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

Meant to add that being provocative and causing disruptions, while not always trolling or in bad-faith...can be many other things and being this way may not be the best method to get your point across and one shouldn’t be too surprised if this approach doesn’t work and causes people to tune you out.

Still doesn’t necessarily mean you’re trolling, just possibly being annoying like a gnat or painful like a blister.

Provocation works (somewhat) when your audience is behaving in bad faith, e.g. ignoring an important but inconvenient issue. To the extent that some debates on a2k are conducted in bad faith, the approach remains relevant.

I agree with this.

Yeah, maybe. I guess its effectiveness depends on what your objective is.

You see lots of people here who behave in bad faith. I’m not sure anything works on them, but it may work on people who read their bullshit.

I can think of no greater example of bad faith than representing one's self as something one is not. For example, representing one's self as French, while unable to properly write a post in French. At another site, our allegedly French friend here once said that he only comes online to argue with people.

Bad faith, indeed.

This is an example of unmerited character attack I alluded to earlier. It’s not a part of a topic discussion; it’s designed to censure a member. Everybody can just make up **** about anyone to shut them down.

What do mean ‘just make up ****’? Could you mean something like...oh, I don’t know.....let’s say, calling someone a drunk , then repeating it to others after following the person from thread to thread, saying things like “the old bag is probably half in the bag now, it’s 3 in the afternoon and she’s been sucking down whiskey sours all day” Things like that?

Exactly like that.

I respond pretty immaturely when I’m treated like that. I think turn about is fair play.

I’m happy to see it disappear entirely, but not only by me.

Wondering though: what’s this for?

Don't worry about Set. He's not going to shut down anyone, least of all me.

And as of writing, you got 2 downvotes for saying you agreed with something... :-)

Heya :-)

I hate that smiley. Pretty much guaranteed to be used primarily for personal attacks.

yep, that smiley is mostly used when the "debator" isnt too bright and has nothing more creative to offer. Really though, that smiley actually looks more like hes chugging a bottle of Tabasco

I hardly think Martin Luther King agitated for the cause of fighting racism and poverty because his aim was, per those Urban Dictionary definitions, to cause "maximum disruption and argument", "provoke an emotional knee jerk reaction" and "cleverly piss people off". He didn't mind if his agitation for righteous causes had those effects on bigots; but it was hardly his goal itself, it was just an inevitable side-effect. That seems like a pretty crucial difference, and I'm not sure what point is served by conflating the two.

Getting beyond the MLK reference, I can think of a couple of A2K users who hold highly controversial or "disruptive", but obviously sincere views, and generally argue them in good faith if sometimes at exhausting lengths. That's not trolling.

I've gotten downvotes for saying that genocide is wrong and should be opposed.

Then, it would make sense to get rid of it, I think.

I make a distinction based on the intent of the speaker. I think you are making the same point. However judging someone's intent is sometimes a problem.

The problem I see is people using personal attacks to prevent certain opinions from being expressed. On a forum such as this, there is a wide variety of diverse opinions. People should be able to discuss, or even attack ideologies or ideas without attacking the people expressing them.

Disagreeing with ideas can expand a discussion or at least explain and understand the differences between points of view. Attacking people does nothing but harden positions and stifle any discussion.

Martín Luther King may not have been the best example of an agitator.

Alice Paul, the suffragette (and personal hero of mine) was. Her intent was to cause disruption. I might argue that kneeling for the pledge is another example...the whole point is to cause a national discussion by upsetting people. If no one is upset, the protest would be meaningless.

Maybe you too had agreed with a poster you shouldn't have agreed with?

I initially found the now several page long section on the theology of trolls and trolling a bit amusing. Later it became tiresome and a waste of energy. The central tendency of the various descriptions of trolls and trolling here appears to refer to the act of posting a comment that the reader in question doesn't like or finds distracting. Similarly the implied definition of non trolls appears to be "those who agree with me".

These threads are essentially a conversation among people who can't see or hear each other, and who, in most cases, don't know each other well. These facts alone indicate a rather high probability for misunderstanding and conflict.

At best this can be an exchange of opinions and viewpoints on topics of mutual interest. "Proving" one's point is not an attainable goal, and the effort to do so in most cases leads only to vituperation and dueling web links (and one can find a link to almost anything) that don't constitute proof of anything. That said, the mere exchange of perspectives, and some demonstrable facts attendant to them, can itself be both entertaining and informative to both parties -- even if they don't agree.

I find the apparent effort on the part of many here (including myself, on occasion) to "triumph" in any dispute here to be both pointless and futile. We should recognize that the best we can do here is to better understand the different perspectives presented and to consider their respective contradictions and limitations. Much more than that is not practically attainable.

Most of the subjects (political and otherwise) debated so heatedly here are far more complex than most of the arguments offered would allow, and achieving a better collective understanding of the attendant complexities involved and the contradictions and second-order side effects associated with most "solutions" is very likely the best we can achieve. I believe that our keeping that in mind would do more to limit "trolling" than any of the theological stuff I have read on the last few pages of this thread.