this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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politics
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I dunno if it's trolling. It's deluded and obsessive demonstrating a lot of free time, but, like, they're passionate about it.
I mean, they have some magical thinking and logic and I don't think their actions are actually pragmatic towards their goals, but I'm fairly certain it's genuine.
Either way, this was the right move.
Edit: ehhhhhh some other comments have shown they were acting like a troll fairly consistently. Maybe this should have been done sooner.
They are trolling. They love the negative attention here is just one example of it “Wait, do I have 81,000 downvotes now? I thought it was 45,000?! Can you double check. I wanna put the correct number of downvotes in my profile. The link you provided isn’t working for me. Thanks for the updated stats, friend! :)” They purposely post more mild posts and then like today they went for the triple post of troll material. They are playing a lot of people right now. Don’t be one of them.
Yeah, they are literally bragging about being a troll in their profile when they boast about their downvotes.
Pretty wild this is even being debated.
Exactly there intentions are right there for anyone to see.
I see I wasn't up to date on my Monk lore... I blocked them fairly early on after a weird conversation.
That's a much more recent turn. Not that long ago they were asking why they were getting such negative engagement. I think they decided to cling to ideology and take the negativity as an affirmation of their position. Make no mistake, I'm not asking for them not to be banned or anything. I have 100% left community that they've been apart of. And will not lament their absence. I don't think it's clear trolling.
This is what falling for a troll looks like. Giving excuses for their trolling behavior as if the troll is really just responding to their environment despite the troll being the one who initiates the conflict.
That's just it though. In a weird sort of way they don't tend to initiate it. Look at it closer. Try to find an instance of them commenting on a post to community that wasn't their own. Or did not mention them in some way. It's oddly rare as f***.
If their whole intent was to feed off metallic replies. Why would they create and moderate many many different communities to which they post some of the same s*** and get very little response? Often still getting ratioed on what little response they do get. That's a lot of extra work for not very much troll food.
If you choose to Define them as a troll. You still have to admit they're one of the easiest trolls in history to avoid. Which should make you question the label. The behavior is much too erratic and unpredictable for something like a simple troll. Much more indicative of something like mental illness and a bad response to being bullied
That is just trolling with home court advantage. They put out the honeypot and get to argue on their home turf for the most part, although they also posted to c/politics.
'Just responding to their environment.'
That's a REAL stretch. I'm not saying they aren't fucking annoying. They're really, FUCKING, annoying. But being annoying doesn't imply trolling. I've met people who's basic speaking tones and patterns annoyed me. But it was less something they did intentionally and more a malfunction of who they were. And in this case, despite monk making a spectacle of themselves. People sought them out far more than monk intruded elsewhere.
I won't miss them. But some of the behavior has definitely been obsessive and bullying towards them. Regardless of their actions or what you think of them personally. Maybe you like that fact. Maybe you don't. For me personally though it feels like pretty shitty behavior all around and no one to really root for. When I stopped engaging with them. I stopped having issues with them. They didn't follow. Didn't harass others the way they were harassed. That's not justifying or defending their behavior. Whatever lessons they learned they learned the wrong fucking thing. There's no question about that.
K
Nah. I've dealt with these kind of people since BBSs. They're trolls and get a kick out of the responses.
They usually have multiple "hidden" agendas.
First and foremost is to get a rise out of people to get engagement so their message resonates negatively and then is surfaced and viewed by the impressionable.
Second is to cause strife within the community.
Third is to get that strife to get people to shift to their viewpoint
It's amazing how many people forgot about the classical "get a rise out of everyone with shitty arguments" troll, or forgot that the way to deal with them was to ignore and ban on sight. Fuck, I was practically in diapers when Usenet and BBSes were a thing and I still remember "don't feed the troll."
That's the consensus from the admins and mods. They have shitty opinions, but having shitty opinions is not a TOS violation.
They constantly troll anyone who responds to them. It’s sheer flame bait with every comment.
All of the posts and comments that user makes are universally Down voted, and pretty much everyone here hates this user. Why on earth you won’t ban them permanently is beyond any of us.
I appreciate that you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it’s obvious that they’re main goal is to provoke Arguments. Pretty much everyone in the affected communities, like news and politics, can’t stand the person. Nobody wants them there.
Please permanently ban them, at least from those communities.
I think this is balanced and fair. I don't think they demonstrated any supremely shitty opinions, i.e. racism, bigotry, but their presence was incredibly annoying and they didn't really participate in useful conversations and moreso used the reply box as a soapbox to say a lot of nonsense.
Moreover, I think banning until the election shows an understanding and restraint by the administration team that is commendable.
Yeah, the typical line crossers, racism, bigotry, hatred, genocide denial, etc. get you on the fast track to a ban and they avoided all of that.
....intentionally.
That's why moderation sometimes requires judgment calls. When someone is intentionally avoiding whatever the moderation cut off seems to be, then it's clear their participation is intentionally as provocative as possible without triggering enforcement. In that case it's the user playing the mod team against the rest of the community because they know your boundaries and can weaponize them to "win."
I think it's troublesome that there's more firm enforcement against any kind of "denialism" and "bigotry" than there is for demonstrably antagonistic behavior. Lemmy is veering too strongly toward curating a list of acceptable opinions and too far away from enforcing civility standards, if you ask me. That's a surefire way to create an ironclad left-leaning echo chamber.
Genocide denialism and bigotry are WAY worse than just being uncivil. I'm fine with a chamber that doesn't allow bigotry. If you think that makes it left-leaning, that says a lot more about the right than "free speech".
My point is they shouldn't allow either. The only thing worse is using a double standard, because it prioritizes assholes you agree with over polite users you don't.
