How to eat an Internet troll (Mark Morford)

[DisgustipatedinCA]

Here’s something you surely already suspected but which is nevertheless sort of nice to have validated by science:

Internet trolls? Those nasty, scabrous, hate-spitting folk who spend their sunlight-deprived days taunting, baiting and venomizing all over the Interweb’s anonymous comments sections in response to, well, just about about any article, column, video, photo gallery, product review or heartfelt tale of love and woe from the here to Gawker to Amazon, Car & Driver to Knitter’s World to the NYT, including but certainly not limited to the very Slate article which discusses the general cruelty and stupidity of trolls itself?

Turns out they really are awful people. Sociopathic, sadistic, narcissistic, cruel by nature, highly unpleasant to be around. They love to cause pain. They delight in ruining the beautiful. The more pure and integrity-filled something is, the more they enjoy corrupting it. So says a new psychology study. Also, they’re antisocial. Poor dressers. Ungainly. Hairy in all the wrong places. Smell like soggy asparagus and old toenails. I’m just guessing.

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2014/02/18/how-to-eat-an-internet-troll/

[snot]

1. Well, not the how-to I hoped for; but note:

"I don’t feel so bad about shunning the trolls entirely, never responding, never engaging them in the slightest. After all, if sadists and hate-mongers don’t have an audience, if their targets offer only pity them and know them to be just a sad, lonely, ragtag army of sociopathic narcissists, they will have nothing left to feed on, and will resort to the only action left: they will merely eat themselves alive."

Get that:
never respond.
never engage.

[Maedhros]

2. The Ignore function is your friend [n/t]

[Blue_Tires]

6. Took me 10 years on DU before I started permanently ignoring people

at least the site is readable now...

[Maedhros]

7. I generally don't like to put people on ignore, but lately I have been encountering so many posters

that refuse to engage in meaningful discussion that it has become a necessity.

Good rule of thumb: if a poster repeatedly engages in a logical fallacy, and that fallacy is pointed out, if they don't abandon the fallacy they go on Full Ignore.

[raven mad]

3. Mark Morford will go into the history books -

as one of the funniest columnists, ever, who uses words that we all think, but can't express.



Thanks, Disgustipated - the northern lights are out, I'm finally home from combat shopping, and this is a treat!

[DFW]

4. I ran into one recently that I actually recognized from before

The guy used to use flowery language and spout the libertarian line, and try his best to put everyone down who had the slightest bit of compassion for those less fortunate, or disdain for killing others with guns. As I knew the site's monitor, I was directed to his profile once and saw he was a wannabe poet. He liked to throw obscure literary references at other posters and feel superior when they didn't recognize what he was talking about. I saw a post on a blog recently where someone was on there, spouting libertarian garbage using two or three different names, but exactly the same syntax as before. I put up a brief answer, and made a vague reference to failed poets who liked to quote T.H. White. Sho 'nuff, the guy vanished from the thread. Gotcha!

[In_The_Wind]

5. I actually know one of those.

Spot on!