The rules are changing, we are going to start showing the assholes the door

The best example I can think of is maporsche following Edgar to different threads, picking at him, and criticizing him for benign things that everyone else does.

I think the following and personal harassment part is a necessary component of trolling.

Setanta used to do it to me, but has stopped.

So I don’t come off as holier-than-thou, I used to troll Momma Angel like hot cakes.

By that definition, I might have a few trolls on my trail who follow me from thread to thread like little puppy dogs, voting down every post I make, regardless of content.

But they wouldn't really qualify as trolls, under your definition. The cowards never confront me or say a word to me, and a negative vote is no kind of "harassment," so....

Yeah, the down voting seems to be either just a cowardly little stab at trying to silence ideas they can’t countenance—or based on personal dislike of a poster. Heh. Those two things seem more related than they used to.

No I can't . It's not a term or concept I use. What I know about it I get from you. There are posters who pointedly disagree with me, and sometimes I find that annoying. However they have as much right to express their thoughts as do I, and occasionally I am forced to concede error on my part or a good insight on theirs. There are also posters who indulge only in name calling and various cartoon depictions without any elaboration of the rationale for their expressions. I usually give them little attention. Finally I have had the impression of t a few cases where individual posters have attempted to follow and harass other posters whom they appear to dislike for some reason. I find that a bit odd. This is a place for the exchange of written words and views. We don't really know the folks with whom we exchange them here. I can understand disagreement with those expressed views, but dislike and aggression appear pointless to me. I like you but I disagree with you on most things political.

9 times out of 10, calling somebody a "troll" is itself "trolling ," as defined by the poster's own standards.

I'll get back to you tonite or tomorrow. I'm calculating some stair stringers for a very odd situation (and for a very odd homeowner) and it is driving me bonkers. I might have to acknowledge that my 70 year old brain is getting even worse at some things it was never good at.

Ya know, until now, I've never even looked at the rules here. Why bother? Those things are alway vague, ambiguous, overbroad and virtually tailor-made for selective enforcement. I take it for a given that I will be banned from any forum, anywhere, if some admin doesn't like me.

I just looked. Just as I suspected:


Not surprisingly, no definition of "trolling" is given.



Yeah, that's what they all say, sho nuff.

trolling is where we keep te motors at a speed of less tha 1 knot and allow the bait to ride against the current.

It's a classic fishing technique not only from a sailboat.

That's a lie--you seem to be a legend in your own mind. If you post bullsh*t and people call bullsh*t, that doesn't mean that they're stalking you. If you start ranting about the Clintons again, as you have done here for fifteen years, in threads which are about your idol, Trump and not the Clijntons, I'll likely point it out again.

For all the assholes here who seem to think attempting to bait me is an indoor sport, I'll just point out that you make yourselves look like fools, and the more foolish in that you are not a part of my life, and you mean nothing to me. If you dropped dead at my feet, I'd experience a mild sense of annoyance at being obliged to step over the corpse.

To Walter and FM--it is rather ironically amusing that in a thread warning members about trolling, several people have shown up to trash the thread by trolling.

Set, I agree with you 100%.

Something lash wrote a few posts above was a revalation to me as to how she, and others see trolling.

It came to me that the closest I can describe it is by using the Spanish verb "soy vs. estoy"

Soy is a permanent condition. I am a woman. Estoy is temporary. I am hungry.

I view a troll as a "soy" type of thing. I think lash would say it can be soy or estoy.

I would never, if someone I knew in general here to be an okay person, call them a troll because (a) they disagree with me on a particular thing and persist in the arguement past the point where I give up. Or (b) is someone I just dislike or don't care for in general, even to the point of putting them on ignore.

Trolls are people who have shown up at some point and their entire MO is to just be an asshole.

Everyone can be an asshole sometimes. That doesn't make you a troll.

I just googled what the definition of a troll is, and I just shook my head. Like so many other things, the definition has become so broad as to be useless.

I found such gems as "5 types of trolls", "10 types of trolls", and the best...."100 types of trolls" Jesus wept.

I looked to see what the "100 types of trolls were", and yeah, basically it boils down to "I don't like what you said, or when you said it"

Someone, like lash did in a conversation I was trying to have with her, says she doesn't know why she feels a certain way, she just does, and I'm the troll because I question and challenge her to figure out why she does. Instead, she calls me names (a troll), which is part of her definition of a troll.

I gotta tell ya, it's got me flummoxed. Oh, and now I'm just pretending not to understand. Well, yeah, I guess I do understand some/alot of people want to just say vague stuff, it seems to me many times to maybe prove their existence?

In this way, I think someone like that poster "agent some number or another" is a troll. A harmless troll, but a troll. You know, the one that posts stuff like "Yes, I feel that way too", or "I agree, meatloaf sammiches are good" or "Just keep looking, you'll find your sould mate."

