Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Re-inventing the reinvention of the reinvention.....
Nothing against this kind of thing, but "Science"? Really? A study of 1200 people is a fact established beyond cavil?
Well, no, maybe not, except to internet trolls and the truly small minded. But while this is as entertaining as any film strip I ever watched in elementary school (over 50 years ago. See how much technology has changed our lives?), it's also no more informative nor better grounded in reasoning or data I couldn't conclude from a few years on the school playground.
I mean, if I didn't learn all this about human motivation by the time I was 10, I really wasn't paying attention to the bullies and other children who populated the world I lived in.
The primary difference between then and now, as the video points out at the end, is the anonymity provided by the internet. But then, we had that one pegged 20 years ago, when I was arguing with people at Table Talk on Salon.
There really is nothing new under the sun; and technology really hasn't changed society, or people, at all.
Oh, to be a Millenial and young again, and think the world sprang into existence fully formed from the brow of Steve Jobs just before I was born......
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Let me guess, they "studied this" by asking people questions with no way to test if their answers are true. While that's a problem at the best of times, when you're proposing to study "internet trolls" that methodology is especially stupid. If trolls like to push your buttons and yank your chain, to start with, you've provided them with the best of forums for doing that by asking them to answer questions like those ones.
ReplyDeleteReally? A job getting tortured with ice?
And it's my experience that when someone uses the word "troll" in that context, it can mean a number of things, not least of which is "I don't like what you said but I don't have anything to answer it with."
I'd originally thought that it meant someone who tried to disrupt discussion of the topic at hand but it is more often used for someone who disagrees with the common consensus at any particular site.
The internet is like a test of how badly the educational system failed to produce a rational would-be intellectual class. It couldn't compete with TV, the internet with stuff like binge-watching will only make that worse.
Yeah, more than once I've probably been a "troll" when all I was doing was insisting on a standard of reasoning that seemed elementary to me. Like understanding an issue of law, for example, instead of championing trial by accusation and innuendo.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I can be mulish and bull-headed and argumentative, but is that the same thing as arguing because I like the negative attention? And how carefully is that examined for purposes of a "scientific" study?
Still, the conclusions are so simple and obvious you have to ask: "Really? You needed a clipboard to figure that out?"
Bullshit. I invented trolling.
ReplyDeleteAnd cursing, right?
ReplyDelete