If we count USENET (and of course we do), I’ve been active on social media for over 25 years, and now, finally, someone explains the mentality of those asshole trolls. This is required watching for anyone who has gotten exasperated with those annoying ‘online debaters’ who have evolved into Kekistanis and Trumpsters and other odious labels.
It is helpful to realize they’ve got no substance behind them, and they’re really just here to entertain themselves by throwing gravel in the works.
“If you upset a feminist, she might cry. If you upset a nazi, he might stab you.”
This is basically what I’ve been saying since Charlottesville. It was the Tiki torches that stood out to me: How, in the era that they wanted to bring back, they could have gone into the woods, got some sticks and pitch, and made real torches; and with the Internet they could share the DIY deets – but instead they went to Walmart and traded their balls for Tiki torches.
These guys are TERRIFIED of being hurt. Oh, they’ll kill for their ideology – but they won’t die for it. Half of the hew and cry about “leftwing violence” is to justify what they want to do to us – the other half is to make sure we police ourselves and don’t fight back.
Maybe evening that out to “feminists might stab you, too” won’t work for everyone on our side but we can at least make it “feminists might get you fired and run out of every restaurant in town”.
Hatpins
@2 Well sh1t Hatpins .
I kinda thought “asshole trolls” was a sufficient insight all by itself.
I would like to hereby recommend Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right by Elizabeth Sandifer. It’s a fantastic book, and I’m not just saying that because my name’s in the first sentence.
It answers the question “what is wrong with these people?” The answer: a combination of anti-empathy, and deep, deep weaponised stupidity.
The book’s on Libgen – the author says the most ethical thing to do is download it from Libgen free, and also buy the paperback. But feel free to skip the second step until you’ve enjoyed the first.
The Stanislavski Opinion concept meshes pretty well with what I have seen of the right: many beliefs are held but only one at a time, so that none of the numerous contradictions are ever noticed.
I have in the past person to person face to face took what always turns out to be a long time to painstakingly go through what ever subject the reactionary fool is going on about to get them to see the contradictions and irrational root of what they are proposing but i seldom engage in that sort of thing any more. It is just to difficult to keep them on the subject at hand and does no good anyway and is in the end to boring to be worth the effort.
uncle frogy
Interestingly, I myself got both this video and the previously-featured Ramsay video, so it’s probably time to reset my cookies for YouTube.
Anyway, being a certified asshole, I certainly recognised myself in that video. Much of that applies to me. I do like to argue for argument’s sake, and I do like to not be wrong when I do so. Actual beliefs are irrelevant to that activity.
I do credit Dan Fincke (of Camels with Hammers) for helping me realise I could use my assholish abilities for good, rather than for evil.
—
Not directly related, but empathy is just another tool in the toolkit. It most certainly doesn’t entail “niceness” — the better one can apprehend what others feel, the better one can use that either to comfort or discomfort them, and the crueler one can be.
—
Holms:
There’s a difference between internally-contradictory (perceived) beliefs and serially-contradictory beliefs. Or: any given arguments stand on their own merits.
(Also, cf. alief)
To me, it has always seemed that part of the problem is how much our media glorifies this kind of behaviour with the likes of House MD, Dexter and Sherlock. Making people think that there is something special about being a prick. There isnt.
People seem to revel in the identity of being an asshole “but right” (they usually arent) as some sort of armour for their self image. What they forget is that one can be a good person and also right.
harryblack, you do tempt me.
What’s glorified about them is that they’re hyper-competent, exceptional people.
They really are special in their respective fictional worlds.
(And I doubt Dexter belongs in the same category as those others; he was ostensibly a nice guy, not a prick — at least to those who didn’t end up in his execution rooms)
Informative — about you.
And one can be a good person and also wrong.
(“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”)
Yes, but the serial nature of the contradictory positions shields each from that person’s own knowledge of the weakness of said position.
#10
I think his larger point was that people use their belief in their correctness as justification for being a total arsehole. A point with which I agree, I have seen it many times.
Holms, :)
A total arsehole needs no justification; if they did, they would be less-than-totally arseholish. That’s one reason I quoted the claim regarding the supposed salvaging of one’s self-image, and intimated it was projective.
I’ve said this before somewhere. I’m looking forward to the development of troll sinks. Instead of just banning trolls, which only sends them to pester someone else, a blogger or other user could just send the troll to a facsimile site, a bot that looks like the real thing but would just be an endless examination and answer for anything the troll wants to talk about. It would be an expert system with variable commenter names. Like an infinitely patient FAQ. Worked properly a troll would stay there forever like Moriarty on the Holodeck. A FAQyou for JAQoffs.
@10- John Morales
Dexter explored interesting territory. He had sociopathic tendencies, but through Rita, their son, and Deb his empathy developed. His work exploited for the viewer a perception of justice shortfall and its cathartic remedy. And in at least one season Dexter did some pro bono social justice work against Jonny Lee Miller’s character and friends aided by Julia Stiles. The season that teamed Commander Adama/Lt. Castillo and Tom Hank’s demonic spawn explored the downsides of apocalyptic religiosity.
I’m sure.
