Online outrage gives us a socially acceptable outlet for sadism. The lynch mob instinct is strong. http://t.co/REIkxpp7Br
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) December 23, 2014
I wore an onion on my belt, as was the fashion at that time. A little nostalgia from Emmett Rensin, at Vox:
Because I was 16 and because I was angry, too readily bored and too easily lonely, and because I wanted very badly to be accepted by anyone at all, I once spent the better part of an October weekend doing nitrous oxide in a San Diego hotel suite with a dozen or so hackers and internet trolls.
My presence wasn’t some freak happening. It was the result of some two years I’d spent running in trolling circles: an affiliate of Bantown, a sometimes-member of 4chan, and an early contributor to Encyclopedia Dramatica, the Wiki site where we documented our exploits (that is: where we documented every time we made somebody cry or scream for our own amusement). I wasn’t a hacker. I didn’t have the technical know-how for much of that. But I compensated for this deficiency with an over-abundance of juvenile sociopathic impulse. I was one of them, or at least I had the company t-shirt (bright yellow; red, MS-Paint style star with a missing pixel; ‘LOL DONGS’ printed across the front)…
Trolling isn’t quite so David vs. Goliath anymore. If it was adolescent then, more mean-spirited fun than outright malice, it is now a frighteningly adult enterprise where the joke is lost somewhere amid the sexual harassment and death threats. What began as the occasional doxxing of a Tumblr user or the occasional angry 4chan /b/ post leading to the uncoordinated harassment of a social justice blogger has grown into a series of ever more serious and well-organized public attacks…
For all of my desire to complicate the trolling narrative, to insist that at one time our motives were permissible if not strictly noble, to suggest that it was fun and harmless and surprisingly diverse, trolling as an impulse has always been largely the domain of white men — and especially of those acutely aware of a world where the theoretical foundation of their inherited power is crumbling. They — we — are all anxious. The difference is in how we cope. This fear does not deserve pity, nor does it take priority over the far deeper worries of the genuinely maligned, but there is something explicable in this alienation. It’s worth having a little bit of empathy if you want to understand where these people came from. Ten years ago, the worry was easily enough ignored: displaced into pranks and jokes and insistence on being above it all, somehow outside both systems, crumbling and ascendant. Trolling was escapism; a denial of one’s place as part of a threatening world by way of imagining a troll as its incidental trickster, here to expose all vanities in equal measure. Today’s so-called trolling is the opposite: it is an explicit part of these power dynamics; a reactionary force desperate to stop the world from changing in this way.
It’s why trolling isn’t really trolling anymore. The motive isn’t sublimated. The rage is bare. Trolls don’t expose the vanities of the world these days; the world exposes the vanity of trolls. I don’t know if it will ever go back to how it was…
Face
4chan is a hacker group? I had no idea.
Joel
I eagerly await thoughts from our resident trolls.
Violet
Sounds like the troll version of “Back in my day music was real.” An adult pining for the fun he had as a kid.
c u n d gulag
Ah, just what this weekend was missing!
The remembrances of trolling things past, from an aging but still emotionally stunted sociopathic troll.
You were a douche-canoe then.
You’re a douche-canoe now.
Just an older, douche-canoe, not a wiser one.
You were one of the ones who lit the path for the truly psychopathic and fear and hate filled angry trolls.
Baud
I’m surprised to hear that people with power would exploit such a noble pursuit as trolling for their own agenda.
brantl
This was the way it always was, trolls didn’t show any wit, they just attacked with ad hominem arguments. What genius was there in that?
lamh36
Watching old episodes of Roseanne and I don’t know who remembers, but she had that one daughter to was dating that one really douchey guy. Who I supposed to be a “rebel” I guess.
Man, I’m feeling like an old lady right now cause I can’t bring myself to even laugh at the episode cause the guy was so disrepectufl to the Conners and don’t even get me started on the daughter…ugh.
I know, I know, it’s a tv show, but geez, I had the same problem with the last Transformers movie with Mark Walhberg (among other problems). Mark played the father of the hot chick-Megan Fox-replacment. The boyfriend in that movie just was so disrepectful to the father of his girlfriend, that I swear, it pissed me off more than the crappiness of the movie itself.
