One of the first things they tell you when you start your own blog is to engage in the comments section. With only 150-200 regular readers, it makes sense that most don't comment, given that only a few people comment on much larger hit sites. I've always tried to spur discussion but I've noticed that the posts that get the most hits are the ones without the long comments threads. This is largely due to the fact that the same 3-5 people leave comments. All of them are migrants from a right wing gun blog (the one that I was recently asked to leave by vote) and they...well...they are complete dicks. There's just no sugar coating it anymore. I've tried to be fair over the years with them but they play a never ending childish and dishonest game that has left me completely disgusted.
I've decided after a few long threads in the last couple of weeks that it is a waste of time to engage these people any longer. If anyone has been reading these threads (and my stat counter shows that it's the same 6 people, btw), it's painfully obvious that nearly all of their comments are ridiculously adolescent and employ troll tactics that would not be allowed on most message boards and blogs. Their primary goal is to insult, scream, mouth foam, and denigrate anyone who doesn't agree with them. When the facts don't, it's instant rage that would dwarf a teenage temper tantrum. I get the fact that they see blogs as a place they can "win" because their ideology certainly isn't winning in the real world (see: outside of the bubble) but their willful ignorance, granite intransigence, and moonbattery has gotten so bad lately that I have realized it's utterly pointless to have discussions with them. In so many ways, this is the very definition of the Right today.
Their comments range from dick to asshole to 12 year old bully to psychotic mouth foamer unmoved by facts and undeterred by new information. They are so insecure that they have to stick together (despite obvious disagreements) for fear of losing the purity of MARKWRONG, MARKLOSE, never once questioning each other and having any sort of real debate with multiple sides. Odd, considering they bemoan collectives. Yet they are the ones that buy into the myth (again, 12 year old bully) that more people against one means a "win."
More frustrating (and highly immature) is their refusal to accept that they are the ones at fault combined with their insistence that I am actually the problem. Honestly, it's like I'm talking to my seventh graders in every discussion now. One need only look at the comments after this post to illustrate this point. There will be cries of "chicken" and links to Brave Sir Robin videos as well as long paragraphs which essentially amount to "No, You are!" It's the same shit over and over again and I am terribly bored with it.
I understand now why Nikto rarely comments. He has always told me in the past that it's a waste of time. Indeed. I love a good debate and have certainly grown from a few of these discussions but now it's time to move on. And maybe the comments section will as well. Maybe some new commenters will start leaving comments. Maybe these 3-5 commenters will change and leave something new and interesting in which case I will respond. I sadly doubt that will happen, of course, given their hostile fear of progress and total lack of people skills. Obviously, they don't get along well in the real world and that's why they spend so much time posting here.
Without me around, I'll admit that it will be mildly amusing to watch them yell at air, kind of like the guy on the street you see pushing a shopping cart, listening to his short wave radio and screaming about communism.
Isn't that where they came from anyway?
5 comments:
I don't think commenting itself is a waste of time. I wish I could do it, because it's interesting to have a reasoned debate.
But that's not what you get on the Internet. You just get a few trolls (some of whom seem to be on the payroll for the gun lobby and the petroleum industry), who use ad hominem attacks against anyone who dares challenge their worldview. Their goal is to intimidate their enemies and chase them from the field of battle bloodied so that they can "win" the Internet.
The problem isn't just that you're just wasting time arguing with these people: it's the corrosive effect of being constantly exposed to such behavior has on your soul. Your psyche is slowly remolded in your attacker's image and you descend to their level. Before long you start talking like them, thinking everything in the world is crap, and calling everyone an idiot.
But that's not so: the world is full of good people and worthwhile things. The good people just don't get into these fights in the first place. And because they don't want to attract the ire of the trolls -- as well as the real-world harassment that often accompanies the on-line attacks -- most good people don't engage online at all.
And that's why the trolls behave they do. They want to chase everyone else away so that it appears everyone who says anything on the Internet thinks just the way they do. They want their thinking and behavior to appear to be the norm.
And that passivity by the good people in the Republican Party is exactly why they have been driven off the right-wing cliff: the Silent Majority has let the loudmouths and trolls do all the yelling while maintaining a polite silence.
So the two guys who post falsehoods, debunked and discredited ideas as facts, illogical and contradictory statements, and BS stereotypical drivel are bemoaning the fact that you get called on it? Interesting.
I guess if you would rather continue your foolish thought processes than actually learn, have at it.
Funny that the guy who bemoans the echo chamber has now declared himself into one.
You really want me to go overdub Terry Stafford's Suspicion with projection and put it on YouTube so I can just link that here every time you do this.
Don't you?
Their primary goal is to insult, scream, mouth foam, and denigrate anyone who doesn't agree with them.
Remind me again who does most of the swearing, name calling, and all of the outright slander on this blog? Oh, right: That would be Markadelpha.
(Mark's version of a mirror is called "a projector".)
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