There's no hypocrisy in saying worse things are worse. That's not a double standard. Bigotry isn't an "opinion" and assholes of any stripe are better than people who engage in it. A lot of the people talking to Monk were assholes (that the majority agreed with), but I don't get the impression you wish moderation had been stricter on them.
I challenge that the definition of "bigotry" is as broad as each individual wants to make it, and the kit gloves with which trollish behavior is consistently moderated differ significantly from the approach taken to a very broad definition of "bigoted" opinions, which regularly invite heavy reprimands. As long as the definition of "bigotry" is rigorously defined, I don't necessarily disagree with you. As I see things, it isn't.
And yes, much of this could have been avoided if the people attacking Monk had been held to a higher standard of acceptable behavior. That is exactly the argument I'm making. None of that crap should have been allowed to spiral out of control.
I would argue exactly the opposite.
First of all, fuck "civility" rules, which in my experience (back on Reddit) tend to result in polite bad faith comments (sealioning etc.) being tolerated while comments calling out bad faith for the toxic behavior it is get removed.
Second, facts are not opinions, and it's hardly Lemmy's fault if Colbert was correct about reality's bias.
You're commenting on a thread about a user whose polite, bad faith sealioning was tolerated for months, and whose spamming behavior is the only thing that triggered meaningful enforcement. If that's what you're concerned about, you should be in favor of more heavy handed moderation of obviously disingenuous "politeness".
I think sealioning is patently uncivil behavior, no matter the veneer of geniality. I just think that Lemmy hasn't quite figured out how to strike a balance between moderators enforcing truth and moderators enforcing good behavior.
Well, it's always been left leaning, look at .ml ;)
And decisions to take a more punitive approach to the expression of certain opinions and beliefs than to shitty, antagonistic behavior will ensure that never changes.
Good cause I’d be gone already
It's certainly not genuine good faith engagement. But yeah not obvious "trolling" no matter how dismissive and off putting their responses can be. They have some sort of personal need for engagement. And way too much free time to pursue it in. Two things combined with unwillingness to understand or acknowledge the arguments other people make. That come off so toxic.
If "not genuine good faith engagement", "dismissive", "need for engagement", "too much free time", "unwillingness to understand or acknowledge other arguments", and "toxicity" aren't signs that someone is trolling, then can you please share the definition of trolling you're using? In my eyes all of those things are classic troll behaviors.
It is only trolling if they do it from the le beaucoup Trolle province of France.
LOL
Just because it can be, doesn't mean it is. It's absolutely taken on more trollish overtones of late. They weren't always this way. If you want to go dumpster diving, months ago there were moments and posts of introspection.
It's not healthy behavior regardless. But I can understand it. I don't tolerate Leninist/tankie hypocrisy, and feel pretty self righteous calling them out on it. Viewing their silent down votes as affirmation. It would be easy to behave similarly to them. Pestering etc. Hell I have done it in the past. And if I was a person prone to the magical thinking of dogma and ideology I probably still would be. But I value my time, logic, and reason much more. And enjoy it much more to engage with someone, that even if we don't agree in the end. We don't talk past each other. But focus on actually having a fruitful discussion.
So, again, can you define "troll" for me? I think you and I are operating based on fundamentally different definitions, and I'd like to see yours spelled out so I can understand the difference.
Only after you define a patronizing. And explain why you've chosen to ignore what was said. I literally said it's taken on trollish tone recently. But I don't believe it's their actual MO. To be clear I'm not arguing that they should not be banned or trying to defend them. I honestly think there's much more to suggest mental illness going on there than gleeful trolling. But I see that it's wildly important for you personally to only see them definitely as a troll. Despite the fact that being undaunted and a bit spammy is the biggest accusation that you have. I honestly am getting much more trollish vibe from you than I have ever gotten from monk all the times I disagreed with them and pointed it out. Which to be clear I've largely stopped engaging with them at this point because of the uselessness.
The definition you gave in your initial comment is the definition I use. I very clearly didn't ignore what you said, have no idea what "a patronizing" has to do with anything, and asked you a very simple question, which you ignored.
The fact that after only two replies you went straight to personal attacks tells me I'm unlikely to get anything productive out of this exchange.
I already came to that conclusion with you two posts ago. If you actually care. Perhaps you should go back and look at what you said. The tone with which you said it. And try to understand. You get what you give. And to be clear I don't say this with a patronizing tone. It's something I have to absolutely have to watch myself on as well.
Looking at some of their threads, the trolling type behavior seemed directed at users who were already fairly antagonistic to them to begin with, then it turned in to trolling back and forth all the way down.
So the user you're responding to just accused me of being a troll. Yet you responded....
Absolutely. I have no love for monk. I've left communities they were involved with. Generally downvote them on sight. But a lot of the people screaming "troll" the loudest. Are easily as guilty of such behavior as the accused. I don't see Monk going to others threads regularly seeking attention that way. I generally only see them post on their own posts, or replies to posts they got. And when they post to the politics community for instance. Things that generally would be popular with most there. Downvoted to oblivion and that's that.
Yup. In 90% of cases the answer is "don't engage and block them" but not enough people do that.
Yeah, there's a bit of spiderman-meme going on with this. They were a spammer and the duplicated posts certainly raise some authenticity questions, but it seems like the people citing their posting as obvious incivility were upset that they responded to their own antagonism with a dismissive lack of engagement.
The only other "trolling" they did just seemed to be being anti-Democratic when a lot of people don't like that and think it requires response. It's hard to imagine how someone could express those (presumed) views in a way that wouldn't be considered trolling by them. If this was /c/democrats, that could definitely be considered trolling, but /c/politics isn't organized as a fan club.