The discussions of the past few days have made me think that we need to familiarize ourselves with an Internet personality. One that seems to be in heavy use here in the St. Paul Forum is the 'troll'. Either read about them on Wikipedia (aka the place where everything is recorded) or my pasting of it below.
To those of you non-trolls on the list, please consider before responding to absurdity whether there is a likelihood of intelligent discourse resulting from the exchange. Sometimes, it is better to just let the flotsam go by and wait for a real bite! To the trolls - is this really the best place for your theory testing? Perhaps calling into one of the many AM radio stations set up for this purpose would be more rewarding.
My purpose is not to stifle speech, but rather to stop the back-and-forths that characterize non-debate and fill our e-mailboxes with junk. This is not cross-fire, we are normal, well behaved citizens and should be able to conduct ourselves as such. Does anyone have any fresh topics to toss around?
forgive me if this is too pointed, Jacob Dorer
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll>
An Internet troll is either a person who sends messages on the Internet hoping to entice other users in to angry or fruitless responses, or a message sent by such a person. The term derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" and ultimately from trolling for fish; it first appeared on Usenet. The term is frequently abused to slander opponents in heated debates and is frequently misapplied to those who are ignorant of etiquette.
Trolling is often described as an online version of the breaching experiment, where social boundaries and rules of etiquette are broken. Self-proclaimed trolls often style themselves as Devil's Advocates or gadflies or culture jammers, challenging the dominant discourse and assumptions of the forum they are trolling in an attempt to subvert and introduce different ways of thinking. Detractors who value etiquette claim that true Devil's Advocates generally identify themselves as such for the sake of etiquette, whereas trolls often consider etiquette to be something worth trolling in order to fight groupthink.
Trolls are sometimes caricatured as socially inept. This is often due to the fundamental attribution error, as it is impossible to know the real traits of an individual solely from their online discourse. Indeed, since intentional trolls are alleged to knowingly flout social boundaries, it is difficult to typecast them as socially inept since they have arguably proven adept at their goal.
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