Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/24/that-time-far-right-trolls-pre.html
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How does one fight such reckless hatred?
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Can’t wait for the Scooby-Doo gang to pull off Candace Owens’ mask revealing her to actually be Jacob Wohl.
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Education and teaching critical analysis skills and internet/information literacy. You have to immunize people mentally to accepting such bullshit in the first place, then when it pops up it will seem more obviously fake. And even if it there might be some real, bad arguments out there, it’s marginal or fringe at best.
I’ve seen a bunch of fake comments pop up in debates on Reddit where people use phrases that real supporters wouldn’t use, such as, “I’m also pro-abortion, and I think…” and others don’t seem to notice that they’re arguing disingenuously.
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It’s a kind of memetic analogue to @doctorow’s adoption curve for oppressive technologies: the right-wing trolls target vulnerable and marginalised people first before expanding the campaign.
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also just for context on deep-cut-snark-note #2: (tl;dr, she was quoting a hymn, a point she made clear in the speech)
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Yeah, sometimes you see stuff online and wonder: “Is this person trolling, are they that ignorant/stupid/confused/etc?”
Like the other day I saw a post about how white people shouldn’t learn non-white languages like Spanish… Like… Spanish… SPAINish… But there are many examples people can show of fringe opinions, and some of them ARE serious. So it is actually understandable that people fall for trolls.
So, uh, I just adopt the policy that the absurd is just ignored… at least I try to ignore as to how I perceive a group of people. Crazy fringe opinions or trolling are just that and really have nothing to do with the larger issues related to them. I think people like Ben Shapiro know this is the truth too, but go ahead and counter such things because it just makes “the left” look bad.
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You flubbed that a bit. This kicked off in June 2014, per the article. Gamergate around a month or so later in August.
And a lot of what happened in both had been burbling for years. There was a massive harassment campaign after the release of Dragon Age II in 2011 that lead to a targeted writer (and a really key writer on the series) quitting the business in 2013. And small scale plagues of fake “radfem” and fake fat acceptance activists stirring shit in comment sections and on Twitter. The rise of the MRA and pickup artist guys, who were often a real space plague around NYC at the time.
I do remember this one, but it seemed to transfer so seemlessly into gamergate I just sort of connected them in my head, IIRC there were identified connections between the two in terms of who was pushing them and where they were being pushed.
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The next time you see a clown holding a rainbow flag, drinking milk, and making the OK sign while peeing himself, don’t take the bait.
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Well, that would prevent them from being right-wingers to begin with, so that would work twice over.
Pretty sure they’re just CGI / neural-net output.
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Lie about who you are in a cowardly attempt to influence public opinion, then get caught instantly because you’re too stupid and racist to fool anyone for even a single second. Most of us would consider that the humiliatingly pathetic ploy of a loser asshole with absolutely no worth to themselves or society. The far right considers it an epic win.
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It’s a win anyway, because there are enough people out there who want to hear such things and therefore want to be fooled, that it doesn’t matter if you get caught out straight away.
In my misbegotten youth, I had grand ambitions to use my own prodigious trollery to single-handedly discredit the right wing. The math worked out on paper. It was doable in my spare time.
The only flaw in the plan was that nothing I came up with shamed them, or lost them support with the people already listening. I’m pretty sure I accidentally created a few policy positions in the process.
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I fixed the typo – thanks.
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I saw one on a NYT comment thread recently, related to the coverage of human trafficking and the Florida “massage” parlors. There was thoughtful debate on the pros and cons of legalizing sex work. Then an enlightened commenter explained to us that prostitution is only illegal as a means of women maintaining their sexual power over men. Wha??!!?
There was no /s, so I guess they were serious. Nobody bothered to reply. But it did get 11 “recommends” which is…scary.
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