Is there a reason?
Oct 18, 2009 by
libjpn
The ObWi spoofer dropped in here and here's what he said, if you missed it.
[i]Hey all, it's Christian Weston Chandler. I'm going to troll someplace new for a while, so you don't have to worry about me. Reading all 151 comments about me was hilarious. Glad to see you paid such close attention to my trolling. I voluntarily identified all my sockpuppets to the kitten because I really am serious about not trolling ObiWi, at least for a while.[/i]
While the truce is appreciated, I keep asking why? Other instances of sock-puppeting usually have specific purposes. Mary Rosh and Sprezzatura were devoted to supporting the real life person behind them. I don't really have any idea of what CWC actually supported that required him to produce at least 2 sock-puppets. There was also no character development, no personalization to make this like some sort of one-man show. The ObWi community is not like some community devoted to sniffiing out frauds, so it's not like playing to a skeptical audience in order to fool them and reveal what dupes they are. It's like revelling in the ability to convince a person sitting next to you on the plane that you are from Arizona, not from Utah. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems that there is no skill at all involved.
Any further speculation I would make would be rather unflattering, so I hope he can enlighten us in the comments. My questions are as follows:
- Why sockpuppet?
- Why is it hilarious?
- Why are you serious about not trolling ObWi now?
- What have you proved by pulling off this?
These are serious questions. I really don't see what makes this a good use of time and a hilarious pursuit. I hope that CWC can put forward his own reasons before people speculate on what they may be. And with that, I await your response.
Comments
Oct 18, 2009, 22:04:12 russell wrote:
My two cents:
I don't wake up every day wondering what I can do to entertain Christian Weston Chandler.
He's a rude creep and I'm glad to see the back of him. I'm not particularly interested in his reasons for jerking the rest of us around, because it's hard for me to imagine that any of them are good.
Bye bye Christian, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Oct 19, 2009, 02:53:56 JayS wrote:
LJ,
Do you really expect an honest answer? Even if this person understands himself, I doubt he would respond truthfully.
Time to move on.
Oct 19, 2009, 03:40:29 matttbastard wrote:
Yeah, no more feeding (although I do encourage everyone to google the CWC handle. The results are...well, just google it).
Oct 19, 2009, 04:02:55 JayS wrote:
I'd advise people to take a pass on the google.
Given the sock puppetry, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a manufactured persona, or perhaps a real one that has been hijacked and amplified. Hits may be another way to feed the troll.
But feel free to exercise your own judgment. Be warned that some of this is NSFW.
Oct 19, 2009, 04:31:10 Turbulence wrote:
LJ, I share your curiosity about what motivates this guy. It really does seem inexplicable to me.
Oct 19, 2009, 08:06:46 libjpn wrote:
JayS,
Any explanation would be interesting. Like I said, any explanation I could offer really would not put this person in a good light, but whoever is doing it obviously thinks it is a good thing or they wouldn't be doing it, so it would interesting to see how they justify it.
Oct 19, 2009, 12:19:15 JayS wrote:
"Any explanation would be interesting."
I doubt that very much. If you get a response, it is more likely to be mocking vitriol. If any explanation is offered it is likely to be a trite one from the generic con artist's self justification short list(it served the self righteous bastards right, or they need to learn not to trust people, etc.), and will probably be false.
But what ever makes your socks roll up and down.
Oct 20, 2009, 02:17:30 ChrisChandler wrote:
I did it because I have autism.
Oct 20, 2009, 04:13:59 russell wrote:
troll is hungry. let him starve.