Ugh, does that mean I’m becoming that old “get off my lawn” person? Shoot I”m only 38 and not 40 YET!
Lee Rudolph
Speaking of trolling, here’s the last sentence of Krugthulhu’s latest blog post: “Does the WaPo mind being used as a platform for deliberately deceptive innuendo, with some plain old falsehoods thrown in for good measure?”
lamh36
Oh, and OMG!!! how’d I miss this!
Nobody told me SHELDON SAID I LOVE YOU TO AMY!!!!
http://youtu.be/GSFaHOhjKB8
I admit, I’d stop recording Big Bang Theory, but I do like to stay up on it.
mai naem mobile
This wasn’t exactly trolling but tbogg had that guy George Tierney a couple of years ago who got the internet treatment. Anyhow, I did the Google searches for Tierney as per tradition etc. A few days later he was essentially begging for forgiveness and all,well most, had a big laugh about it. Tbogg was decent enough to state that that was the end of it, no more mention of Tierney. I was talking to a friend about it and laughing about it initially but as I continued with the tale I kind of realized it really wasn’t funny and my friend didn’t find it particularly funny either. Its just so easy to say nasty stuff under a pseudonym that you would probably never say to somebody IRL. And Tierney was saying some pretty awful stuff himself.
Bob In Portland
And speaking of trolling, as I’ve been designated a troll here, here is the reason why the US has spent 35 years, trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in Afghanistan instead of, say, on education or infrastructure here in the US.
Not bin Laden.
Or maybe it’s about purple fingers on election day.
Bob In Portland
@Violet: Or, “I went to Woodstock!”
Helen
@mai naem mobile:
I have to disagree with everything but your last sentence. George Tierney deserved every single thing he got.
He was not being trolled. He was being held responsible for his reprehensible behavior.
hilts
The People and the Police: Oakland
This 1974 KRON-TV program investigates the history of police brutality in Oakland, California, and documents a variety of efforts to reform the department, including the practice of audio recording interactions with the public.
h/t http://www.c-span.org/video/?323299-1/1974-film-people-police-oakland
Baud
@Violet:
Heh. That describes at least half of the regular commenters here.
Doug r
Who needs trolls when you’ve got rttv?
Anne Laurie
@mai naem mobile: Ah, yes, that George Tierney. (Shout-out, BettyC!) That was 2012, before Twitter became the internet force it is now — as you say, once TBogg pointed out us rude bloggers had made our point, everyone pretty much dropped it. No SWATting, no death threats, no sending mobs of angry randos to harass every other misspelling-of-George-Tierney innocent with a web presence… the “good” old days…
srv
I blame DougJ
Schlemazel
Someone should save that link & post it in response to the trolls that appear here. Nothing else, just that link.
Howard Beale IV
Read the article; talked about weev doing nitrous hits at the conference they were at. weev has become a full-time Alex Jones-like bitcoin-using white nationalist hiding out in Lebanon, with talk about using drones to assassinate federal agents.
Mister Harvest
I had someone threatening to set fire to my cat in 1996. No, it wasn’t ever just for the lulz.
Villago Delenda Est
What is amusing about that entire thing is the notion that this is a bunch of white guys in fear of losing their “ascendancy” in society. Guys…it was an illusion in the first place. It’s the entire “at least we have a sparrow to roast” thing writ large.
I know I’m a dreamer, but someday I’d like there to be an actual meritocracy where how much money your family has, or who your parents are (I’m looking at you, Chelsea Clinton, the Bush twins and most assuredly Luke Russert) isn’t a measure of merit.
srv
Such a vapid reimagining of the past. Ten years ago, this site and the blogosphere was a shitheap of Bush cocksucking and Truthers.
You righteous surrender monkeys, you’re welcome.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
You’re not the only one.
Pogonip
Mom had 10 (so far) wigs. A couple of months ago the news talked about helping cancer patients, including donating wigs, constantly. Since she died–not a peep. Is there a particularly good wig-donation program? I don’t mind mailing them. They don’t have the foam heads, just the wigs; the recipient would have to furnish her own head (so to speak).