I will continue to be “polite”, regardless of the trolls and their madness.
If i can not be polite, I am not doing it right.
Owlmirror @2: “Hatpins”.
In the early 1950s (before I started school) my father’s terrifying mother used sometimes to take me with her on various errands in her pre-war Plymouth. Once when we were on the way to Cleveland’s lakefront municipal sewage plant, to fill the trunk of her car (for free) with Cleveland’s version of Milwaukee’s famous Milorganite (many decades before environmental concerns, like those I’ve highlighted from the Wikipedia article, became widespread: I’ve survived another 65 years with whatever extra load of heavy metals I got on those occasions, but I don’t doubt there’ll be some in my ashes eventually), I asked her why she had a long hatpin stuck into the upholstery of the car roof above the window on her side. She told me that if anyone tried to hold her up at a red light, she’d blind him with it. And now I’ve learned she was part of a trend, not just a random psychopath (I mean, she was a psychopath, but this particular behavior turns out not to have been random after all).
Memory lane is a falling rock zone.
@ 17. “Memory lane is a falling rock zone.”
LOL!
Indeed, it is!!
This is one of the most profound exchanges of wisdom in comics to movie history that may be apt here (though need to rewatch video in OP):
“Bruce Wayne: [while in the underground bat cave] Targeting me won’t get their money back. I knew the mob wouldn’t go down without a fight, but this is different. They crossed the line.
Alfred Pennyworth: You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn’t fully understand.
Bruce Wayne: Criminals aren’t complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he’s after.
Alfred Pennyworth: With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that you don’t fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
Bruce Wayne: So why steal them?
Alfred Pennyworth: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn [my emphasis].”
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/quotes/qt0487470
Ironically Batman exploits that same perceived justice shortfall that Dexter does (he scratches an audience itch). And the Joker is the archtroll.
“I think his larger point was that people use their belief in their correctness as justification for being a total arsehole. A point with which I agree, I have seen it many times.”
Sort of like my observation that some people use their alcoholism as an enabler of their bad behavior.
From what I’ve observed, they more than happy to be cheerleaders, but they know they have way too much to lose by getting out there on the front lines of their so-called revolution to take back the country from those nasty liberals. I don’t even think it’s about being afraid of being hurt, they’re just scared that they will lose everything — their livelihood, their family, their homes, everything. As reactionary and aggrieved as they are, they’re too comfortable to risk losing it all.
They all want a revolution, but none of them is willing to go first.
(BTW: It’s hue and cry.)
There’s an awful lot to digest in the video, but I think I caught enough to disagree on a couple of points.
I don’t believe the contradictory positions they hold are a consciously made for the purposes of trolling, and when they dismiss criticism for holding those contradictory positions, it’s not that they know what they’re doing and just don’t care.
To a lesser or greater degree, most of these people are conspiracy theorists, and one of the defining truths about conspiracy theorists is they are perfectly happy to believe two separate conspiracies, even when they completely contradict each other. It doesn’t matter if you point out the contradiction to them, they will always find a way to delegitimize your critique, even if it’s something dumb, like shooting the messenger.
It seems pretty clear to me that the right-wing trolls have the exact same mindset as conspiracy theorists. They have ultimate confidence in the rectitude of their position, no matter what it is at the moment, and when challenged on their contradictions, they don’t care, but it’s not because they know and they don’t care, it’s because they don’t care to know.
Like conspiracy theorists, they simply reject the possibility they are wrong because they have so much time and effort invested in believing they are right. It’s not even a conscious thing in most cases.
Unfortunately, that means we’re not only dealing with nasty people, we’re dealing with nasty delusional people, making it all but impossible to deal with them on a rational basis.
@Gerard #5: Thank you for the recommendation. I was hooked halfway through the introduction;
“This brings us to our second relatively uninteresting question, which is what to do about the alt-right. In this case the answer is even easier and more obvious than the first: you smash their bases of power, with violent resistance if necessary. If you want a more general solution that also takes care of the factors that led to a bunch of idiot racists being emboldened in the first place you drag all the billionaires out of their houses and put their heads on spikes.”
Thank goodness I have a “no coffee at the desk” policy or I’d need a new keyboard.
@John Morales
I figure the problem with characters like Sherlock, House, Rick etc. is that insecure young men see them and conclude that, since geniuses are apparently cynical assholes, acting like a cynical asshole will make them look like a genius.
The character’s assholery (even when the show deconstructs and condemns it) is treated as inextricably linked to what makes them special and smart. Which is good drama, but a dangerous message to send to self-absorbed jerks.
Giliell #24
Stunning, isn’t it! It’s almost as though there’s a faint glimmer of self-awareness there in Holms which means they instantly recognise the process, but consciously attributing that motive to themselves is a step too far.
Or else just trolling and this is a taunt. Hard to say which by this stage.
I have tended toward a Conan the Contrarian approach myself. It’s not truth as democracy, but maybe akin to marketplace of ideas. Or at least ideas compete and ideally truth (as correspondence) is the ultimate arbiter of success and to avoid confirmation bias one must focus on the negative aspects. But this is in a spirit of Popperian defeasibility, not 4chan cauldron of the most outrageous possible talking points. My experience though is people dislike gadflies as Socrates took hemlock. Also skeptic negativism can translate to disconfirmation bias when it’s an idea one reflexively hates, such as global warming or evolution.
