Wednesday, August 18, 2004
(1:24 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Internet Trolling: A Virtual Symposium
Today, I'd like to take a minute to reflect on the phenomenon of Internet trolling. As many of you know, we have had a fairly persistent troll here at The Weblog for the last couple months. Being the ruthless hegemon that I am, and given my penchant for forming relationships with other bloggers only with an eye to their potential benefit to my blog, I "poached" an enterprising troll by the nom de troll of Hindustani from BreyLog. I formally welcomed him as a commenter, hoping for "a long and productive blogger/troll relationship."So far, he has performed admirably. He has picked fights primarily with Anthony, Brey, and Dave, and I'll be honest -- I always chuckle when I read the name "Dave the Earnest." I was especially pleased when he changed his name, a classic trolling behavior. Finally, I think we're fortunate that Paul is an Indian, anti-Christian, anti-American troll, rather than the generic right-wing troll. I think that's just part and parcel of the unique perspective that everyone has come to expect from The Weblog.
I'm sure that some of my fellow commenters are more or less "sincerely" pissed off at him for his general trolliness, but I feel like if we could all go down to the pub and have a pint, we'd be good buddies in no time. Honestly, I have trouble getting mad at people or staying mad, and I have trouble believing that people stay mad at me (indeed, even think about me when I'm not around). I have a bit of a reputation as a skilled penetrator of awkwardness; my main technique is to talk to people with whom I should be awkward, as though nothing had happened.
Calvin said that one should address every person as though she were one of the elect, and that's the kind of radical hospitality that I try to cultivate in my personal life -- even toward people who are "officially" my enemies. So I say that even if he is a racist, or even if he's not technically a racist but speaks in broad overgeneralizations about Americans (who now number at about 300 million) or Christians (2 billion), and even if he seems to be a rude person in general, maybe it's still kind of fun to have Paul/Hindustani around, at least in terms of artificially inflating the number of comments here and giving people a reason to come back more often.
Since this is a virtual symposium, preferably you would be drinking wine while commenting, or looking at a web site about wine. In fact, here's a picture of a glass of wine:
To conclude: Jacob Javitz, I'd like to thank you for everything, primarily your glass house.