Someone, like Lash, but not restricted to her of course, simply sees a troll when the poster is making them uncomfortable, and they turn that into an accusation, or stalking, or name calling. It's easier for them that way.

I think this is an act of projection on your part. Passing references to you or your actions here constitute "baiting" only in your own mind. You are a smart guy with a lot of real knowledge, but your surly distemper hurts only yourself.

You made several assumptions —during two excessively lengthy posts —that I wasn’t interested in clarifying, primarily because your comments were so weird, I thought it was intentional.

I’m disappointed to see that you are now parading your assumptions with even more embellishment and attributing them to me.

That’s a good deal more dishonest than I thought you were.

I said none of that tripe, nor is it my opinion.

I believe the term "Troll", as it is being used here, has more to do with the mythical Scandinavian creatures than it does a well-known fishing technique.

As portrayed Trills were always disagreeable , argumentative and hypocritically jealous of their own prerogatives and assumed territory. A few names of frequent posters here come to mind, but they are not the ones to which the several critics were referring,

So....you're not making assumptions my comments were "weird", whatever that is? What comments, and what was weird about them? If you're going to throw something like that out there, you need to be able to explain yourself.

You don't like me, or someone asking you to explain yourself? Then stop saying things that would cause someone to ask you to do so.

As I explained previously, I'm wordy, my posts are sometimes lengthy, so what?

I believe you're not interested in clarifying because it would make you uncomfortable to, in that instance, admit that you do/did/say something, because it makes you feel good. What's weird about that?

No, it wasn't intentional. I asked several times, because I believed you were intentionally being advoidant, passive agreessive and unwilling to explain why you feel as you do.

It really doesn't feel kosher to think one can, in a forum or real life, just dump a comment like "I just feel that way" without being willing to say why. Right now, I can explain why I feel it isn't kosher.

Because of a lack of sense of fairness. You for instance, say something, especially something vague, and expect others, all others to just accept it. The reader has taken the time to read what you felt was important enough to write, but you don't feel you need to appreciate that time freely given, by making yourself more clearly understood. That's not fair. Yeah, I know lifes not fair. I don't expect it to be. But, that doesn't mean when given the opportunity, I won't say something about it.

What, so you've made no assumptions about what I asked, and said? It goes both ways.

You think I'm parading, embellishing? What exactly am I embellishing?

Parading? Oh come on. Really? Like no one could go look up the actual conversation if they wanted to? This is an open forum lash, one can't parade anything. It's already all out there.

Just for a moment, can you imagine how frustrating it is to ask a direct question, and to get back an answer of "I don't know why I feel that way, I just do"?
Said none of what tripe? Can you be specfic? All I have quoted you as saying is that you can't explain why you said, or feel something.

Now with more name calling toward me? Dishonest? I "parade" and "embellish"

Why would I care if you are disappointed with me? That belongs to you.
No more disappointed than I am that someone can't explain why they said something. However, that disappointed isn't directed at you, but at the fact there are just so many people who want to be able to say something vague, and get some negative emotion when asked to explain themselves.

That's actually funny. One adult telling another they are "disappointed" in them. My behavior/words "disappoint" you.

Maybe you've been hanging around children to much lash. To say you are disappointed in someone is not meant to show your actual emotions, but to deflect it onto someone else, so they can feel badly.

Not buying into that.

You seem to be having an odd moment, and I’m not going to expend a lot of energy pecking on my phone behind it.

You had a one-sided soliloquy; in it, you assigned lines and opinions to me, and now, you are repeating those lines and opinions you wrote, saying I did. That’s disappointing.

You created the hypothetical, and hypothesized comments by me that you are either intentionally or accidentally presenting as mine.

I said almost nothing to you about this subject, and in your mind, you’ve created volumes of lies attributed to me. It is easy to look back on, as you say.

I don’t know what’s going on with you, and I wish you well, but I’m not getting further drawn into your thing. I’d taken a break from reading you because of similar interactions with you previously. Let’s just do that.

I guess my definition of a troll is someone who comes here to get a rise out of people. If that is all they do, then they are, in my never humble opinion, definitely a troll. We have people here who do nothing else. They don't post in music threads, they don't engage in conversations about non-controversial topics--they just try to pick fights or to ridicule. I don't know that I would call anyone in this thread a troll, with one glaring exception. There are a lot of people here, however, who become obsessive about their particular bête noire, and who are otherwise not at all trollish.

There are a few people here whom I dislike or whose "contribution" I dislike. There's only one person whom I've seen in this thread whom I would call a troll.

Fact is, our responses are how trolls win.

In the sport of trolling, a successful troll is one where they succeed in disruption.

It takes some effort, but we can all make the trollish behavior stop...or at least not be as successful.