Schlemazel
@Anne Laurie:
Crap, I had forgotten all about George Tierney of Greenville North Carolina. I wonder if he really learned anything from the experience? Does he now say the same evil stuff but only at the clubhouse with other douchebags? Does he add what a vicious pack of jackals internet liberals are? Does he post this sewage under a pseudonym now? It would be nice to believe he actually had a change of heart but that would be a bigger miracle than Scrooge’s and I have never witnessed a miracle so I am skeptical.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Now THAT was music!
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
@lamh36:
I used to be a big Shamy fan, but I got tired of how he treated her. His cluelessness has worn off and he irritates me now.
Schlemazel
@Baud:
I hope some day to join you so you’re not the only one.
with apologies to Mr. Ono
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
Here’s some info from the American Cancer Society — it looks like they have a program you can donate them to. If you want to stay local, you can call your local hospital and see if they have a program.
Violet
@Pogonip: I just googled “wig donation program” and a whole bunch of links popped up. The first one was the American Cancer Society, so I’d think they were reputable. There’s probably something near you or certainly you could donate by mailing them.
Edit: This looks like a good program: http://thewigexchange.org/donors/. When the recipient is done using it, they return it for someone else to use.
Schlemazel
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):
The guy would have no friends. There have been a couple of episodes where they try to show why people would be willing to put up with his abuse but it really goes beyond belief, even for a sit-com
Mnemosyne
Also, too, when people say that “script kiddies” did the Sony hack, these are the kinds of people I picture doing it, which is why I keep discounting the idea. I really don’t see why a 16-year-old suburbanite would bother to release a list of everyone who’s been laid off or fired from Sony Pictures Entertainment in the last year, but I can see why a disgruntled ex-employee might do it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
From the title, I thought this was gonna be a drive by from Doug J. Post Xmas music or some such.
Another Holocene Human
Some people troll because they want attention. 13 was a long time ago for me and I don’t really understand 4chan culture, the sublimation into something bigger than yourself and the vicious knocking down of anyone taking “credit”. Back then trolling was totally about ego, attention, like a really prolific tagger in the railroad tunnel or whatever. Really annoying trolls and kooks were liable to get doxxed because Thou Shalt Not Piss Off The Sys-Admins. Usenet. Usenet was super-vulnerable but there was nothing like the web era where somebody could just say “fuck the world, I’m running a troll board” as /moot did. Or Lowtax, back when he was running a troll board on Something Awful forums. (He grew up, got sick and tired of it, and mass banned his troll hoards years ago, but yeah, he totally commanded an army of flying monkeys back in the day. It was back when guestbooks were a thing. The flying monkeys specialized in swarming those. They also would smoke servers. There was no real technical know-how … Anonymous and more sophisticated DDoS tools came later. There were also trolls, some with technical know-how in the hidden comments of Slashdot–GNAA came out of there–but I just don’t remember them doing anything more malicious than posting goatse anywhere and everywhere.)
Maybe it was the power of having automagic DDoS tools and the IRC hookup with honest-to-god blackhat hackers with no morals teaming up with shitty trolls that supercharged the trollingsplosion of the last few years. When I was a teenager you could mostly just do attention seeking stuff until somebody canceled your posts for you or banned you or whatever. It’s not that there weren’t some really really vile people out there but they were marginalized and certainly didn’t have much of a posse. The blackhat hackers kept to themselves and didn’t want to have anything to do with anybody who wasn’t a l33t h^X0r.
Power attracts the slimeballs, the malignant narcissists, the sadistic sociopaths. Trolling could make somebody cry on the other side of a computer but the power to really torment, that’s when stalkers, hackers, and trolls united, and you get a new kind of troll. The old kind of trolling was funny but sort of boring. The new kind is horror movie kind of stuff.
