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posted by janrinok on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the troll-on-trolling dept.

Paraphrasing an article by Time Magazine's Joel Stein:

The Internet's personality has changed -- once it was like a geek with lofty ideals about the free flow of information. Now the web is a sociopath with Asperger's. [ Submitter's note: the "Sociopath with Asperger's" comment is not my addition, but a verbatim phrase in the source article ]

The people who relish their online freedom to act under influence of the online disinhibition effect are called "trolls." Trolling is, overtly, a political fight; but it has become the main tool of the alt-right, an Internet-grown reactionary movement that works for men's rights and against immigration. They derisively call their adversaries "social justice warriors" and believe that liberal interest groups purposely exploit their weaknesses to gain pity, which allows them to control the leverage of political power.

When sites are overrun by trolls, they drown out the voices of women, ethic and religious minorities, gays -- anyone who might feel vulnerable. The alt-right argues that if you can't handle opprobrium, you should just turn off your computer. But that's arguing against self-expression, something antithetical to the original values of the Internet.

The article closes with a description of an exchange between Stein and a detractor. In meeting the detractor in real-life, he was surprised by her lack of bravado, to which she responds, "The Internet is the realm of the coward. These are people who are all sound and no fury."

Stein ruminates in response, "Maybe. But maybe, in the information age, sound is as destructive as fury."


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by aristarchus on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:45AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:45AM (#390417) Journal

    Sorry, Cuban, I cannot read your link. You used the "SJW" thing, and so all rational people know two things immediately: you are not reliable, and you are probably not really a hacker. More of a hack. Or hackneyed. You should post more here to further damage your credibility.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   -1  
       Flamebait=1, Troll=4, Insightful=2, Informative=2, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Disagree=2, Total=13
    Extra 'Troll' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   0  
  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by cubancigar11 on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:49AM

    by cubancigar11 (330) on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:49AM (#390421) Homepage Journal

    That's the title of the article. Thanks for letting us know about yourself.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:52AM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:52AM (#390423) Journal

      How are you defining "SJW?" Do you mean it in its true sense, that being the ridiculous Tumblrinas that invent things to be offended about, or are you another one of those dork--pardon me, *dark* enlightenment types who thinks they invented selfishness and that anyone left of Rand is untermenschen unworthy of life?

      (I already know the answer, but I wanna see it right from the jackass's mouth, as it were...).

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:09AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:09AM (#390433) Journal

        Leave Cuban alone! He's just like Britanny! Fragile! He does not want to explain himself, he just want to be banned! Then we will all see the violence inherent in the system! Then he can say, "See, I told you! Ban-happy SJWs!" Except, of course, evidently, we cannot ban poor cubancigar. All we can do is mod him down and hope some readers will not read him and spread his shame. Encouraging him to explain more will only end up like the troll in the FA, a normal person, but one with issues, and chemical imbalances, and one who we will have to accept as one of us, and assist on his path to becoming a more normal, more liberal, more justicy person.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:45AM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:45AM (#390485) Journal

          Just to set the tone, I have modded no one in this thread down. We are all here to help us all be better Soylentils. Let's keep this in mind. Cuban needs our help. Do not retaliate. Cuban needs our love.

      • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:09AM

        by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:09AM (#390434) Journal

        I suppose I must also await the response. If I know you, my opinion is the other possibility, but I may be proven wrong. Rand may be tangential to the matter. At the very least, you've shown me before that you have some very good positions as concerns men's rights, and I for one haven't helped. Granted that MRAs can be equally wacky as TERFs.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:29AM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:29AM (#390449) Journal

          If I know him, he'll conveniently disappear and never respond to that little challenge. After all, terms like "SJW" are snarl words, used for their impact on the R-complex rather than the cerebral cortex, and making the user actually *explain* what they mean makes the people watching have to *think,* at which point they realize what kind of memetic conjob was played on them and leave in disgust.

          I think what pisses me off the most about people like him is that they genuinely think everyone else is as solipsistic and shortsighted and self-absorbed as they are :/

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:57AM

            by edIII (791) on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:57AM (#390465)

            I knew right from the title, and the TFS, that a critical shortage of warm fuzzies would be present here. I was right :)

            This thread need a hug. *HUG*

            --
            Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
            • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:26AM

              by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:26AM (#390477) Journal

              This thread need a hug. *HUG*

              *HUG* back, edIII! Wasn't it that great big SJW Friederich Nietzsche that said: "When you hug a thread, the thread hugs you!" Maybe not. Or only in the Soviet Union. YMMV.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:17AM

        by cubancigar11 (330) on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:17AM (#390501) Homepage Journal

        (I already know the answer, but I wanna see it right from the jackass's mouth, as it were...).

