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trolling left and right
Wednesday, April 4 2007

Partly as a marketing ploy for my anti-Obama Flash web-ad, lately I've been playing around with various troll identities on political websites. On DailyKos.com, my identity isn't really a troll, since I've had it for years and my userid is only 15481 out of over 100,000. I've just never posted before, so when I posted this the other day —

Poor Obama - when his staff isn't making Hillary ads out of old Mac ads, some retard with Macromedia Flash is making ads suggesting we'd have a hip hop ghetto nation if he won: http://asecular.com/obama
come to think of it, this looks more like the work of an Obama insider trying to inoculate him on matters of race.

— it was my first post ever.

What followed was the following exchange: Nah (0 / 0) just looks like some wingnut racist twit thinks Kossacks dont recognise a troll when we see one. All you have to do to qualify for human rights is to be human An 11yo Girl. Unbossed.com by cdreid on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 09:54:28 PM PDT [ Parent | Reply to This ] what gives it away is the Willie Horton reference (0 / 0) Note the transition between the Your Home part and the Your Daughter part - it's that famous grainy black and white picture of Willie Horton (which I have seen glued onto SAFECO lawn signs as a gag). No racist would use (or be smart enough to use) that pic - it's nothing but a cause for embarrassment to those who exploited it back in the day. by bigfun on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 10:00:45 PM PDT [ Parent | Reply to This ] please don't use that word (1+ / 0-) Recommended by: m00nchild 'reta....'Using it in that context is demeaning to those with mental delays and disabilities. As someone who was born with a disease which usually includes mental delays and disabilities, it's like slapping me against the face. Thank you. Sadly, Heather by Chacounne on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 10:15:03 PM PDT [ Parent | Reply to This ] and ... (1+ / 0-) Recommended by: Chacounne slapping a lot of other people, too. Question authoritarianism by m00nchild on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 10:20:25 PM PDT [ Parent | Reply to This ] Thanks, m00nchild (0 / 0) absolutely! not discounting the many others at all. With gratitude and respect, Heather by Chacounne on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 10:28:05 PM PDT [ Parent | Reply to This ] oops I thought that word was okay again (1+ / 2-) Recommended by: scrutinizer Trollrated by: rightiswrong, nasarius I guess I missed the memo - me and all my friends (and we're all East Coast liberals who teach at Bard College, write for the NYT, and what not) use the r word all the time, though perhaps just among ourselves. We're graduates of liberal colleges and knew how to be PC once. We went through using the term mental challenges for years but then, strangely but simultaneously, at some point in our lives we just started saying the r word again. Evidently that's still not okay. I apologize and will forward the memo to my friends who should know better. by bigfun on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 10:26:33 PM PDT [ Parent | Reply to This ] If that is meant to be snark, (2+ / 0-) Recommended by: rightiswrong, fancy chicken It's Not Funny. I made a polite request. I don't particularly care who your friends are or how you speak amongst yourselves; I'm telling the effect the word has on me. Sadly, Heather by Chacounne on Sun Apr 01, 2007 at 10:34:40 PM PDT [ Parent | Reply to This ] TR'ed for the obvious (0 / 0) ...no hell below us, above us only sky. by rightiswrong on Mon Apr 02, 2007 at 05:59:13 AM PDT [ Parent | Reply to This ]

Basically, I was immediately set upon by the Politically Correct Police (PCP) for the offense of using the word "retard," a word I never pause to consider not using. My accusers had familiar names ("moonchild") from the last time I had to deal with such people (back in Oberlin College in the late 1980s). Still, there are obviously some in the DailyKos community who have a better-developed sense of humor and are not this way; my original post got a 2+/0- rating and someone even canceled-out one of the two "troll-ratings" I got for my snarky "oops I thought that word was okay again" post.

So that was my experience with trolling the lefty blogosphere. I also trolled a right wing site called RedState.com, but I couldn't help myself and immediately had to have sarcastic fun at the expense of a thread full of people rabidly icked-out by gay sex. I thought my post (wherein I raged against the casual breaking of other laws found in Leviticus) was superficially subtle, but the folks at RedState.com obviously have a lot of experience with trolls posting this way, and I was immediately banned. So I joined again with another identity and was careful to never say anything that betrayed my true feelings. If anything, I laid it on a little too thick, saying that I wished George W. Bush could run for President again and again. This got someone to flag me as a "purity troll," a term I'd never heard of. But my account remained active, so after doing some research to find out what that meant, I defended myself by saying that I was less pure than they suspected and that I actually believed in evolution and the right to have an abortion. I quickly added that the right to abortion wasn't all that important to me and that I wouldn't mind if a Supreme Court packed with Bush appointees overturned Roe vs. Wade, mostly because I personally don't have a uterus. This was as clever a jab at the cartoonishly-selfish right wing mentality as I could manage in that environment, and I survived without being banned.

Tonight Gretchen and I saw the movie Shortbus, produced by John Cameron Mitchell, the actor who played Hedwig in the incredible Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Shortbus is sort of an Alice in Wonderland tale, in which Sofia, our heroine (a sex therapist who has never experienced an orgasm) ventures behind a drab New York City facade and finds herself in "Shortbus," a wacky sex-positive world of saturated colors, crazy costumes and (mostly) beautiful people. In the context of the ecstasy of the place is the private torment of those who frequent it. Near the end there are some wonderfully Hedwigesque scenes, including a lingering one of two emotionally-injured lovers staring at each other through apartment windows across a street. And at the end there's a great rave-up involving a drag queen and a marching band.

Gretchen loved most of the movie but felt it dragged towards the end, as if Mitchell didn't quite know how to resolve his setup. One of the several reasons she had wanted to see it was that she happens to know two of the amateur actors filmed having sex at the "Shortbus" club.

For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?070404

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