First off, happy holidays to all. I've been up in Boston on dial-up for the last few days, so not so much by way of posts for me. We got nearly a foot of snow last night and I'm going out to play. :)
Before I do, I wanted to note an observation I had reading some of the comments this morning. We've had plenty of debates back and forth whether to ban trolls, ignore trolls, encourage people not to feed the trolls, etc. Personally, I find trolls useful. They are a good meter of how good my argument is based on how many trolls post to the thread.
If you haven't noticed, there is a scale of troll agitation:
1) Snarky - A red state themed nickname when they postNumber one, snarky. Sometimes these trolls are even funny. Number three, terrified, I get such a laugh out of these I enjoy it all the more.
2) Scared - You're going to lose every election if you talk that way, you're doing yourself more harm than good, etc.
3) Terrified - So many typos I can tell the troll realizes that when enough people hear this, their world is coming to an end
Number two is a bit more of a debatable case. Like I'm going to take advice from a troll? Are you kidding me? Like you're even giving me advice out of the goodness of your blackened, frosty heart? Of course I'm not, nor does the troll expect me to. The purpose of the "scared" post is simply to attempt to demoralize the opposition. It's plain as day psych ops.
Personally, I get quite a kick out of the "scared" posts. However, I find that they bring out the worst in otherwise great posters on our side. So, open discussion, what to do with the trolls in the New Year? Keep them around? Ban them back to the hell from whence they came? What do you think?