If I understand the video the contrarians aren’t particularly interested in truth as correspondence (Moops vs Moors) nor internal consistency (arguing from fiscal responsibility against public assistance while supporting huge defense budgets). But maybe it’s not about watching the world burn? Still haven’t fully digested the video.
Looking at the post title, I keep thinking of another word . . .
The Trollery Problem
You are in an online argument, and you wish to sneer at your interlocutor. Do you do this in a way that only insults and embarrasses them specifically, or do you pull the switch and unleash bigoted slurs against at least five groups, such as nonwhites, the disabled, women, homosexuals, and Jews?
Tinkerer @#26
Amazing, and it really doesn’t matter which of those is true, Holms fits the bill.
So the contrarians aren’t concerned with correspondence or consistency? They flit through a collection of insincerely held positions merely to trigger opponents (the libs) but aren’t just nihilistically (damn mobile “keyboard”) setting fire to it all. They feign concern with freedoms of religion and expression, yet target Muslims and trans people, betraying ideological insincerity as they set fire to the parts of the world they reflexively hate because a deep clinging to traditional values or self-serving status quo? Is that a fair take on the video?
@tacitus (22)
To be fair, the dude does say that while assuming that the person with whom you are arguing believes in nothing except winning, that they’re doing all of this intentionally to screw with you (and know that they are doing so as they do it, but don’t care), will get you a lot of mileage in terms of effectively engaging with these people, it’s not capital T true.
A little later on however, he says one of the Truest things I have heard in a long time: “so much of conservative rhetoric is (about) maintaining ignorance of one’s own beliefs. As American conservatism gets more radical, it gets harder to square one’s politics with what one assumes to be one’s beliefs, so you learn, when someone challenges you, to cycle through beliefs until something sticks. Just play your hand, and trust that you’re right.”
So an unwavering belief in your own rationality is in fact the first thing to happen in this chicken-and-egg problem. One can engage in the cognitive dissonance associated with the postmodern right, and be a total douche because it’s fun, but you do actually hold some things to be true. It’s just that you are not self-aware or smart enough to know that you are being self-contradictory, since you start with the premise that if you believe it, it must be true.
Hmm, well that’s the dilemma among certain postmodern expressions. Something is true if you want it to be true. History ends here. We make our own reality. Reality has a left-wing bias. And, oh yeah, just soldiers following orders that only their betters can understand properly.
It’s not turtles all the way down. It’s Trump the Uber-Troll and malignant solipsism all the way down.
Ultimately it’s a war on reason. IMAO.
@23
I do not know how that was meant but on the face of it it wont work.
if you want to really reduce the effect of the alt-right I would strike at the root on which it grows. Economic insecurity when people are more prosperous and secure crime rates go down I would also suggest that drug addiction and political unrest would also tend to be diminished as well. that alone will not prevent some who hold deep seated prejudice and resentments relinquish them nothing less then long term psychotherapy may do that but their ability to gain power and influence followers would be diminished by wide spread prosperity not the phony kind we are told we have now.
That same kind of prosperity and security would go a long way to bringing peace to the middle east and the entire islamic world.
uncle frogy
@John Morales insight into other people’s emotions is not empathy.
Experiencing other people’s emotions is empathy. Walking a mile in their shoes.
It is necessarily a simulation of their emotional state but it is experienced by the empathise as real emotion as if it was happening to them.
@34 DanDare
Could someone walk a mile in someone’s shoes to enjoy their pain (sadistic schadenfreude) even more? Or could theory of mind and emotional coupling be helpful when exploiting someone? Sociopathy is often thought as lack of empathy but maybe more-so disregard or lack of fear of consequence.
This link could be mistaken but it dovetails with what I’m saying:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201505/empathy-vs-sympathy
“Conversely, psychopaths with absolutely no sympathy for their victims can nonetheless make use of empathy to snare or torture them.”
I view car sales people as opportune sociopaths that situationally turn on their exploitive skillset and can empathically mirror their victims to topple their defenses.
In the above cited article compassion is a different thing and more humane.
“Compassion (‘suffering with’) is more engaged than simple empathy, and is associated with an active desire to alleviate the suffering of its object. With empathy, I share your emotions; with compassion I not only share your emotions but also elevate them into a universal and transcending experience. Compassion, which builds upon empathy, is one of the main motivators of altruism.”
#24
Hello, exact person I was referencing!
Welp, there goes the “Holms has any self-awareness” hypothesis.
#37
Additional person I had in mind, hello to you too!
And Holms triples down on the own-goal.
C’mon, you cannot possibly be that fucking oblivious.
Interesting article by a professor of philosophy of language on the right-wing use of language and the basic goal of making abhorrent ideas respectable:
#39
Has double down / triple down lost all meaning?
No, but your credibility has.
It’s so nice that we have all become mere numbers, isn’t it?
Because only people get names, right, Holms?
#43
You truly are stretching.
Nope.