1964, lower courts had misapplied the Roth standard resulting in many cases for Court review. Thus, the Court tried to clarify this standard by adding another requirement for obscenity in later opinions – that the material goes "substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation." The Court also clarified that the "community" referred to in the definition was as the national, not local, community. This clarification resulted in a more liberal definition of obscenity going forward.

The Second and Current Definition

The tide turned more conservatively on free speech and sex when two liberal elements – Chief Justice Earl Warren, an Eisenhower appointee, resigned in 1969 and Black, a Roosevelt appointee, resigned in 1971. President Nixon appointed two replacements, Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice William Rehnquist, along with two other appointees Justice Harry Blackmum and Justice Lewis Powell. With the arrival of Rehnquist and Burger, the Court opinions on obscenity became more conservative.

In the summer of 1973, the Court decided a group of pornography/obscenity cases that set the standards for the future of pornography. In his Dissent in one of these cases, Justice Brennan wearily admitted:

"Our experience since Roth requires us not only to abandon the effort to pick out obscene materials on a case-by-case basis, but also to reconsider a fundamental postulate of Roth: that there exists a definable class of sexually oriented expression that may be suppressed by the Federal and State Governments. Assuming that such a class of expression does in fact exist, I am forced to conclude that the concept of 'obscenity' cannot be defined with sufficient specificity and clarity to provide fair notice to persons who create and distribute sexually oriented materials, to prevent substantial erosion of protected speech as a byproduct of the attempt to suppress unprotected speech, and to avoid very costly institutional harms."[3]

Unfortunately, this realization came too late and without support from the majority of the Court.

Thus, in 1973, in Miller v. California, Justice Burger announced the second definition of obscenity - the majority position of the Court, and the definition, which, more or less, is still in effect today. It is as follows:

"(a) whether the 'average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and

(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

This holding specifically replaced the old test and also held that community standards could be local rather than national. This change swung the pendulum back toward a more conservative definition of "obscenity" by local, some times rural communities.

As many had complained that these rulings were so vague that they were impossible to comply by those trying to obey the law, the Court set forth examples of what was "hard core", or that which the Court considered obscene and illegal. The Court's list of illegal acts was as follows:

"(a) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated.

(b) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals."[4]

Clarifications and Today's Definition

Since Miller, the Court has clarified and explained aspects of the Miller standard:

Jurors are to apply the standards of the area "from which he comes for making the required " decision as the "community standards" for obscenity; [5]

"[A]ppeals to the prurient interest" means that which appeals to "shameful or morbid interests" in sex, but not that which incites normal lust [6] and includes materials designed for and primarily disseminated to a deviant sexual group (for example, sadists) which appeals to the prurient interests of that group; [7]

"[A]verage person " includes both sensitive and insensitive adult persons, but does not include children; [8]

Serious artistic, political, or scientific value, using a national standard, is required for a finding that something is not obscene and a finding of some artistic, political or scientific value does not preclude a finding that a work is obscene.[9]

Additionally the Court has created a sort of middle category of materials – "indecent" materials that are protected speech. Indecent materials are defined as those which show "nonconformance with accepted standards of morality."[10] After reviewing the above, most persons, including lawyers, remain confused about what is and is not legally permissible.

The Definition of Child Pornography

In New York v. Ferber in 1982, the Court held that "the States are entitled to greater leeway in the regulation of pornographic depictions of children" because:

"It is evident beyond the need for elaboration that a State's interest in 'safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor' is 'compelling'" and therefore that narrowly tailored government interests may restrict such speech as stated in the initial definitions of restricted speech above.

"The distribution of photographs and films depicting sexual activity by juveniles is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children in at least two ways. First the materials produced are a permanent record of the children's participation and the harm to the child is exacerbated by their circulation. Second, the distribution network for child pornography must be closed if the production of material which requires the sexual exploitation of children is to be effectively controlled."

"The advertising and selling of child pornography provide an economic motive for and are thus an integral part of the production of such materials, an activity illegal through the Nation."

"The value of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged in lewd sexual conduct is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis."

"Recognizing and classifying child pornography as a category of material outside the protection of the First Amendment is not incompatible with our earlier decisions"

The Court then declared a more conservative Miller standard applicable for child pornography:

"A trier of fact need not find that the material appeals to the prurient interest of the average person; it is not required that sexual conduct portrayed be done so in a patently offensive manner; and the material at issue need not be considered as a whole."

