1) Any group of mostly men dedicated to any sort of hardware—guns, cars, for all I know chainsaws. For some reason men don’t just form attachments to the specific tool they actually have (Cars, Guns, Hammers, scapels are all tools), they have to defend the BRAND and/or model (Mopar, 1911, Macintosh are the most vociferous defenders).
2) Any group that thinks unreasonably highly of itself. Atheists, Mensa, Vegetarians/Vegans, Hippies, Mac Users.
3) Any group that feels under threat, either from the march of technology, a conspiracy, or just reality damaging their world view like Socialists, Vegetarians/Vegans, 1911 owners and Mac Users.
I salute your ability to troll all of these groups in a post about what kind of groups are easy to troll. I almost started to argue on some of these points before I saw your game.
I don’t troll. I never have. I will attempt to reasonably argue a point of view, but (as an example) I will not go to www.ar15.com and start a post containing my (slightly negative) opinion of it, nor discussing my preferences to that device (Sig 55x, AK etc.).
However I have been on the intarwebs since 1993 and have engaged in some fairly vigorous debates. I have also noticed who responds and why. This is not building interplanetary transport devices.
I will admit I should have put an etc. on the end of points 2 and 3.
In retrospect I should have put Linux Users in there as well.
I used to think I trolled all the time, but then I realized I wasn’t looking for anyone else’s anger or frustration, just trying to find their exact train of thought and get to reasonable arguments. Have you had worthwhile experiences probing for information in ways that could be misinterpreted as trolling or just by asking?
Even when there’s no trolling going on, the discussions I’ve seen online are predominantly shouting matches where no one leaves happy. When there’s a troll, at least someone wins. But when debates become rational, everyone wins.
There are times when I’ve made deliberately provocative statements to attempt to get someone to think and realize, but when you’re dealing with mental children this doesn’t work. Meaning it rarely works.
I can’t decide whether our culture has created a great “under class” of people who don’t want to deal rationally with the world, or whether it’s just a ‘feature’ (or bug if you will) of the great masses of humanity. Either way I’ve come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people are basically peasants with varying degrees of technical training, willing and able to operate at fairly high intellectual levels within narrow areas, then going home, popping a pabst and watching prime time cop buddy shows for decades at a time. you know, as opposed to operating at high intellectual levels, then going home and getting on the internet and arguing about peoples intellectual levels.
There are places online where discussions happen, but these are often places where discussion of one category of contentious issues is disallowed by fiat, and forum owners and/or moderators screen or are very active in preventing those sorts of shouting matches. Whether you’d think these were rational discussions or not is another matter :)
1) Any group of mostly men dedicated to any sort of hardware—guns, cars, for all I know chainsaws. For some reason men don’t just form attachments to the specific tool they actually have (Cars, Guns, Hammers, scapels are all tools), they have to defend the BRAND and/or model (Mopar, 1911, Macintosh are the most vociferous defenders).
2) Any group that thinks unreasonably highly of itself. Atheists, Mensa, Vegetarians/Vegans, Hippies, Mac Users.
3) Any group that feels under threat, either from the march of technology, a conspiracy, or just reality damaging their world view like Socialists, Vegetarians/Vegans, 1911 owners and Mac Users.
I salute your ability to troll all of these groups in a post about what kind of groups are easy to troll. I almost started to argue on some of these points before I saw your game.
I don’t troll. I never have. I will attempt to reasonably argue a point of view, but (as an example) I will not go to www.ar15.com and start a post containing my (slightly negative) opinion of it, nor discussing my preferences to that device (Sig 55x, AK etc.).
However I have been on the intarwebs since 1993 and have engaged in some fairly vigorous debates. I have also noticed who responds and why. This is not building interplanetary transport devices.
I will admit I should have put an etc. on the end of points 2 and 3.
In retrospect I should have put Linux Users in there as well.
I used to think I trolled all the time, but then I realized I wasn’t looking for anyone else’s anger or frustration, just trying to find their exact train of thought and get to reasonable arguments. Have you had worthwhile experiences probing for information in ways that could be misinterpreted as trolling or just by asking?
Even when there’s no trolling going on, the discussions I’ve seen online are predominantly shouting matches where no one leaves happy. When there’s a troll, at least someone wins. But when debates become rational, everyone wins.
There are times when I’ve made deliberately provocative statements to attempt to get someone to think and realize, but when you’re dealing with mental children this doesn’t work. Meaning it rarely works.
I can’t decide whether our culture has created a great “under class” of people who don’t want to deal rationally with the world, or whether it’s just a ‘feature’ (or bug if you will) of the great masses of humanity. Either way I’ve come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people are basically peasants with varying degrees of technical training, willing and able to operate at fairly high intellectual levels within narrow areas, then going home, popping a pabst and watching prime time cop buddy shows for decades at a time. you know, as opposed to operating at high intellectual levels, then going home and getting on the internet and arguing about peoples intellectual levels.
There are places online where discussions happen, but these are often places where discussion of one category of contentious issues is disallowed by fiat, and forum owners and/or moderators screen or are very active in preventing those sorts of shouting matches. Whether you’d think these were rational discussions or not is another matter :)
He almost got me, too.