What to do about online trolls and twits.

It's very simple... nothing.

FreeMason/Hammerite/Hkot/TheMaster is a very poor pathetic person. For whatever personal reasons, he's seen fit to stay up late and attempt to torment the fine members of this forum. As is often natural, you respond in kind, defending your community, or debating his points, or simply lashing back.

Well... such activity is what he enjoys, it gives people like this a big stiffie to be deep into such back-and-forth forum squabbling. He's staying up late, read eyes and all, posting his drivel in rapid fire spews. Then he gets some quick sleep, hardly able to contain himself, anxious to see everyone's response to his pompous spews.

Just don't do it.

Ignore him. Your silence will infuriate him (and others like him) to no end.

And soon, he'll go away, because the lack of attention won't feed his ego, and it needs to be feed giant scopes of attention. On occasion, these people don't go away... they evolve into reasonable people, able to participate in reasonable discussions. Either way, it takes all of us to simply ignore them.

Thanks.

[Edited on 22-5-2003 by William]

Well, by not replying to him, we let him put his view across unchallenged.

A lot of what FM posts is about freemasonry. As a mason myself I strongly disagree with most of his points regarding the subject and feel that half the time he is just copying and pasting items found on the internet. He rarely portrays masonry in a good light and makes us look like some sort of mythical freaks (yeah I know there are those of you that think we are that :lol

To tell the truth I'm not entirely positive that the guy is even a mason. Even if he is, he isn't a mason with any experience. None of the guys that I know have the extreme views that he seems to hold.

I guess we always get out bad eggs. But maybe he isn't one of them because he isn't a mason anyway. Either way, when he posts junk about masonry all he is doing is posting deceit. Most of the guys here can see through that but there are definitely one or two here who swallow his lines.

It's hard to ignore somebody when they are posting propaganda and to let it go unchallenged.

So we ignore him and the stupid edjit will disappear.....no problem....the guy was a menace to society anyway!!!!

One question though.....is it possible to trace the IP address of every new member to stop the same people annoying us descent ATS folk?

Originally posted by Leveller
Well, by not replying to him, we let him put his view across unchallenged.

No, that's not the case. You send the message that his view doesn't matter. That it's not worth challenging.

It takes restraint, but it is an effective weapon to completely ignore these silly children.

The hopeful result is that by not responding to their idiocy, they sometimes learn manners and tolerance... and sooner or later, they post under a new name with a level of civility and grace... and if that happens, fine. Actually, that would be best.

Originally posted by Gryffen
One question though.....is it possible to trace the IP address of every new member to stop the same people annoying us descent ATS folk?

That sounds a little like too much work for poor William. It would be better just to trace the IPs of those who become a menace.

I had decided to ignore the child right before Will took care of it. I tried to before, but there were so many errors in his writing that I just had to correct him. I've learned my lesson though now.

XAOS

which is why you see me stay out of these messes...

I agree with William, by answering them we are feeding them attention which is what they want. If we pay no attention they will simply fly away.

Originally posted by JediMaster
I agree with William, by answering them we are feeding them attention which is what they want. If we pay no attention they will simply fly away.

Flying away is too complementary. They either crawl or slither away

XAOS

Tell you what, William, I'll ignore the cretin if Xaos will. Put if he jumps in there, I will not be able to resist tag-teaming Dum-Dum with him.

Maybe I should feel bad, but I found FM to be like some defective toy last night. Wasn't worth keeping around really, butI did find amusement in him.

But, you are the elder and your advice should be heeded. And will be.

Okay, I'll ignore trolls I can still diss them in chat and U2U though, right? It'll be hard, I'm gonna have to get a troll patch or some trollerette gum to satiate my cravings. Maybe I'll just go to the message board on the black vault and diss trolls there. But wouldnt that make me a troll? Oh well, self-hatred has been central in my young life

XAOS

Kill them when they lose their usefullness if they had any to begin with.

Hmmm.... send them a logic bomb or worm???

Originally posted by xaos
It'll be hard, I'm gonna have to get a troll patch or some trollerette gum to satiate my cravings.

if you need some URL's, there are a few forums where I go specifically to feed trolls and be trolled. (what can I say, I'm strange) that's how I get it all out of my system before I come here

Me and HKoT got history about arguing, but your right, better to ignore him than to encourage him, although he said he does have another name here, I'm Pretty sure who it is, but its not worth spoling it.

Let his true nature show so that all can see who he was.

I thought there was a topic in this section about 'Lies & Conspiracies' concerning this board. Someone named AV was claiming something about a terrorist & about this board being involved with some kind of conspiracy?

I wanted to make a response.

Overblown paranoia.

Two nuisances were causing some problems, nothing more. A few members (AV included) read too much into the situation and over reacted.

Carry on.

groups.yahoo.com...

William is right........
By not paying any attention.......they have no defense....and eventually will go away........

hmmm...

Now this has made me think of a new feature for the forums... a twit filter!

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just block the idiots... so you never even see their posts? Thereby making it much easier to ignore the fools, idiots, twits, and trolls that invariably show their face at our door.

Yes... my task for tomorrow... a personal twit filter!

I thought some of the things the guy said were hilarious in their ignorance. He stopped replying to the "discussion we were having, so whatever, was fun while it lasted...

[Edited on 25-5-2003 by Thorfinn Skullsplitter]