It's open ZOT Friday: You people are [expletive deleted] pathetic.

05-December-2003 | Pedantic_Lady

[MHGinTN]

Sadly, there are so many of these self-only centered people.

[sweetliberty]

An addition to my troll post....I just ran across this today.

A troll is basically one who posts messages intended to insult and provoke per fas et nefas. For each person who responds, the poster (the troll as a person) will consider that person "caught". The troll (the troll as an action) is considered to have been a complete success if it disrupts beyond repair the normal traffic on a newsgroup or on a messageboard. In extreme cases, trolls are posted by groups of trollers and crossposted to unrelated newsgroups in an attempt to destroy those groups by flooding them with flames and off-topic ranting.

Variants:

1.Spamming Troll: one who posts -or crossposts on many newsgroups- the same, exact post, multiple times. Some of these 'listings' with all answers and counter-answers, can grow into huge files.

2. Kook: a regular poster who continually posts messages with no apparent grounding in reality. The kook trademark is paranoia and grandiosity. Kooks will often build up elaborate imaginary support structures, fake corporations and the like, and continue to act as if those things are real even after their falsity has been documented in public. While they may appear harmless, and are usually filtered out by the other regular participants in a newsgroup or mailing list, they can still cause problems because the necessity for these measures is not immediately apparent to newcomers; there are several instances, for example, of journalists writing stories with quotes from kooks who caught them unaware. See Crank Dot Net for more info.

Some people have dedicated their lifes to expose kooks, and they will warn you that 'It is important to note the subtle distinction between a net.kook, a net.cretin, a clueless newbie, troll, or garden-variety @$$hole. The newbie, one hopes, can acquire a clue on the installment plan even if he can't afford to buy one for cash; the cretin is merely stupid and/or irritating; the troll is purposely pulling your leg like it got caught in some heavy machinery, the @$$hole is, well, simply that. But a TRUE net.kook has a special fascination derived from his/her/its utter ineffability. Their behavior is irrational, if not downright weird, but they are seldom merely boring'

3. Flamer: is one who contributes nothing but uninformative "ad hominem" bickering. His inventivity in names-calling and "hurting tooth poking" fears no matches. Even a good troll will never win against a good flamer. Yet flaming is an art that many, many, try, few master, and nearly all think -wrongly- they are good at. So since you (reader) are most probably not a good flamer, heed the (sound) advice: never answer to a troll (not even in order to flame him).

4. Shill: is one who posts messages as a spokesperson or "front" for an unseen group or organization, usually at odds to the topics being discussed.

[Timesink]

My bet is she's been registered here at least twice before, and we'll be seeing her again at some point.

If she does, she'll be very easy to spot.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

"The Medicare bill is good" bandwagon.

Is is good, if you are older, and need the medical assistance. Just don't expect me to gleefully pay that portion of my taxes! I can only imagine the tax burden that my young children will have to endure, when it is their turn to pay the piper.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Oh, wow! CP was banned?

[Timesink]

Actually, dubya, the Pretentious_Loony isn't so much the sophisticate that she wants us to believe that she is -- she just desperately strives for that putative status. A pathetic social climber, at best. Personally, I'm glad the haughty hag is gone. That onslaught of articles in Portugese should have been enough to ban her snooty ass from here.

I've never understood why anyone either: a) is impressed by the fact that someone else speaks multiple languages or b) Thinks they're smarter than other people because THEY speak more than one language. ANYONE can speak multiple languages ... all it takes is either exposure to more than one language at a very early age or else the willingness to put time and effort into learning it as an adult. (And if you have the time and money available to "immerse" yourself - that is, jet off to a foreign country and live there for one to four months, forcing yourself to speak nothing but the indigenous tongue - you can become pretty much completely fluent just as if you had picked it up at age 3. This is how Celine Dion learned English even though she never even started until her early 20s, as an example.)

It's even less impressive if the other language(s) you speak are in the same family as your native tongue (and yes, English and Portuguese are both in the Indo-European family). At least if someone came along who spoke Icelandic, Japanese, Arabic and Xhosa, and learned them all as an adult, i'd give that person a little credit for the time and effort expended. But I wouldn't consider that person one iota more intelligent than me, because any one of us could learn them too, if we really wanted to do so.