Conclusion

What persons in the sex industry typically fail to understand is how conservative the legal standards for pornography are and how vulnerable to prosecution they truly are due to these vagaries. One reading of the personal obscenity tests of the liberal justices of the past makes that clear.

What the Miller test outlines is the outer most limits on banning sexual speech. Thus, nearly all legislation at the both state and federal level, simply copies the Miller test into its language since substitution of even a single word can result in the law being held unconstitutional. The result is that application of the Miller test – what "prurient", "patently offensive", or having "social, artistic or scientific value" is, and what the local standard are for such decisions - rests squarely in the hands of the juries of each state. In the end, the Court concluded that this decision was one that must be made by each state, not the Supreme Court.

FOOTNOTES

1 Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964)

2 The Brethren, Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, (Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 193-200.

3 Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 103 (1973)

4 Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24-25 (1973)

5 Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 105 (1974)

6 Brockett v. Spokan Arcades Inc., 472 U.S. 491 (1985)

7 Mishkin v. New York, 383 U.S. 502 (1966)

8 Pinkus v. United States, 436 U.S. 293, 298-299 (1978)

9 Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497 (1987)

10 FCC v. Pacifica, 438 U.S. 726, 741 (1978)

xposts

some people are not even aware of their own intents, let alone that of others.

More people need to realize this! KUDOS.

the people who spend their lives reverting wikipedia vs. Dom/forks/esteban/me

Stevem, as so often, OTM.

.... Being one of the first MP3 blogs to be principally written by a blood-drenched human thigh bone, Fluxblog has featured....

Roffle. 10/10

manfully? and why do you think i prefer to avoid you? (answer below)

particularly as i get on perfectly well with ilxors in real life

i think the main reason for this is that you haven't been quite as scathing or snarky about them on ILX as you have towards me over the last couple of years so there's no beef obstacle (edit: i'm glad i posted this if only for 'beef obstacle'). iirc it all started when i criticised you for your behaviour on some thread, not being used to your 'persona' or wise enough to just let people be as cuntish as they wanna be and it must've escalated from there. i will criticise if i think it's warranted and i don't abuse unless abused but you seem to operate the other way round and expect everyone to tolerate it. of course the smart thing to do would've been to just ignore it all but i'm nearly as stubborn as you are so can't 'forgive' as it were.

im not being a sycophant, don't even necessarily think nabs is otm here, but it gets really boring when people just read shit wrong and then go on about it for ever.

PS jw i thought *you* were doing the reverting of the fluxblog zings on the ilx wiki page?

just popping in to say this line is great

let's just say it solidified an already established precedent.

Sorry, I'm not picking on you, JW, but that description of you and/or troll buddy registering other people's names - honestly, what do you *get* out of that?

Maybe this is because I'm a middle aged middle class vaguely conservative woman, and I've never been a teenage boy, but what is the joy in it?

Is it like the thing of tagging, of writing your name in the drying cement? Do you find some amusement in realising that you are creating a mess that some other poor sod will have to clean up?

This is honestly not trolling, I really would like to know what the appeal is. Obviously there is some, or people wouldn't waste their time doing it. What is it?

(the weird thing is, with all this "calm down"ing and crap, I've not actually lost my temper or even my cool once while reading this thread. Which is odd, for me.)

Perhaps they can go off and make some hay and then we'll all be happier.

Talk about trolling!

One fundamental reason why I don't troll (beyond 'cannot be arsed' and 'frankly it never occurred to me') is that I don't want people to dislike me, whether they meet me in person or online. In theory I understand the 'negative attention is still attention' theory of trolling-to-get-noticed, but it's pretty foreign to my way of thinking, as is the 'venting misplaced aggression at world left over from past injustices' idea. I suppose I sound disingenuous, or I-am-too-nice-to-understand-mean-people, but it's mostly just that the thought of playing the fool in the middle of a group of mild acquaintances (which is what most of ilx are to me (excepting london-ilx all of whom I hate many of whom I consider good friends)) kind of fills me with revulsion and shame-by-association. I'm pretty awkward around anyone who makes a fool of themselves on the internet (whether intentionally trolling or not), the way I'm awkward around people who make fools of themselves under any other circumstances.