Oct 20, 2009, 04:45:46 Slartibartfast wrote:
russell says even more stuff I vehemently agree wit
Oct 20, 2009, 20:27:24 marbel wrote:
Everybody wants attention and if you aren't able to get positive attention you crave for negative attention. Fairly well known concept in child-raising but most grow over it ;)
The short explanation is: People get emotional about me so I not only exist but am important. For the longer explanation I'll cut and paste from a parenting website:
[quote]Say my name. It's been said that people love hearing the sound of their own names. When you hear your name spoken aloud, it's a tiny manifestation that you exist. You belong in the world. You're acknowledged. So I imagine that if little Johnny is hearing, "Johnny! Quit that! Johnny! Did you hear me? Johnny! I mean it! Johnny! Stop that NOW! Johnny. . ." then little Johnny is certain to know he's alive. That's a lot of validation.
You say tomato, I say tom-ah-to. Conflict is stimulating. Perhaps these kids secretly feel some delight that a little bit of controversy is brewing. Think about it-human beings love debates. On television, we crave the scandals. We like the news programs where two "experts" hash it out. We like to watch presidential candidates squirm in the hot seat. Maybe a little dispute with mom and dad provides some well-needed intellectual stimulation.
Power to the people. Provoking others and causing upset is a manifestation of power. If Susie has the ability to get her siblings up in arms, and has ruined or changed the family outing because of her actions, that's a lot of influence she has on her world. In her view, she must truly be an important individual to have so much power. There must be real satisfaction in that.[/quote]
Oct 21, 2009, 03:11:34 JayS wrote:
Marbel,
How often is Johnny self aware and able and willing to articulate his motivation?
Speaking of motivations, here's a real [url=http://jonathanturley.org/2...]deadly troll[/url] that makes ours look tame.
Oct 21, 2009, 05:02:18 marbel wrote:
@JayS:
firstly: the question was about motivation, not about execution. And even when you take execution into the equation most kids can articulate their motivation quite eloquently, even if it is not accurately or even logically for the more experienced mind. Mine are 7, 9 and 11 and I've had complaints about their singlemindedness in discussions from teachers as from when the oldest was 4...
secondly: I'm not sure your example would be called a troll in the most widely used sense. Appearantly he wants to convince people to do something bad (wether his methods actually work is another discussion) and tries to get them to do it by telling them the best way to do it. That is not the same as going around discussion boards trying to make people angry and stirring things up.
Oct 21, 2009, 06:05:03 JanieM wrote:
A little story about kids and articulating motivation:
When my kids were little there was a boy who played at our house a lot while his dad played basketball in our barn. One day when this boy was 5 years old I drove him home. He was in the back seat of the car with my kids, one of whom had just started to take violin lessons. The little boy said that he was going to ask his parents if he could take violin lessons too. One of my kids asked, "What if they say no?"
He said, "I'll just cry until they say yes."
Oct 21, 2009, 09:06:54 JayS wrote:
The wikipedia internet troll [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...]definition[/url] seems to include my example.
"It is thought to be a truncation of the phrase trolling for suckers, itself derived from the fishing technique of slowly dragging bait through water, known as trolling. The word also evokes the trolls portrayed in Scandinavian folklore and children's tales as they are often creatures bent on mischief and wickedness."
I'll grant it's general usage is different. I didn't really think of it as trolling until the article used the term. After some consideration, I thought it was apt.
Thanks for the info about kids understanding their motivation. I don't have much personal experience to draw on. It was not a rhetorical question. I'm not sure I understand the how "not accurately or even logically for the more experienced mind" fits with "eloquently", but I think it supports my assumption that asking the troll his motivation is unlikely to be enlightening.
Oct 24, 2009, 07:17:05 justinslot wrote:
Is this "Jennifer Hoss" entity legit? I mean she immediately generated a fairly obvious threadjack. (Facebook is blocked at work so I can't check and see if somebody randomly appropriated a Facebook account and started trolling.)
Oct 24, 2009, 23:46:36 libjpn wrote:
I'm pretty dubious. The argument is a little too neat and self contained.
Oct 28, 2009, 05:25:38 ChrisChandler wrote:
Hey guys I'm back!
Oct 28, 2009, 06:57:22 Slartibartfast wrote:
*yawn*
Oct 30, 2009, 05:18:46 Ugh wrote:
it is kind of sad that someone's sole purpose in life is to be a dick on the internet.