I would, however, consider that person to be a raging egomaniac if one of the first things they made sure you knew about them is that they speak multiple languages. Assuming Pedantic_Bim was even telling the truth in the first place, it doesn't make her smart. It merely makes her gauche.

[NeoCaveman]

Yup.

[Mike-o-Matic]

I'll see your spokes-alien, and raise you a pack of bubblegum.

[Maelstrom]

A sleeper account. She didn't use it much.

It was my pleasure to provide her with a bit of exposure to critical thinking skills.

I have to question her conservatism and Republicanism.

[GulliverSwift]

You forgot neanderthal!

Hah! It proves you are one :-D

[scott7278]

I'm all out of bubblegum.

[SerpentDove]

She was a strange one all right.

[lowbridge]

I'm an American living overseas who is planning to return to the United States in 2004. I consider myself to be fairly independent-minded politically, but in the UK I'm considered conservative. In a nutshell, I hate lazy people, broccoli, drug use, and people who won't mind their own business. I love Mexican food, loud bluegrass and classical music, non-fiction books, and growing native Texas plants in my English garden...which never fails to annoy the neighbors. A bit more...I speak four languages fluently: English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. I was born in Texas and raised in Dallas. I went to UT Austin and graduated in 1997 with a BA in French. I've always been interested in politics; my dad is a hardcore conservative and my grandmother (his mom) is a New Dealer Democrat, so family gatherings were always interesting and filled with arguments about politics, particularly during the Reagan and Clinton years. My politics fall in between my father's and my grandmother's. Socially, I suppose I'm pretty liberal...I like a strong separation between church and state, abortion doesn't bother me...neither do gay people. On some issues, though, I'm pretty conservative; I can't stand illegal immigration. As an immigrant I know how hard it is to fit into a new society but I'd never be arrogant enough to ask British taxpayers to subsidize my life here. I don't really like unions and I think being tough on crime is a GOOD thing. I don't like globalization because I see it tearing up the middle class in England and in the U.S., but you'll never see me marching on May Day or smashing up a McDonald's. I'm more likely to be inside the McDonald's ordering a Quarter Pounder with fries. I think vegetarians are crazy...beef IS what's for dinner...and though I'm not religious, I don't really care if other people are as long as they don't come to my door and try to drag me to church with them. Basically, as long as people stay out of my business, I'll stay out of theirs. It's nobody's business what books I read, what shows I watch, what I like to eat for dinner, and what my spending habits are...as long as I'm not doing anything illegal, I should be left in peace to live my life. I think the government here is far too intrusive; the average British resident is filmed 300 times a day and now the government wants to introduce mandatory national ID cards. I'm not big on guns...I've never owned a gun in my life and I don't see what the average citizen needs with an assault weapon...but I don't stay up nights worrying about it. Odds are, nobody's going to break down my door brandishing a weapon...in the U.S., anyway! I didn't worry about crime in the U.S. and was never a victim of it myself until I moved to the UK. Here, I have been assaulted in broad daylight in a city center and have had my house broken into, my car broken into and vandalized, and items stolen from the bike shed next to my house. A woman in my neighborhood was dragged from her home by her hair and forced (at gunpoint in a country where handguns were banned six years ago) to withdraw every penny in her bank accounts at two ATMs within a mile of my home. I think Britain is in a serious crisis and I cannot wait to return to the United States. Why did I leave in the first place? Fair question, and one I can't give a simple answer to. I married a British man who couldn't face living in Texas, which is why we're looking at New England as our new home...kind of a compromise, but hey...you do silly things for love.

I'm not a fascist. I dont have a problem with ordinary citizens owning assault weapons.

[Coop]

Hey, now. Does your state have any Democrats serving statewide or in DC? New Hampshire doesn't.

You and I both know how fond I am of New Hampshire. We also know your beautiful state is a tiny island in a sea of liberalism. :-)

[Marysecretary]

Aha. So he stole the line from Churchill. It was a good one.

[k2blader]

Thank you! :-)

[Lazamataz]

Opus.

Pure and simple.

Not hard to understand.

[Phaedrus]

So go AWAY ... and have a nicer day.

[Lazamataz]

I may be right of Attila, but at least I'm not a pedantic self-satisfied bitch.

Marry me.

At least for one night.