        So you apparently know me, enough to call me jackass, and expect me to explain myself to you. And I had the bad luck of reading rest of whatever you wrote:

        solipsistic and shortsighted and self-absorbed

        Gee... and you are surprised I leave conversations in the middle.

        Rand? Tumblr? The whole world doesn't run around the american fads, you know?

        How are you defining "SJW?"

        Here is the subject of my original comment: "I will just leave this here" Because I am well aware of language mismatch when a party is married to a "cause". You can't have a civil discussion without an open mind, and I don't see any civility in this discussion.

        Here is what ESR has to say about SJW:

        He knows who these people are: SJWs, “Social Justice Warriors”. And, unless you have been living under a rock, so do you. These are the people – the political and doctrinal tendency, united if in no other way by an elaborate shared jargon and a seething hatred of djangoconcardiff’s “white straight male”, who recently hounded Nobel laureate Tim Hunt out of his job with a fraudulent accusation of sexist remarks.

        There is nothing I can add to whatever that article says.

        • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:53AM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:53AM (#390516) Journal

          Here is what ESR has to say about SJW:

          Oh, fuque it, Cuban! You just doubled down! I cannot read anything where the entry is SJW, and certainly cannot read anything prefaced by Erectile Subperformance Republican! I mean, the man is a sexually harrassing pedophilic coward who has a Patron account! How could you possibly have any idea that quoting ESR would have any cred here at all? The man has not written any code for at least 20 years. He shit his pants after 9/11. And now he is unemployed and seeking socialized medical insurance. Pathetic.

          I wish we could ban you, cubancigar, so you could be happy. But this is SoylentNews, we have a different method of dealing with batshit-crazy right-wing nut-jobs. It is not neat, it does take longer, and will require more work on your part. So what was that about White Males? You forgot "Christian". Do we need to call in Runaway to help? You still have not explained what is to be reviled about Social Justice Warriors.

          • (Score: 4, Touché) by linuxrocks123 on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:25PM

            by linuxrocks123 (2557) on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:25PM (#390553) Journal

            The man has not written any code for at least 20 years.

            https://github.com/eric-s-raymond [github.com]

            Your commitment to truth rivals that of Donald Trump.

            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:32PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:32PM (#390586)

              And what about everything else aris wrote? ESR's checkins are really the least of his complaints.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:07PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:07PM (#390596)

            "I won't read anything that challenges my beliefs."

            • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:52PM

              by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:52PM (#390625) Journal

              "I won't read anything that challenges my beliefs."

              Oh, if only anything that starts with "SJW" could challenge mine, or anyone's, beliefs! So to be clear, this is not a matter of ignorance, it is a surfeit of knowledge, knowledge gained from hard experience. Many times in the past I thought I might find something to challenge beliefs in writing that contained "SJW", but sadly I only got spittle on me from the foaming mouths of a deranged far right. It was like reading Mein Kampf expecting to learn something besides a historical context. Hmm. "Mein Drumpf"?

            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @08:49PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @08:49PM (#390705)

              Anyone actually interested in debate wouldn't be using terms designed to shut down debate, like "SJW", from the start.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by JNCF on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:48AM

    by JNCF (4317) on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:48AM (#390460) Journal

    I cannot read your link. You used the "SJW" thing, and so all rational people know two things immediately: you are not reliable, and you are probably not really a hacker.

    This is actually an interesting ball of yarn to unravel. Keep in mind that I'm strictly discussing word-use here. The Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] cites positive uses of the term "social-justice warrior" going back to 1991, which predates any known derogatory uses that I've seen:

    More than 20 years ago, the term was generally used as a neutral or even complimentary describer. Here’s a clip from a 1991 write-up of a Montreal jazz festival, from the Montreal Gazette:

    [Quebec guitarist Rene] Lussier will present the world premiere of his ambitious Quebecois mood piece Le Tresor de la Langue, which juxtaposes the spoken word — including sound bites from Charles de Gaulle and Quebec nationalist and social-justice warrior Michel Chartrand — with new- music noodlings.

    “All of the examples I’ve seen until quite recently are lionizing the person,” Katherine Martin, the head of U.S. dictionaries at the Oxford University Press, said in an interview last month. Because “Social Justice Warrior” is currently only in Oxford Dictionaries — and not in the Oxford English Dictionary itself — lexicographers there haven’t done a full search for its earliest citation. But a cursory search for the phrase turns up several positive uses, spanning from the early ’90s through the early ’00s.

