EvMetro
Platinum Member
- Mar 10, 2017
- 10,328
- 6,732
- 970
- Thread starter
- #21
Very well written and civilized post, thank you. I don't see the point of much of the juvenile trolling and baiting that I see out there, and I prefer to stay civilized as well. I am disgusted with the members who resort to such ugliness, but not as disgusted as with the admins who censor it. I like to remember that the juvenile troll may feel genuine hate and ugliness that match his posts though, and how ugly cancel culture and censorship are as well.I've been on here for about 5 years now and to this day I try to have civil discussions here. I actively look for it. I rarely rise to people who try to bait me and I tend to not engage with those that are obviously here to do nothing else. In my personal experience, it hasn't led me to "hate" those I disagree with. It has frustrated me on plenty of occasions but hate is something I have a hard time feeling for people I will most likely never personally meet.Civilized political debate or discussion is an oxymoron. People can pretend for a little while, but that turns into a time bomb of even more hate. I absolutely prefer seeing all the lefties troll my threads with evasion, which they do, than to see them silenced. Even if it sounds like juvenile Beavis and butthead posts trolling me from a basement or a foreign enemy expressing their deepest hatred for me, it is better than fascism and censorship. At least it is what they really want to say. Trying to fix trolling on a political board where trolling is the native language is ridiculous.
As to your OP. Trolling indeed has been a time-honoured tradition in political discourse. Agent-provocateurs have been around before the US was even conceived. Having said that the advent of the internet has changed the objective of trolling. It used to be used as a way to provoke a response from your political opponent in order to show them to be unreasonable or as a justification for advancing your own policies. It seems to me that modern-day trolling has evolved as an objective by itself.
If the only thing you are trying to achieve is frustrating your political opponent without a clear policy goal in mind, I fail to see a point to it. Besides feeling the satisfaction of being the kid that breaks other peoples toys.