When I was a teenager I know that there were quite a few men who used computers to stalk exes. Sometimes it even played into murder plots. Those men would be MRAs and there were some MRA websites even then (usually stuff about how to win divorce cases or rants about family courts, the PUA thing merged later, different age group). Those kinds of evil people can now merge into the anti-SJW troll brigade when back in the 1990s they were lone wolves. You could download all kinds of freeware for PCs that would let you monitor other users computer usage undetected. Or you could get malware you could put on a diskette to trash someone else’s computer. All kinds of stuff. These vile, sadistic control freaks used to torment people close to them but now they can attack people they’ve never met and with Tor and similar things avoid local law enforcement entirely. In the olden days you needed a special contract with a scummy ISP like atti to act like an asshole for months without getting shut down.
Yeah, trolling has changed.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Today’s script kiddies download all the tools they use off IRC. They’re more likely to get 0wned themselves than pwn anybody else.
Sometimes a malicious actor will trick rubes into downloading their DDoSwarez which they will then control (zombies) while the marks think they’re doing something else.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: Goddamn I had no idea it was all that complicated!
Pogonip
Why, thank you, wiggies! I’ll go with the outfit that keeps them circulating. I like the idea of Mom helping out several times over.
raven
What about that dope that did the awful paintings that Cole bought?
lamh36
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac): I kinda like the slow evolution of Sheldon’s character though. Sheldon has always been that way for sure. They way they wrote the character of Amy is perfect for the way they wrote the character of Sheldon. Either character in real life though would be insufferable.
Pogonip
Do most people take Internet death threats seriously? I know the trolls can still frighten sheltered young SWPL ladies, but does everyone else say “Hey, look, I’ve hit the big time! I got my first death threat!”. Maybe the trolls have outwitted themselves?
Stalking by an ex, which is indeed something to take seriously, is not the thing I mean. I mean the ubiquitous death threats that every blogger gets.
Les Nessman
Never trust those anti-freeze freeze level check syringes with the little floating balls.
I bought a real anti-freeze checker, and went from -10 (little floaty balls) to -40.
Which means a lot in “Big Sky Country”.
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
I think the people who still get understandably nervous about them are people who go on lecture tours and suchlike rather than doing everything via computer. If I was getting death threats a few days before going in front of an audience of a couple hundred strangers, I would be a lot more nervous than if I was just sitting around at home because who the hell knows who has a gun in public these days?
lamh36
@efgoldman: lol. I’ve resigned myself to turning into that old person…
The thing about the character from Roseanne that really stuck in my craw, first he didn’t walk to the door to pick up the girl for the first date, he just honked his horn for like 15min. Then when he did come to the door and the girl told him her ‘rents wanted to meet him before going on their date, and he rolled his eyes and basically sucked his teeth. So then the dad offers him a seat and asks him about his car, how old he was, basically checking out the dude who’s taking out his daughter, and he responds to the father by calling him by his first name! I mean dude, if you’re meeting your GF parents for the first time, I mean wouldn’t it be common courtesy to call them by their last names until they give you permission to call them by their first?
I mean is that just a Southern thing…lol
That was my thought processes, and that is when I realized that I may be stepping into crotchedly ole lady “get off my lawn” territory….lol
Davis X. Machina
@lamh36:
Not unless you mean “South Boston”.
My mom dinned into us, “If you don’t have money, you have to have manners.”
Corner Stone
@Another Holocene Human:
Matoko, is that you?
schrodinger's cat
Trolling was a noble pursuit 10 years ago? Who knew? These days people don’t rewrite distant history but something that happened just a few years ago. We were not all born yesterday. Trolling is so mainstream now, they have their own political party.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: Makes sense to me. If I were in a position to be invited to lecture I’d do the J. D. Salinger routine and keep quiet for 50 years.
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemazel: I used to be on a fandom usenet board (these used to be the most vicious corners of the internet in terms of drama) where a group of people who totally would never consider themselves to be trolls (think middle aged Midwestern housewives) flooded the group in the late 1990s and started spamming the board with their favored pairing. (And need I mention it, being dismissive and obnoxious to everyone else.) When the regulars (hah, some of them actually were sys-admins, it was Usenet after all, but the newsgroup had been mirrored on Yahoo!Groups which I think it where the culture problems started) started gently raising their voices about the nascent ‘ship wars, a war broke out. (Just like Republicans, they could dish it out but not take it. What a coinkydink, a lot of them actually were Republicans. One even had a GWB fanpage on her website. The same website with her erotic male/male fanfic. It’s not gay if a church-going Republican granny posts it.)