So every time I try to imagine how internet-trolls are in real life, I just get the sense that they must be much better than me at behaving differently in different social situations; or at least at maintaining the belief that 'the internet is different from face-to-face life'. (or alternately they are socially bad all of the time and just reserve the egregious worst of it for the internet where there's less fear of reprisal).

Perhaps they he can go off and make some hay and then we'll all be happier.

Fixed that for you, no thanks needed.

I don't understand why you keep hanging around threads you don't like either (xpost).

Perhaps they can go off and make some hay and then we'll all be happier.

Why not actually address my comment properly? Respond with explanation?

I suppose diverting the scrutiny onto others IS easier...

hell even my other ilx nemesis has got ma back

it's been one of those days

ding ding ding!

look, everyone is "nicer" in real life, ilx is a rough town. even the most level headed and non-trolly types will fucking swear at each other! over very little!

Anyway, pretty much everyone accusing people of being trolls on this thread has been pretty abusive at some point.
xpost
Sorry, I'm not picking on you, JW, but that description of you and/or troll buddy registering other people's names - honestly, what do you *get* out of that?
*I* only registered one and I haven't had a chance to use it. As far as what I'd get out of it; I would hope I could perform some work of magic akin to making people suspect that Tuomas wasn't Tuomas anymore, or posting a link to purchase a Zune with a fake affiliate id to set off ILX's hysterical morans would be amazing.

Granted, I haven't done anything funny lately that you know of, but I really like the idea of using the ambiguity of identity on the internet for possible comedic confusion. I know I've "played" around this before to slag on people who I had problems with, but I've been pretty good at not getting into shitfests lately.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/Quintesson.jpg

SHOCK REVELATIONS IN STORE

Top ten rundown U+K.

OK, thanks for explaining that. It makes more sense to me now. (And a lot more enjoyable than a shitfest on either of our parts!) Identity confusion has been a stock of comedy since Shakespears's day.

It's just a bit difficult seeing the humour when it's you getting the hassle, I guess.

jw- i like the cut of yr jib. A databasey website may be better, tbh, if only to list the lengthy stream of endeavours Wikipedia now attributes to Trinidad and Tobago international Ricky Shakes.

Or maybe someone else had already registered as the Dirty Vicar, and posted as such on some sport thread, so the original Dirty Vicar had to register as something else, perhaps with a name asserting his authenticity and proclaiming his realness.

I kind of like the idea of a Turing-style identity test. What would make you think that I was the person who posted on old ILX as DV? Why do you think I am not?

And if jaymc beat it, would he be Dirty Vicar?

Is this is the Kate St. Claire book in this series:

http://www.spaceshipnofuture.org/pix/fhblog/yads.jpg

I thought you were not because I honestly hadn't seen you post in a while.

-- Fat Lady Wrestler (noodlevagu...), December 21st, 2006.

make you sikh, doesn't it

It didn't work for the Esteban Buttez character, son.

That took literally 1 minute.

Everyone OTM!

"God bless us, every one."

(See: Dom Passantino) is the cherry on top of this one!

Ha ha ha ha ha

I also changed it to read "Gerald Sindstadt", which isn't particularly funny, but then I got curious and clicked on the link to see if his edit history was full of people inserting references to him getting fired for wanking in a gay cinema. Turns out his edit history is entirely dominated by Robin Carmody, whose profile still contains a vandalised reference to Hen Fap. It's a small pretend encylopedia out there.

"OBIE TRICE" is definitely the best one ever, for the sheer unexpectgedness of seeing that. Steve otm also, although I have not always entirely adhered to this.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y148/Juror8/neverforget.jpg

okay, that is funny.

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/9642/rapst9.jpg

You're right - it's not just that I don't think it's funny. It's that I can't conceive of the mental viewpoint that would find it funny.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/114/292435446_c75e435831.jpg

But it's more like, to find these things funny would require me to take on a mental viewpoint which is so alien to me that I just can't get my head around the humour at all.

LOL.

Didn't the individual who (I thought unfairly) deleted the entry for a certain UK band turn out to be a 15yo schoolkid from Brisbane w/a string of complaints as long as yr arm about unfair rapid article deletions on his talk page?

You can read the words and look at the situations, but unless you understand the mindview behind it, they simply aren't "funny".

(Though I do actually think that funniest things are simply not explicable - that certain air of utter surrealism and unexpectedness.)

x-post

If you can't see what's funny about confounding expectations via surrealism then dog help you.

damn polite britishers

Yes, it's a continuum with culture jamming at one end and WE WANT HEN FAP at the other, but it's like the difference between graffiti art and mindless tagging like a dog marking its territory. Which is art, and which is vandalism? Which is humour, and which is just vandalism?