Oct 30, 2009, 22:57:38 ChrisChandler wrote:
With publius down, the trolls may win this war.
Oct 31, 2009, 01:58:52 Slartibartfast wrote:
Nah. I do most of the policing.
And I'm not at all tired or discouraged. In this matter, my patience is nearly boundless.
Oct 31, 2009, 02:40:02 ChrisChandler wrote:
Yeah, but you're not very good at it. More to the point, your traffic will go down. New people won't come. If they do, you'll end up banning them. Eventually the blog will die. Trolls win!
Oct 31, 2009, 02:40:06 ChrisChandler wrote:
Yeah, but you're not very good at it. More to the point, your traffic will go down. New people won't come. If they do, you'll end up banning them. Eventually the blog will die. Trolls win!
Oct 31, 2009, 02:41:27 ChrisChandler wrote:
I think we both know Lindsay Beyerstein can't sustain the blog, whether you want to admit it or not.
Oct 31, 2009, 06:52:06 libjpn wrote:
Hmmm, someone has a fixation about Lindsay. But I think the trolling started when Hilzoy was around, but because Lindsay came on board, she became the target? That suggests some problems with any articulate intelligent female.
Oct 31, 2009, 07:26:10 OCSteve wrote:
Well, I don’t have a stake in this anymore. OK – I do – I still skim the blog every couple of days. It’s a hard habit to break….
Tell ya’ what troll – I’ll agree with you on one thing – Lindsay was a mistake. She doesn’t post enough, her posts are often weak and just seem to be driving traffic to her blog, and she doesn’t engage in comments much. I don’t give her high marks as a front-pager. If Hilzoy is 10 and publius is 7 then she is about a 3. So, ya got us there.
But this panty fixation? Seriously? Tell you what. My wife is hot. No, I won’t share a picture. You’ll have to trust me. You can use your imagination and plug in what you like. Post your real address and I’ll send you some dirty dirty panties in exchange for just going the hell away.
You can make soup. Yum, soup…
Ass-wipe.
Nov 01, 2009, 20:55:30 Slartibartfast wrote:
[quote]Yeah, but you're not very good at it[/quote]
[quote]Yeah, but you're not very good at it[/quote]
Those would have more impact coming from someone who can keep from double-posting.
It actually doesn't matter, though, whether I'm any good at it. It's a free service, I always get my man in the end, and you've become fairly easy for the regulars to spot. Predictable, even.
Lastly, it doesn't matter what you think in this regard, because I'll still be out here, patiently cleaning up after trolls, long after you've moved on to other venues.
I haven't banned any new people that haven't earned banning the same way you have. There's no shortage of readers who aren't into trolling, fortunately, so we're not quite in this lose/lose scenario you think you've created.
Nov 01, 2009, 22:47:07 russell wrote:
I'm not interested in offering tasty snacks to trolls, but I think you might want to ask yourself what you're getting out of being a rude jerk.
I'm not interested in the answer. Treat it as a take-home exercise.
Good luck.
Nov 02, 2009, 23:33:04 Chandler wrote:
"Hmmm, someone has a fixation about Lindsay . . . That suggests some problems with any articulate intelligent female."
There are only two problems with your amateur psychoanalysis: 1. Lindsay is not articulate, and 2. Lindsay is not intelligent. I've got to admit Hilzoy was a good blogger. I liked trolling here because I could actually learn something at the same time. But publius? They guy was kind of a brick. He'd just recite the most obvious liberal talking points with the smug feeling that he'd said something insightful. Eric Martin is a one-trick pony, but he knows a lot about Afghanistan. Von is just a straight up idiot.
But just to show that I don't have anything against articulate, intelligent women, I want to reiterate that Slarti et al owe Jesurgislac an apology. As soon as Slarti got his badge, the first thing he did was threaten Jes and defend my trolls against her. I thought that was pretty funny.
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