So, funny story, it turns out that these same people were obnoxious gits in the pre-internet fandom networks of the early 1990s when people were mainly communicating by newsletter. The result of the war was the instigators rage-quitting the newsgroup en masse and retreating to “secret” email mailing lists. (Which failed to stay secret through the magic of morons and cross-posting. There were lulz to be had in between the drama.)
I just mention that because that’s probably where Tierney is at right now, anti-Obama email forwards, conservabot forums, maybe even Faux News comments or Yahoo comments, but with a patriotic pseudonym because Tierney Sr was probably pretty unamused by the blowback.
He’s probably on Discus right now.
schrodinger's cat
How long before Vox folds? I predict one year, tops?
Davis X. Machina
@efgoldman: I’m with Voltaire: Cela est bien dit, mais il fait cultiver nos pelouses.
Violet
@lamh36: That reminds me of an interview–I think it might have been Seth Rogen on The Daily Show–talking about how when you go back and look at movies you thought were hilarious as a kid or young adult from the 80’s or early 90’s they’re so misogynistic. Things he laughed at then he’s kind of aghast at now because it’s no longer something culturally acceptable.
Not that being polite to your girlfriend’s parents is only a 90’s thing, but the whole cultural thing has shifted. Now wouldn’t the parents have looked him up on Facebook before they allowed their daughter to go out with him? Would he even have a car? Isn’t it less of a thing for teenagers and young adults to have cars?
Violet
@schrodinger’s cat: I thought Vox was doing better than expected and it was 538 that was underwhelming.
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat:
Who is backing this vanity project? EK has fallen through the floor for me in terms of visibility. I never really cared much what he thought but I would at least see him vocally saying things. Nowadays, not so much.
Pogonip
@lamh36: I’m with you. I never liked that kid either.
I think we should unite to defend our lawns against all comers!
Fred Dickinson
So quick question to the Obama defenders here : what the fuck was Joe Biden doing at that cops funeral today? The NYPD and all cops are tools of the oppressor class, engaged in warfare with the working class and people of color -why are obstensibly “left” politicians like DeBlaso and Biden enabling them?
lamh36
Ok, so ya’ll know I’ve been hyped on Selma the movie. So I just happened to see a tweet bout it, so I checked out and so I keep up on news and such about the film.
So as I’ve said before, the movie has received 100% rave reviews. So I happened to see a review from the NRO and I figured let’s see what they said, and Lord, they gave it a thumbs up, but reading the review, it was SOOOO obvoius the writer was trying sooo hard to find fault with the movie. The write is sooo butthurt that it’s soo good, that they can’t even bring up anything in the movie itself to critic, so they basically just wrote about liberal Hollywood.
The whole article has me LMBAO. It was so obviously written in a partisan voice that it mad me think “ya’ll mad bro”…lol.
Anyway, I’m not linking it, but hey even titled the review “For Whites Only” google it if you must…it was comical the pathology…LOL
EthylEster
So I google “dox” because I have seen the term a few times but now want to know the exact definition.
According to the Urban dictionary:
WTF? The intertubes are really beginning to piss me off.
Corner Stone
@EthylEster: It means having your real life details spread out for all to associate with your online persona.
Davis X. Machina
@efgoldman: Naturellement. The lawns at Ferney were to die for.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: People like Lowtax used to write screeds on their websites about how trolling teenage girls or furries or whoever society hated and making them cry would save the internet from itself or whatever bullshit.
Lowtax is likely single-handedly responsible for a lot of the completely unhinged furry hate on the internet. For one thing he blamed the internet for furry fandom (complete bullshit) and then posited that it was the responsibility of the internet to take it out.
Another Holocene Human
@EthylEster: They’ve always been like that.
It’s Urban Dictionary so you can always downvote the definition.