I don't really understand how mindless vandalism, repeating catchphrases one didn't even come up with ... how that translates into humour in any universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Creole_and_the_Coconuts

do ctrl + f for "hen fap", and I must admit, I laffed. It's the incongruousness of it, hidden in there where most ppl won't even notice it/

It is certainly not mindless to the person tagging. There is a valid reason for them to be doing so (as well for the dog.) I think vandalism can be seen as relative here.

altho i also agree with pashmina's point re incongruousness of placement

is there anything wrong with this tho? human behaviour is fascinating - esp. on the internet.

Workday over. Going home. ::insert comedy catchphrase::

http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Samples/003.4/s7s.JPG

I, by no means advocate disrupting wikipedia in a permanent sense, and I think the comments on the appeal of wikipedia vandalism are OTM here. If you had read the edit history for Israel-related stuff as the events unfolded this summer, it was a very clear way to see all aspects of the zeitgeist.

There's been a number of fairly high profile ILX related wikipedia edits than have gone unnoticed and gained credibility over the past year. Some of them are pretty easily refuted, but there's a sense of wonder in thinking that someone in LA may be crate digging for a collaboration between a legendary guitarist and a man who only existed as an injoke ysi. Or that an extreme sport founder is actually a twee office drone in California. Why do we have to chronicle reality as if it actually is objective? It makes the world more amazing to me.

I've perpetuated a pretty funny YSI hoax on ILX, but I'd love to try a bigger one.

Now I can't find my list of funny edits to wikipedia and I wanted to share my gems with you. (My personal funny edits are almost only additive and easily refutable.) I've noticed a number of people who cleanup vandalism find it funny and use their cleanup as a method of appreciating the vandalism. It remains in the edit history, much like that Roman Graffti that ILX loved so much. Don't you think it'd be wonderful for some graduate student in Star Trek to write a thesis on Hen Fap?

He is a former Maxis employee, who was fired after secretly adding code into the game SimCopter, which would cause sprites of males in swimming trunks kissing each other to appear on certain dates. This was not discovered until after the game had been released.

still funny

^^best part of this thread

Alexis Petridis
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Alexis Petridish is the chief music writer, as well as a columnist on matters of male fashion, for UK newspaper The Guardian. He is also the "under 50s" music critic for GQ, and was final editor of now defunct music magazine Select. In his writing he has praised a wide variety of musical acts, such as Kasabian, Girls Aloud, and Ricky Shakes, writing: "I have seen the future of ant simulation video games, and his name is Ricky Shakes". Petridis is referenced by Nas in his song "Ether", with the line "Remember Jay when I got you in Select/ Back then not even Petridis give you respect/ So we went to Wagamama's instead/ Awesome chow mein".

Petridis is a regular contributor to the internet forum I Love Music, under the sobriquet "Louis Jagger".

(Probably not.)

Besides, how do they know that Nous voulons le fap de poule! wasn't a student slogan anyway...

YSI

link plz

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diplomats

You know, I just spent about 15 minutes fighting off the enormous temptation to delete every post on this thread and replace it with the words OBIE TRICE.

anyway thread was pretty fun!

Merry Christmas ILE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Crosby

-- masonic boom (kateotheremai...), December 21st, 2006.

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "takes one to know one." Aren't you a junkie in therapy on antidepressants or something?

Speaking of "not understanding," let me quote for you from my pal Jon "Wizard Is Hungry" Guy's old website where he quoted thusly, and I quote:

Advancement is a cultural condition in which an Advanced individual—i.e., a true genius—creates a piece of art that 99 percent of the population perceives to be bad. However, this is not because the work itself is flawed; this is because most consumers are not Advanced.Now, don’t assume this means that everything terrible is awesome, or vice versa; that contrarianism has no place in Advancement theory. The key to Advancement is that Advanced artists a) do not do what is expected of them but also b) do not do the opposite of what is expected of them. If an artist does the direct opposite of what is anticipated, he is classified as “overt” (more on this later). The bottom line is this: When a genius does something that appears idiotic, it does not necessarily mean he suddenly sucks. What it might mean is that he’s doing something you cannot understand, because he has Advanced beyond you.