Re: Hello

Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
tiggy <tiggycat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

(Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

[...]

It's a planned policy: aversion therapy. I know those who abuse me
don't like to receive what they dish out, so I dish it out back to
them. Eventually, they'll give it up.

Not the best policy imo.

True, but it's the only one I've got. I'm a social cripple. I don't
understand people. I don't know how to socialise. I don't understand
social interactions. I just can't handle people much any more at all.

But what people perceive, is you being as nasty as the other nasty people,

Yes, which is slightly strange given that I'd expect anyone with
half-decent literacy levels to be able to spot that I'm only `nasty in
kind in response to nastiness aimed at me. What causes this is the
refusal of some to see the nastiness in their friends.

People are always going to disagree about who is or isn't a troll in a
newsgroup - particularly when the trolls are in any way subtle about it.

Depends on the newsgroup. The problem with this one is the low level of
sophistication of many of its posters. Most of the newsgroups I've used
have had much more sophisticated posters, and so trolls are easily
agreed upon and they don't cause trouble.

They only cause trouble when you've got idiots who reply to them a lot.
You really want to be trying to persuade others to ignore 'em, not me.
I do very little to encourage them: look at the posts. Almost all the
encouragement is done by others.

So when you harangue someone you've spotted as a troll, what other people
see is you laying into someone. That's all they see; you laying into
someone. They don't work out what your motives might be, or why you pick
on one person but not another, they just see you being nasty. That adds
to the general atmosphere of nastiness and upset, and gives the real
trolls more material to work with.

But how come people are blind to the nastiness that the trolls fling
around?

It's the usual thing - `My mates are alright, and I'll excuse anything
they do and bash anyone who critises them or has a go at them or
suchlike'.

Filthy social pattern, but there you go.

That statement is the sort that other people can interpret as 'one rule for
me and another rule for the rest of you'.

Eh? How does that work?

Are you describing what you are
doing or what you perceive others to be doing?

The latter.

The distinction might be
clear to you, but it may not be at all clear to anyone else.

I thought that the way I described it as a filthy social pattern might
have been a bit of a bleedin' obvious give-away. I assumed that there
might be indeterminacy in the minds of some given the first bit of that
quotation, which is one reason I added the second bit: to make my
meaning utterly unmistakeably clear.

Are you suggesting that I got my judgement wrong? If so, how do I learn
how to write for an audience of sub-literates?

A troll
could twist that into something very nasty.

Naturally - what of it? I've written lots. It's very easy to abstract
sentences and phrases I've used and put them together in unnatural
congress and out of context to make anything at all out of my words.

I ignore the trolls, almost entirely.

which makes you look like a nasty person and (by your own raesoning as it
will be interpreted by most people) makes it OK for anyone to be nasty to
you, so that makes more nastiness going on and more people getting hurt.

So I should just eat *** and be happy, then? Just let the bullies get
away with it? It's not just *me* they've been having a go at, is it?

I do my thing because it's not really any bother for me. But this sort
of thing does serious bother some people.

Your laying into the people you see as bullies, is just added nastiness as
far as the rest of the group is concerned. Retaliation just hurts
everyone else, not only your intended target.

For sure - in the short term.

Those who only post here to stir up the nastiness can feed off the
nastiness you post. It makes no difference why you are posting nastily,
or who you are trying to be nasty to, all that matters is the nastiness.

What's a better tactic when I see people being nasty to others?

Be nice to the people you want to be nice to and ignore the people you
don't want to be nice to. Being ignored is the one thing a troll doesn't
want. They /want/ retaliation; they thrive on it.

If you notice, almost none of the replies I make are responses to any of
the trolls. It's very rare that I even read a troll's post.

What else can I do?

Try to shrug off the nastiness, no matter who it is about or addressed to.

Why?

Because adding your own nastiness to the mix is just increasing the total
amount of nastiness going on. That is a Bad Thing, it upsets innocent
harmless people - and feeds the trolls.

But it does not increase the total nastiness in the long term that I've
seen. I've persuaded Chrissy/Val to stop being nasty to me, for
example, and used2be is back and not being anything like as repellent in
her posts.

Concentrate on trying to be helpful to those you think you might be able
to help, or entertaining or or amusing or sympthetic or anoy of the othe
positive things you are capable of at any given moment.

Negativity just breeds more negativity.

Which is why I want it stopped.

But you cannot stop it by adding to it.

Are you sure?

I've put Chrissy/Val off her nasty barrage of posts directed at me,
haven't I?

