This is such a great topic I got wrapped up in reading the posts and this ended up being a two-parter.
What I originally came here to ask is about quoting from an external source (ie. not another BBS comment or original post). I know how to bracket a quote to make it appear as one, but how do I create a link within an external quote so that when a reader clicks on the quote it can take them to the source, or at least reveal it?
For example, on this post I grabbed a quote from the linked WaPo article. Is there a way to make that “live”?
Sorry if this has been discussed before, but this is a long thread and I didn’t see anything specific.
Yeah, it’s kind of amazing the reach and longevity bOing bOing has. Years ago when I was still struggling with Facebook and asking myself why I was bothering to post comments when the trollies would inevitably come shit everything up it occurred to me; for every t.r.o.l.l, there are multitudes of lurkers who never interact, either because they’re shy, don’t have a login or just can’t be bothered. The post that really made me question this was some anti-LGBTQ+ rubbish masked as concern t.r.o.l.l.i.n.g for children. It was frustrating screaming into the void, but then I looked at my friends list and realized that I wasn’t really responding to the t.r.o.l.l.s per se, but on behalf of all of my real friends who aren’t inclined to speak up for various reasons. One time it even had an impact (maybe). Years ago some random dude posted some BS about what “real bravery” looks like in response to Caitlyn Jenner coming out as trans using this picture as an illustration:
Which is so richly ironic that it almost seemed like a setup. Mark Hogancamp (who is a local I happened to have just met at the time), is an artist who was beaten nearly to death by anti-trans bigots for daring to admit he wore women’s clothes. His self-directed therapy was creating these extensive dioramas of a fictional town in the Netherlands (I think?) during WWII using Barbie and GI Joe dolls and scale models (there have been two films made about his art). Amazingly, the poster responded with a mea culpa and apology and a promise to learn more about Mark and his struggles. Now, I’m not saying that it was my post that convinced him as there were hundreds, but it was one of the earlier ones and the only one I saw with links to Mark’s artwork and statistics about anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ violence (note: I do not know how Mark identifies). It was amazing to see such a humble response, but it was even better to think about all of the people who would only see it in passing and be positively impacted by the exchange.
That’s why I post here half the time; to share information, support, encouragement, empathy or clarifications that might benefit some reader I’ll never even interact with.
ETA: Got got by the BBS t.r.o.l.l ban. One of them even came out as “driving trollies”, ha!
