Newshoggers Comments
Dude. It was irony.
Indeed, how one could read the headline and "Aside from the facts that al Qaeda appears far from defeated and that the American public seems to have tired of the war effort even though Fox is the most popular network, this is some brilliant analysis" and think I was endorsing the article is beyond me.
An "aside" that undermines the entire thesis of the piece is pretty big, no?
Thanks for the update!
Unfortunately, snark is sometimes not obvious, especially out of context. I think regular readers got it because they have some sense of where I think we stand in the war.
This is why we need trolls (not flamebaiters which is a different breed.)
A troll is a huumorous piece of writing or satire designed to catch the unwary.
For example a famous troll included the definition then a dotted line saying troll starts here, then a claim that the government would require people to upload a copy of their hard drives every night then troll ends here with a prediction that people would respond.
And hundreds did, quite seriously.
A troll contains it's warnings, the poll which attracted this attention did so, the paragraph following the claim of keyboard commando victory noted the real failure.
And as happens some individuals, including intelligent individuals did not notice the details.
But details are the gist of arguments, if you don't notice these details how can you notice inconsistencies and false facts in truly sincere statements?
You become a potential victim of rhetoric and logical fallacy. The troll was a technique designed to enforce clear reading. It is loved by most "netizens," many of whom were highly educated iconclasts.
But webbies such as bloggers have tended not to want irony and satire, things that make them think critically or poke fun. Thus the hatred for trolls and the libeling of an art that would have attracted the likes of Franklin and Twain.
From wikopedia
The more likely derivation can be found in the phrase, "trolling for newbies", popularized in the early 1990s in the Usenet group, alt.folklore.urban. Commonly, what is meant is a relatively gentle inside joke by veteran users, presenting questions or topics that had been so overdone, only a new user would respond to them earnestly. Others expanded the term to include the practice of playing a seriously misinformed or deluded user, even in newsgroups where one was not a regular; these were often attempts at humor, rather than provocation. In such contexts, the noun, "troll", usually referred to an act of trolling, rather than to the author.
New users of the internet now use the word where they actually mean "flamebait".
and
In some Internet subcultures, notably Kibology, the words "troll" and "trolling" have taken on a different meaning. Instead of the aggressive invader and his (sic) loud, often abusive posts, the terms refer to someone more subtle, seeking to create a loud, indeed furious response, to a post that may be moderate and even reasonable in its tone, while pushing the victim's hot buttons. This treatment may be applied to invaders, especially cranks such as Archimedes Plutonium or George Hammond (Scientific Proof of God, not the TV character) and the loud, obnoxious, self-centered kind of invader called trolls elsewhere.
Trolling may also be done as a kind of practical joke among group members. Those who can see through such trolls quickly, and respond in kind, are held in high esteem, while those who fall for the trick may eventually be informed "YHBT"--You Have Been Tro
C,
Email me about your asthma attacks.
Asthma is what I do.
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