Another Holocene Human
@lamh36: WaPo has a negative review by a former LBJ admin insider who felt the film manufactured drama by creating a false conflict between MLK and LBJ on the CRA. (For POTUS against civil rights movement you don’t have to go far to find the very real lack of support from Jack and Bobby Kennedy for the Freedom Ride.)
Also the reviews I’ve seen call it good but not great, and liken it to the Malcolm X movie by Spike Lee.
I was super excited about Annie. Saw it yesterday and it did not disappoint. There was a trailer for Selma. Also trailers for what looked like a lot of shit movies. Weird.
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: I see Vox getting linked a lot. I like their stylesheets and the articles are okay too. 538 is linked about never. Went to the website, was bored to tears.
I distrust everything on Pando daily but at least it doesn’t lack for drama if you’re into that sort of thing.
Another Holocene Human
@Pogonip: Email death threats by internet tough guys or doxing followed by SWATing, pizza calls, hangup phone calls, bomb threats, and all of that funtimes?
SWATing could very well get someone killed.
Plus it’s a volume thing. Most men online get occasional internet tough guy death threats but women who are out as women get crapfloods of rape/death threats so it’s psychologically more damaging.
Plus doxing is the worst thing ever unless you do it to your enemies then they deserve it.
It’s stochastic terrorism, you never know who’s actually going to go all Jared Loughner, now do you?
Another Holocene Human
@c u n d gulag: That’s true. In the early 2000s internet trolls actually had ringleaders who would opine about how crapflooding websites and email inboxes with abuse was somehow a noble cause and a lot of stupid, bored, and very, very insecure teenagers rallied to the cause.
I was a little too old for that when it was happening but I did have a ringside seat. Someone close to me actually got targeted by Something Awful forums. It was nowhere near as scary as that internet stalker she had in college who said he had a dream that she was supposed to have his babies. But it was a big deal emotionally. I was actually kind of jealous because I would have relished that kind of attention on my shitty Geocities website. We’re talking about very derpy, copy-cat trolling, not this crap going on now.
So, this, exactly. They thought they were “exposing the vanities” of furries which somethingsomething were destroying the world and the internet, herpaderp, that which I don’t understand disgusts and frightens me, but it was the other way around. They were so vain they thought their fake bravado internet tough guy act was a beacon of light in the darkness, if they only ridicule enough losers today and break their stuff. Their troll-fu was weak and they did what they were told like the unimaginative followers that they were.
wil
This is pretty ridiculous.
NotMax
Bear baiting be bear baiting.
Another Holocene Human
@Mister Harvest: I used to post provocative stuff on forums with a burner account just to see if people would respond to it. My younger brother did the same thing. I never threatened anybody and I never doxed anybody. (I did find out one of my internet nemeses’ personal infos but just had a good laugh with girlfriend about how she was posting with her real name.)
So we did it for lulz, really stupid lulz, but for lulz. But there were always, always some really dangerous and evil people online.
I stand my assertion that the blackhat world used to be pretty closed and it wasn’t until hacker tools became automated that the shitstorm really started rolling.
Back when Something Awful was a trollsite all of the dumbasses in the forums had to troll people manually. Imagine that! (Script kiddiez they were not.)
Another Holocene Human
@hilts: Thank you! Bookmarked for later.
1974!! Nothing ever fucking changes!
different-church-lady
Money quote.
lamh36
@Another Holocene Human: Not for nothing, but the actually staff movie critic review for WashPo gave the movie a rave review.
What I have been seeing alot of opinion pieces written by writers on staff at some of the mags, that aren’t actual reviews of the film itself, but pieces that were created based on aspects of the movie.
In the reviews I’ve read (from Rotten Tomatoes) Malcolm X was mentioned in passing,but not in comparison, but only as in saying that for such a meaty subject and timeframe and group of people to profile, there really hasn’t been that many feature film about many civil rights icon directly, and then they mention Malcolm X as an example of one such feature film that did was a direct biopic.
Anyway, majority of reviews have the movie on their top list of films of 2014 already.
