{"id":122,"date":"2003-07-17T01:38:06","date_gmt":"2003-07-17T04:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/?p=122"},"modified":"2003-07-17T01:38:06","modified_gmt":"2003-07-17T04:38:06","slug":"free-speech-trolls-and-sissies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/free-speech-trolls-and-sissies\/","title":{"rendered":"Free speech, trolls, and sissies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some interesting discussion over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.e-claire.us\/archives\/000218.html\" target=\"offsite\">e-Claire&#8217;s<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/geoffrey-allen.com\/mt\/archives\/000137.html\" target=\"offsite\">Dog Snot Diaries<\/a> today (and crap elsewhere).<\/p>\n<p>I for one, feel freedom of speech comes with a load of responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like having a driver&#8217;s license.  While it enables you to drive a vehicle anywhere you want&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;riding on the sidewalk and mowing down pedestrians is usually frowned upon by the police department.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nI&#8217;m once again reminded of a few sites that I typically avoid like the plague. Usually they want to talk, but they don&#8217;t want to listen.  They have a link that says &#8220;Comments&#8221;, and some people get the silly impression that, as loyal readers they are welcome to, uhm, well, comment.<\/p>\n<p>How stupid can you be?  Comment means &#8220;Shower me with praise and adulation, and nurse my insecure, neurotic ass by telling me what I want to hear.&#8221;  Like, duh, get a clue.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s usually the same crap too. High on emotion, low on the logic.  Lots of tough talk, and you watch the comments either get deleted, or their loyal staff of attack dogs rip the poor fool to shreds. They&#8217;re called names, they get labels hung on them. An otherwise decent discussion degrades to shit.<\/p>\n<p>Again, before I hear the worn out &#8220;If you don&#8217;t like what I say, don&#8217;t come here.&#8221;, I repeat, these are sites I avoid like the plague. These sites (much like their authors) have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.<\/p>\n<p>See, here at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ericbrooks.com\">EricBrooks.Com<\/a> &#8211; This isn&#8217;t my &#8220;house&#8221;.  It&#8217;s a club, where all are welcome to come and party.  I&#8217;m not only the owner, and the DJ, but I&#8217;m the bouncer as well. <\/p>\n<p>By default, my MT comments are &#8220;off&#8221;. Not everything I write here warrants comments.  It&#8217;s not that I don&#8217;t value what people have to say. If someone feels that strongly about what I wrote, they can either address it on their sites, or they&#8217;re welcome to email me (either to share their view, or to ask me to turn the comments on). <\/p>\n<p>Sometimes I want to direct you elsewhere; Sometimes I want to get something off my chest.  It&#8217;s not the vicious remarks I fear, but it&#8217;s the attempts to try and cheer me up,  {{{hugs}}}, and the &#8220;but you&#8217;re wonderful&#8221; remarks that I dread. I&#8217;m a complicated person that way. What part of &#8220;-=e=- the merciless\u2122&#8221; gave you the impression that I was a nice guy?<\/p>\n<p>You think your &#8220;trolls&#8221; are so bad? Try  the living hell that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.assortedweirdness.com\/mt\/archive\/000423.php\" target=\"offsite\" title=\"Early last year, this guy I used to know from another forum started sending me death threats out of the blue and not only did he threaten to come to my house and kill me, he threatened to kill my husband, my son, and a friend of ours and he threatened to rape me while my son was to watch this. \">Kathy &#038; her family just endured<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p>Oh, and who is the imbecile that decided to redefine &#8220;trolls&#8221; as &#8220;someone who disagrees with the author&#8221;, anyway?<\/p>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dspguru.com\/comp.dsp\/useterm.htm\" target=\"offsite\">troll \/v.,n.\/ <\/a><\/b><span class=\"reg\">[From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames. Derives from the phrase &#8220;trolling for newbies&#8221; which in turn comes from mainstream &#8220;trolling&#8221;, a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don&#8217;t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Hmmmm: &#8220;designed to attract predictable responses or flames&#8221;.<br \/>\nSure as hell sounds more like the morons posting the drivel on thier blogs, if you ask me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some interesting discussion over at e-Claire&apos;s and Dog Snot Diaries today (and crap elsewhere).<\/p>\n<p>I for one, feel freedom of speech comes wit&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-as-the-web-burns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Free speech, trolls, and sissies - SoApBoX<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ericbrooks.com\/soapbox\/free-speech-trolls-and-sissies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Free speech, trolls, and sissies - SoApBoX\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some interesting discussion over at e-Claire&amp;apos;s and Dog Snot Diaries today (and crap elsewhere). 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