"Wes Groleau" wrote in message
...
On 11-11-2013, 20:37, Robert Green wrote:
the equipment it's connected to has failed. Of course, since this was
apparently a cowardly troll post to begin with, we'll never know any
real
details. Too bad.

Two guys speculate it might be a troll, and then the OP says "Happy
Halloween" on Halloween Day, and that proves the speculation was correct?

Sadly there's a lot more information that led TomR to be the first to (quite
correctly, IMHO) speculate that this was a troll.

"Fred" has never posted here in AHR before, has no last name - not even an
initial, provided no email address ("Fred" ), has no record
of posting *anywhere* else on Google that I could find. He never provided
any meaningful follow-up on the resolution of his problem, other than to
vaguely say there was a fire and an investigation but with no real details.
That all adds up to be highly suspicious.

Then there's his cryptic writing simply "Happy Halloween" instead of
providing clear details of the problem's resolution that so many helpful
contributors were waiting to hear. That paints a pretty clear picture of
the typical juvenile troll/sock puppet that enjoys making people worry about
his safety while he's wasting their time. Too cowardly to admit to his
trollery, too? That fits a well-known profile here.

Search with the name of our favorite self-confessed "entertainment troll"
and you'll find the name Fred, too, oddly enough. All these little clues
add up. Most Usenet groups are suffering very serious attrition yet we have
new faces cropping up daily that seem to know way too much about the group
members to really be new to AHR. They tend to appear to make "me too!"
posts of support when someone's losing an argument and then are never or
rarely heard from again. Except for yet another "me too" post.

I was moderating one of the world's largest BBS systems long before the
Internet. "Fred" fits a very common profile of an emotionally retarded
person that enjoys making trouble - the class clown - too stupid to learn
and mean enough to make sure others can't learn, either.

Most importantly, year after year helpful posters like Han just disappear
after being barraged by trolls and sock puppets. The BS that trolling
"don't hurt nobody" is just crap pushed out by trollers trying to justify
their own sad existence. They nym shift *because* they want to screw things
up, bother people, cause arguments and do the things that the sociopathic
enjoy doing.

Despite the BS they sling, the don't just want the freedom to express
themselves. They want to mess things up for others because they feel
society has screwed them over and now they want to screw society back. Most
of them appear to be abject failures in the game of life, always whining
because someone *else* did something to them that caused them to be
wastrels. They rarely, if ever, take responsibility for anything they do.

Couple all that to the absolute onslaught of troll postings from the
baseball bat moron and many others here and there's what I would call a
preponderance of evidence that this was yet another immature moron thinking
it's a fun idea to make people believe someone's in mortal peril. Think of
a normal posting of a problem like this and how much give and take there
*usually* is from the OP that's absent here.

The unmoderated Usenet attracts socially dysfunctional people in the same
way that the weak central government in Somalia attracts pirates, hijackers
and terrorists. Trolling is the low-voltage equivalent of hijacking -
taking something with a defined and useful purpose like a home repair group
and subverting it to satisfy the miscreant's pitiful personal, political or
emotional gain. These trolls have likely been kicked out from other venues
repeatedly and now they're taking their vengeance.

Worse, still, we're infested with nym-shifting trolls who resort to fake
ID's like Fred because they know that most intelligent people who are
actually interested in discussing home repair have twit-listed them. These
poor, socially maladroit infants are *so* starved for attention and
recognition that they will do whatever it takes to get their fix. And
they'll do it over and over again because that coincides with their juvenile
and monomaniacal personality defects. They are unable to distinguish, as
Justice Potter Stewart once said, between what they have a right to do and
what is right to do.

Every one of them knows they couldn't exist for more than a few infantile
posts in a moderated group and so they flock here like pirates to Somalia.
Unmoderated Usenet is the refuge of last resorts for cowards, scoundrels and
people who have nothing particularly meaningful to say, but demand to be
heard anyway. Unmoderated Usenet depends on the honor principle and it's
*very* clear that some people have no honor whatsoever. Just infantile bile
they feel compelled to puke up on anyone within range.

There's an important difference between the normal, acceptable off-topic
chatter that arises in every discussion group and a determined, relentless
effort to pollute the group with off-topic nonsense and flame-bait day after
day. Trolls try to exploit that diiference by claiming they're part of
normal thread drift but even a casual inspection of the day's postings puts
the lie to that contention.

They lie (their normal state of existence, apparently) and say "you can
filter us out" but then turn around and create sock puppets so they can
bypass those filters because their sickness demands that they be at the
center of attention. Always. Can you imagine a life so meaningless that
you have to give it some sort of purpose by being a deliberate a$$hole? My
wife implores me to pity them but I say I don't have much pity for morons
who like to pee in the public pool.

I admire your faith in the goodness of your fellow man, Wes, but in this
instance I think it may be misplaced. If I am ever on trial for a crime, I
want *you* on the jury. (-:

--
Bobby G.