The review at NRO though seemed like it was reviewing a movie that no one else saw. It was written as a grievance piece disguised as a movie review and was so blatant, that it was laughable.
My only complait about Annie, was that the singing was not good, but aside from that the actors and everything else I enjoyed.
different-church-lady
The Blomberg article will link you through to a Slate article which could serve as a comprehensive primer on why nobody should ever use Twitter again.
A primer that I’m sure will go utterly ignored.
PurpleGirl
@Pogonip: Google/Yahoo search terms:
Donate wigs for cancer patients
One place I found is
http://wigsforcancerpatients.com/donate.php
Or a local hospital or cancer center.
Villago Delenda Est
@different-church-lady: All one needs to know about Twitter is that Newt Gingrich loves it.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Another Holocene Human:
Since “Malcolm X” is one of the great films of the 1990s, and one of the best biopics ever made, is the comparison that “Selma” isn’t quite as good?
Doug r
@Fred Dickinson: Biden is first in line for chief executive, who is in charge of all departments, including Justice. He is also President of the Senate, part of the legislative branch. Why wouldn’t he be there?
SRW1
@Baud:
I hope some day you’ll join us.
Steeplejack
@Schlemazel:
Sheldon was the reason I didn’t get into The Big Bang Theory at first. He really grated on me. Only after a friend said it was really good did I give it a second chance. And “Sheldon being Sheldon”—the self-absorbed, demanding stuff, not the merely eccentric—is still my least favorite part of the show.
Steeplejack
@SRW1:
And the world will live as one.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Steeplejack:
Was it a millionaire who said ‘imagine no possessions’?
Les Nessman
As a site proclaimed troll, “Made it Ma! Top of the World!” #1 upstairs.
I feel…..vindicated.
Shout out to Corner Stone.
http://youtu.be/lf3mgmEdfwg
mai naem
@Anne Laurie: I am too lazy to look it up but I seem to remember there was a Catholic priest whose name was George Tierney from the same area who got nasty calls and the church had to put up a notice on their Facebook or website that he wasn’t the same George Tierney. Also, I believe his father got phone calls and his employer got calls as well. Saying crap online is one thing, taking it offline is for the most part, crossing the line for me. I know there’s a bunch of deserving regular non-famous assholes in the world, I’m just not sure they’re prepared for the shitstorm they face when they say stuff online. I just don’t want to be responsible for somebody like that committing suicide. Celebrities, I don’t really care about.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Malcolm X may be a great film but it’s not the artistic tribute that Malcolm deserves. But doesn’t it say it all that Spike Lee was the only one to try.
John Weiss
Naval gazing. Indeed. No, thanks. I did my requisite naval gazing a long time ago.
Bruce Baugh
I’m going to guess here that the people whom Rensin abused in various ways to stir up mockable anger and misery don’t look back so nostalgically on the experience, and that there’s a lot less difference in terms of the emotional harm done between his crap and Gamergate crap than he wants there to be. It reminds me of Pat Buchanan’s autobiographical reminiscences of his youthful experiences beating up cops and getting away with it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Wow, so it only took the experts, what, twenty years to figure out the people use the intertubes to look at porn and attack other people anonymously.
Speaking as a forum moderator for a long time – pure and utter bullshit. Being an internet douch isn’t limited by fricken race or gender. It may seem to this idiot all the trolls are all fucking white bois because he is a fucking white boi.
. And Jesus Christ on a pogo stick – it’s painfully obvious the feminists are just trolling the gamers. All the butt hurt ad rage from the gamers is about because they love dishing it out but can’t take it. What really sets the gamer rage in overdrive for these guys is they know they deserved to be harped on by a woman for being a self-destructive, effeminate, coach potatoe pretending they are Conan the Barbarian.
Xjmueller
@Another Holocene Human: ” former LBJ insider..”
Yes he was, but that is selling him short. He was a great secretary of HHS under Carter, and a fairly civic minded guy outside of government. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_A._Califano,_Jr. I would hate to see him thought of only as a political hack with an axe to grind.
I didn’t read his op ed yet today, but he certainly would have the LBJ administration’s perspective. I will take it with a grain of salt.