Unfortunately the main casualty is support.
It just turns the group into one big flame war.

`Support' goes as soon as the first nastiness gets posted - I'm not
helping in the short term, but I'm not the one who threw away the idea
of support in this newsgroup. I take the line that if these shits are
trying to make the newsgroup unsupportive for me in order to drive me
away, I'll sit here and make sure it's just as bad for them as they're
making it for me and see how they like it.

That just makes it worse for everyone except for those who revel in
discord. You can't hurt a troll by 'giving as good as you get', that is
just another way to feed the troll.

That's why I generally completely ignore the trolls. I give 'em a slap
to try and draw their attention to me and away from the more vulerable,
and then leave 'em in my killfile, generally not reading posts that are
replies to trolls.

Ah; so the rest of the group gets to enjoy the fun of the trolls feeding
on the feast you've just given them, but you're OK because you can block
them from your sight?

Umm. If any trolls are so feeding, I don't know about it. Are they?
What goes on? This is something I was utterly unaware of.

That's not being public spirited, that's being
selfish, as far as anyone can tell - after all, only you know what's going
on in your head and what's going into your killfile.

Every time you post something nasty, the total amount of nastiness
increases.

In the short term, but if it results in fewer nasty posts being made in
the longer term, you get a net benefit. Question is: is that what we
get from my activities?

It doesn't make any difference that you believe the people you
are nasty to deserve it.

I don't think that they deserve it - this isn't punishment I'm dishing
out, it's aversion therapy to stop 'em. It worked with Chrissy/Val. I
don't apply the method to trolls because I know it doesn't work on them.

So it works, doesn't it?

If they don't, they know what to do: just stop being nasty to me.

They don't want you to stop; they want you to carry on being nasty. They
feed off nastiness. They want more, and they can manipulate things to
make you deliver more if you let them. People trying to start a war are
delighted when fighting breaks out. But if no-one fights, there's no war.

But it's not the trolls who are the issue in this case. It's people
like Chrissy/Val and humble life and Monkfish and others.

Hmmm. Well, perhaps they aren't as perceptive as you are, or have
different opinions about who to be nasty to.

I only lay into people if I think that they might respond in the way I'd
like: that is, only if I think that me laying in to them ill persuade
them to stop being nasty.

Or perhaps they see you
being nasty to someone (perhaps not having seen the nastiness you saw, or
having interpreted what you saw as nastiness as being something else), and
feel the need to be supportive of your victim?

That's not what ever happens, is it? They just attack me.

If you hadn't been nasty
to that person, there would be nothing for them to be defended against,
would there?

There's no defence going on of anyone - it's just attack, attack,
attack.

Once you've been perceived as nasty in one post, people will be looking
for nastiness in all your posts. So even your gentlest, kindest, posts
will be contaminated by the nastiness on your nasty posts. People will
start to see nastiness where none was intended by you. And if you make
nasty posts to other people, why shouldn't other people make nasty posts
to or about you? That's how people often think.

This newsgroup was filled with people being vicious and nasty not so
long ago - not just the trolls, but `normal posters'. I found the sight
sickening and couldn't bear it - it was just horrible.

Now, there are people who had been nasty who've given it up. That's a
result if you ask me.

The problem is that it was always okay for `those in the clique' to be
as nasty as they liked to anyone that they liked. I didn't like that.
And it's not like that any more. The casual viciousness to drive out
`those who aren't us' has gone, from what I can see.

I take all your points as good ones - but I reckon you're missing a
trick because my activities have, so it seems to me, produced minor
useful results. What the negative effects might be and how the balance
works out - well, that's a different matter.

The people who are
shits stay shitty, those who aren't get hurt, people who need support
are reluctant to post because it's all such a mess, people leave and
it's really painful to watch.


And you become the bad guy because you are
flaming the most and attacking different people,

But I am not flaming people.

You may believe that, but it's easy for others to point at things you've
posted in retaliation against nastiness and show just how nasty you can
be.

If it's easy for them to do so, how come no-one's ever actually done
that?

I've asked people to explain, to show me what's so bad - and I get
nothing but abuse in response.

[...]

Your respose to Tiggy here will be seen by some as you being nasty to
Tiggy, when she's posted nothing to provoke you. /I/ don't believe you
mean to be nasty to Tiggy, but what you've posted here can easily be
twisted to make you look 'bad' and 'aggressive' and 'nasty' and, yes, 'a
troll'.

Okay, but how?

I don't think that's what you intended, but it is what you
achieved. Merely posting at such great length is in itself capable of
being seen as 'aggressive'.

