{"id":610,"date":"2008-12-29T20:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T18:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=610"},"modified":"2015-12-03T11:16:23","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T16:16:23","slug":"on-trolls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/on-trolls\/","title":{"rendered":"On Trolls…"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re new to the blogosphere, the term “troll”\u00a0may be confusing, so here’s the Wikipedia definition<\/a>:<\/p>\n

An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It goes without saying (but I\u2019ll say it anyway) that trolls exist to be destructive, not constructive.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the deal?\u00a0 Recently, I was on the receiving end of a comment to\u00a0my post on Dr. Suzanne<\/a>\u00a0from a troll calling him\/herself “helminth.”\u00a0 I suppose s\/he based the name on the post, which concerned intestinal parasites (a helminth<\/a> is a worm, typically a parasitic one).\u00a0\u00a0But\u00a0it was the perfect name for\u00a0this particular troll\u00a0as s\/he\u00a0was both spineless and – like a parasite – attempting to be hurtful. In fact, Paul nuked\u00a0the comment\u00a0as soon as he saw it…as he put it:<\/p>\n

“I don’t even want to entertain such nasty and mean spirited material. There’s no place for that here.
\n\u00a0
\nAnd no… I don’t think it dignified a response.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a (sometime) student of human nature, however, I found the hows and whys of it fascinating – which is why I’m ignoring Paul’s (more\u00a0sensible)\u00a0reaction and\u00a0discussing it here.\u00a0 Evidently, “helminth” objected to my post, yet chose not to tackle any of the points I raised. Rather, s\/he opted to attack me, personally.\u00a0 And it wasn’t\u00a0any generic attack, either (such as calling me “stupid”) – rather, it was straight out of Misogyny 101:<\/p>\n

“Well, if your pictures aren’t a photoshop edition (they’d better be) than you just make me sick! Do you think you look great? Say who? Are you a female at all? You look like a beefy, puffed, disgusting 55 years old bodybuilder.. Look at your hands! You think can change the nature and substitute a male? I believe that it is just about your husband who left you a while ago and you just couldn’t forgive him.. Or your father beat you in the childhood and all these loathsome heap of muscles…<\/em><\/p>\n

Trust me, you’d better hide those pics of you if you want people to at least not to run out from your site..<\/em><\/p>\n

the Bleccccch indeed!!!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

ROFLMAO!!!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it\u2019s as sad as it is funny.\u00a0 Predictable too… When a misogynist wants to attack a woman – the first thing that comes to mind is to either a) attack her sexual orientation; b) attack her physical appearance\/desirability; or c) both.\u00a0 That\u00a0\u201dhelminth\u201d\u00a0imagined s\/he could\u00a0hurt me by fantasizing about my gender identification and rejection by men (and not just any men, either, but the most important men in my life – whom I know\u00a0better than anyone else), says a lot more about \u201chelminth\u201d than it does about me.<\/p>\n

“Helminth” is entitled to his\/her opinion, of course, but I gotta say: it takes a pretty\u00a0bloated ego to assume his\/her preferences\u00a0w\/respect to\u00a0female beauty\u00a0represent universal truths that can (and should) be projected on others.\u00a0\u00a0It takes\u00a0a\u00a0pretty dim intellect, too, to prefer personal attacks to analysis and criticism. \u00a0But then again, it’s implicit in the definition, I suppose: if trolls were intelligent, well-adjusted people, then they wouldn’t be trolls, now – would they?<\/p>\n

I\u00a0expect that – by posting this – I’m just encouraging “helminth” to slither back to the attack…but then again, what s\/he is evidently too\u00a0thick to realize, is that I’m in total control of the process.\u00a0 All comments are held in a moderation queue for approval, so whether “helminth” is allowed airtime on this blog is strictly subject to my (or Paul’s)\u00a0whims.\u00a0\u00a0So if “helminth” wants to waste more time here, that’s his\/her choice…but in the future, it’s not likely to be a rewarding one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re new to the blogosphere, the term “troll”\u00a0may be confusing, so here’s the Wikipedia definition: An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28],"tags":[227,544,936,1684],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10231,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/10231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}