    Which raises the question, is "SJW" a different term than "social-justice warrior?" Or is this a term that started with a positive connotation, and only very recently became negative? If the latter, it seems odd to write off a statement based on the use of this term. If the former, merely unabbreviating the phrase would make the statement readable again (or at least nullify your original objection) -- and while I can't find the link now, I'm pretty sure I've seen a "This Is What A SJW Looks Like" shirt which uses the abbreviation itself in a positive manner.

    I'm legitimately interested in whether or not this information changes your mind about dismissing statements based on the use of the term alone, ancient chatbot philosopher.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:06AM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:06AM (#390472) Journal

      Hey, JNCF, (if that is your real login name), only an actual SJW can call another SJW a SJW!! We own the moniker, we take what our enemies call us, stick in our hat, and call it macaroni! With cheese!

      But, yes, it would be interesting to know where this first arose. With a colossal lack of evidence, I suspect Brietbart. What with all the new stuff that has come to light, man, it only makes sense. But I could be wrong. We should research this more, so we can help our fellow Soylentils who seem to have been infected. I have heard that "SJW appelation syndrome" can cause microcephaly in otherwise healthy adult males.

      • (Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Saturday August 20 2016, @10:28AM

        by art guerrilla (3082) on Saturday August 20 2016, @10:28AM (#390543)

        words are neither good nor bad, but thinking makes them so...

        (with 'thinking' meaning 'it is what our brains do', not 'reasoned logic'...)

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Kell on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:11AM

      by Kell (292) on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:11AM (#390497)

      I think there are really two concepts here that are being wrongly conflated. On one hand, there is the person who strives to bring about social equity and change (a laudible goal to many people) - the 'social justice warrior'. On the other hand is the person who uses feminism and race politics as a sort of weapon to promote a political agenda - what I would call an 'identity politics zealot'. There's a Venn diagram: not all SJWs are IPZs and not all IPZs genuinely fight for social justice... in fact, most of them seem hell-bent on promoting a culture of inequity based on historical slights and wrongdoings, real or imagined. IPZs seem to dominate the online discourse, and I think we rarely hear from the "real" SJWs because they're too busy actually doing that things that help build communities.

      --
      Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:59AM (#390517)

        Oh, great! The solution is another TLA? WTF? NNR? Whatever happened to the Anti-social Injustice Quibblers? AIG, opps, AIQ. Suspiciously like al Quaeda, doncha think?

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NCommander on Saturday August 20 2016, @08:31AM

        by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Saturday August 20 2016, @08:31AM (#390532) Homepage Journal

        The problem is that when you have a label of any type, the loudest tend to create the stereotype of that label, and those stereotypes then get distorted over time. 20 years ago, the definition of what a Republican was is very different that what it is now. The same can be said for SFW, or troll, or even hacker.

        --
        Still always moving
        • (Score: 2) by Kell on Sunday August 21 2016, @12:21AM

          by Kell (292) on Sunday August 21 2016, @12:21AM (#390800)

          You're perfectly right - this is merely my own internal way of thinking, and not what I'd propose for others. We all label people, consciously or subconsciously. I prefer to consciously separate these two concepts, which others may tacitly not. YMMV.

          --
          Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Saturday August 20 2016, @02:19PM

        by Francis (5544) on Saturday August 20 2016, @02:19PM (#390569)

        It hasn't meant that in a very long time. The main reason why SJW is a pejorative is that they live in bubbles. They usually mean well, when they're not actually trolls, but they're so divorced from reality that they're a danger to the republic. They don't respect free speech or equality as it exists and are regularly tilting at windmills and trying to right past wrongs by screwing over people who had nothing to do with it.

        I personally think it's rather offensive to lump the anti-immigration people in with the men's rights people as those are two very different groups. In America it's difficult to find a measure by which men aren't behind. And the list is pretty much limited to sexual offenses. Even there, the women seem to be catching up.

        But, life expectancy, prison terms, conviction rates, homicide, suicide, work conditions, divorce rates and child care leave are all areas in which women are doing better than men and those are some pretty damn important things and hardly a comprehensive list. Hence why the SJW types have to silence the critics, they haven't got a leg to stand on when it comes to women's rights and as a result their only viable strategy is to silence the opposition before people notice the lies.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:52PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:52PM (#390592)

          Nice to see the special snowflakes are out in force. I'd hate to think that they would ever be confronted with somebody elses opinion.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:53PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:53PM (#390663)

          Shut up, Francis!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20 2016, @12:57PM (#390556)

    So the ignorant willfully wish to stay ignorant? Interesting, albeit unsurprising, especially considering how many SJWs espouse how ignorant everyone that they disagree with is.

    I'm not quite certain how likely it is you're going to respond, but I'm quite sure if you do it's going to be something snarky that proves my point, so please, fire away if you are so inclined.