Which is just really bizarre. I can't understand that at all. The
world's gone mad, if a long post is aggressive. Then again, I once got
thrown out of a hospital by the police because a doctor complained I was
looking at him in a funny way (really; I was far too depressed at the
time to do anything but stare at people).

Two examples of your admitted difficulty in understanding how other people
perceive things.

Eh? Can you explain what on Earth you're on about?

Long posts like that can be called 'tirades'
and 'rants' and they don't improve your image. The more word you use, the
more they can be used against you.

I've not noticed people doing that; then again, I don't read troll
posts.

Others do; they night not agree with you about which are the troll posts,
for one thing, and they may not be able to physically killfile at all (or
not know how to, or have a moral objection to doing so). So you might not
see the damage you do, but others see it and feel it.

<shrug> So the trolls take my words out of context for the purposes of
making things nastier. I knew that. Unless I re*** the troll's posts,
there's nothing whatever I can do about that and it doesn't have
anything at all do to with the character of any post I might have made -
they're just malicious scum who will twist anything to serve their ends.

I don't see that it makes any difference to the trolls what I do.

You have posted recently that you don't understand people well, and that
you want explanations of why other people don't understand what you post
and why you don't understand what other people post.

Not at all. I want to know what they don't understand, and I want them
to explain how they interpret my words to turn 'em into what they claim.

That is a very difficult thing to do. It requires that 'they' have better
understanding of people in general and of individual people, than you have;
and better understanding of such things than most people have; and know how
to express it in terms that *you* can understand in such a way that
*you* can understand what other people actually think and feel and perceive.

I don't see that at all. Just an explanation of what they thought I
meant would do for starters.

Well, in this thread
Tiggy has tried to give you such an explanation in a particular context -

Hmm. I didn't see it as anything remotely like that. I still can't see
it as being anything like that - although with my current head on, I can
see that it's quite a nice post.

For anyone reading: please do bear in mind that my state of mind is
affected very little by goings on in this newsgroup; my `bad heads' are
all caused by `real life' issues.

and your response to that isn't what anyone could call grateful or
gracious.

Well, no: it seemed more like more attack. I was in a very bad way when
I wrote the reply. It's - well, I must have been in a *very* bad way
when I wrote that. It's been bad for the last few weeks, the inside of
my head.

In such circumstances, not posting in haste is advisable. Perhaps type
but then defer posting for a bit, and come back in a little while and
review what you typed and try to work out what other people might think of
your choice of words. Perhaps change what you wrote, or perhaps just
delete it unsent.

Can't do that when I'm in a bad way.

Tiggy hasn't posted here for a long time, so she hasn't been
involved in any of the recent nastiness, and has been nothing but gentle,
but some people will see your reply to her as an attack.

Hmm. So long posts, and those that dispute someone's opinion, are
viewed as attacks, are they?

Sometimes. It is possible to disagree gently, politely, diplomatically,
and in moderation. Without any nastiness.

For sure, but I'm only going to take the trouble to make `honest' posts
like that to honest posters.

If the only response you can
think of is nasty or open to being seen as nasty - don't post it!

Which means I must post nothing at all, since I don't understand what
others view as nasty and seemingly almost anything I post gets cited as
evidence of nastiness.

Seems to me that what you're saying is that the way to get viewed as
`not attacking' someone is to stick to short posts that agree with
everyone. That's hardly `me', is it?

That isn't what I'm saying, either. Can you try to not post anything at
all addressed to the people you class as trolls?

I don't - except once in a blue moon. Maybe I could stop so much as
referring to them too? Hmm.

That should reduce
considerably the likelhood of you feeling inclined to post nastiness.

If you want to rant or rave, start a thread for it. Other people do,
sometimes; you might even have spotted posts which contain no coherent
language at all, just inarticulate moans or screams or randomness.

Almost everything by humble life, for example.

When
you feel the need to lash out, do it against 'the world in general' rather
than in a way that might seem to be directed at anyone. Don't kick the
cat - we are the cat.

I think you misunderstand what goes on in my head. Your advice is
non-applicable.

So will you take it from me, or do I get a tirade as well? (At least I
think I might be able to understand a tirade in response to what I've said
here; others might not).

I wouldn't understand a tirade in response to what you've just posted.
There's nothing about your post that's anything other than nice and
decent.

Thank you. So a post /can/ be long and disagreeing about things, and also
possibly not aggressive or unsupportive. It's hard work though!

Well, yes. I'm glad you put the time and effort in - thanks.

Rowland.

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