trinityvixen | Two things

-My internets at work are being stupid. Is anyone else having trouble with g-mail in particular? There's some script or another not working its best and I'm assuming the internets will start loading pages normally again whenever it is I fix this shit, but I hear I'm not the only one having difficulties with g-mail. Just thought I'd check

-The other thing: The problem with Poe's Law is that it's only too right.

Generally, I don't read comments on blogs unless the subject matter really gets me worked up or excited. For no reason at all, I was reading the comments to the Sadly, No! post about how much of a fuckshit Elizabeth Hasslebeck is, and I got caught up in an amusing bit of troll-baiting. (Not posting myself, just reading.) Look for a poster called "Commander of the Scottish Contingent during the First Crusade" for the start of it, if you're so inclined. Not surprisingly, this is a troll. What's even less surprising is that this troll then rolls out with a "Hah! I got you to waste your time debating pointlessly!!!" somewhere down the thread while posting as his "true" self...TheTruth. Yes, the thread should have avoided baiting the troll. I enjoyed the irony of the troll then saying that the people responding to him are the real idiots, as if someone purposefully picking fights over ideologies he does not actually believe has a PhD in Smarty Pants.

Then this thread witnessed something similar. (Ugh, it's about tasers.) Here, the trolls are pro-tasers who like to pretend that trials that do not include operational trials of this so-called non-lethal weapon are PROOF BEYOND ALL DOUBT that tasers can't hurt anyone. I'm still waiting for either "Mike Lane" or the guy backing him up to turn out to be this Truth person.

I'm reminded of this article about trolls and how low they are. But the problem isn't necessarily that they're instigators; it's that they often instigate believably. In the threads I linked to, it's hard to believe that there isn't someone, somewhere with the sort of asshole, incredibly dickish belief stated by those posters. This is Poe's Law--no matter how nuts it seems, someone actually thinks it's true.

The problem with Poe's Law, as I see it, is that it isn't a joke. The trolls who treat it as such are laughing, but nobody else is. Because we find ourselves constantly trying to give the benefit of the doubt to even the batshit (whilst still calling them out when we think they've overstepped from Crazyville to Annhilationburg). As a consequence, not baiting trolls gets harder to do. If you ignore someone's contrary belief, you run the risk of them assuming you've ended the discussion in defeat. If you call their belief batshit, and they're serious, they assume you've lost the high ground for the ridicule. And if you try to take them seriously and talk them down from worshipping some sky fairy or another, they turn out to be dicks who weren't worth your time.

In short, Poe's Law makes it impossible to be polite on the internet. Because, almost without exception, it doesn't ever benefit the people who are polite to be so.