[Discussion] The Inconceivable Power of Trolls in Social Media

This is a follow-on to the nearly two year old topic "Trouble at the Kool-Aid Point." The intention is to provide a place to discuss the unreasonable power social media trolls have over women and minorities, with a primary focus on video games (though other examples are certainly welcome).

One of the allegories on the dangers of dependence on AIs is that a scientist asks his robot to get rid of the fleas on his cat. The robot then throws the cat into a furnace, successfully killing all of the fleas.

Not making me feel great about humanity that some of us are basically doing the same thing here.

Oh god it's worse because the bleach doesn't even affect autism at all.

In addition to the physical damage it's also psychologically bad for the children, since it tells them that their parents think that they're so broken that they need to go to extremes like poisoning them.

That's one reason why a lot of the autism support groups run by people with autism are extremely opposed to that kind of thing, particularly since autism groups run by parents are prone to promote abuse by the parents as they desperately attempt to get their children to conform to expectations.

I recently read a story about a missionary in central Africa administering bleach as a miracle cure for children, and not just for autism. I'd like to see chapter and verse where the bible a) says that is a good idea, and b) says that missionaries should pretend to be doctors.

Well, one of the wonderful side-effects of the internet and "do your own research" culture is that quite a few people think they know just as much as doctors, because, y'know, who needs an education on the subject? MoonTruthWarrior on YouTube has a rambling, three hour podcast on how colloidal silver cures diabetes and she's just a regular Mom and she had a chart, so that's twice as scientific.

Less snarkily, a lot of this stuff stems from reasonable criticms, taken to ludicrous extremes. We should not put all of our trust in pharmaceutical companies, and doctors and healthcare professionals have absolutely been complicit in foisting stuff on the public! Some of them have absolutely been caught lying, misrepresenting, and just generally being Sacklers.

Whoops! Common spelling error there, I meant sh*theads.

Anyway, these are all entirely fair criticisms, and even good doctors can be wrong, make mistakes and do not have all the answers. However, MoonTruthWarrior, whose professional history is in hairdressing, is not "telling the truth they don't want you to hear", she's just some weirdo yammering on the internet.

I think we'd all like to think we are or are listening to some unheard of genius who has it all figured out, except those people are incredibly rare, and in truth, you're probably listening to some moron spewing nothing more than misinformation, often leveraging your own fears and concerns to line their pockets.

Prederick wrote:

Well, one of the wonderful side-effects of the internet and "do your own research" culture is that quite a few people think they know just as much as doctors, because, y'know, who needs an education on the subject? MoonTruthWarrior on YouTube has a rambling, three hour podcast on how colloidal silver cures diabetes and she's just a regular Mom and she had a chart, so that's twice as scientific.

Less snarkily, a lot of this stuff stems from reasonable criticms, taken to ludicrous extremes. We should not put all of our trust in pharmaceutical companies, and doctors and healthcare professionals have absolutely been complicit in foisting stuff on the public! Some of them have absolutely been caught lying, misrepresenting, and just generally being Sacklers.

Whoops! Common spelling error there, I meant sh*theads.

Anyway, these are all entirely fair criticisms, and even good doctors can be wrong, make mistakes and do not have all the answers. However, MoonTruthWarrior, whose professional history is in hairdressing, is not "telling the truth they don't want you to hear", she's just some weirdo yammering on the internet.

I think we'd all like to think we are or are listening to some unheard of genius who has it all figured out, except those people are incredibly rare, and in truth, you're probably listening to some moron spewing nothing more than misinformation, often leveraging your own fears and concerns to line their pockets.

In the pre internet days, the only place I remember seeing these people was in 3am paid infomercials. And by people I mostly mean Kevin Trudeau. Who, incidentally, eventually got sent to prison for his lies. Apparently if you just stick to lying on the internet, you're immune to jail time.

Edit: and of course, after reading Trudeau's Wikipedia entry, guess who maintains a Facebook page from prison!

Snake oil cures have been a thing since the 1700s and I'm quite sure they weren't the first time in human history that assholes sold bullsh*t medical treatments to desperate people.

OG_slinger wrote:

Snake oil cures have been a thing since the 1700s and I'm quite sure they weren't the first time in human history that assholes sold bullsh*t medical treatments to desperate people.

Shamanism says hi!

Jonman wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Snake oil cures have been a thing since the 1700s and I'm quite sure they weren't the first time in human history that assholes sold bullsh*t medical treatments to desperate people.

Shamanism says hi!

I'm sure it wouldn't solve the problem but I suspect it might help if all those parents had some way to speak to and have their child looked at by various doctors and specialists without having to worry about the cost.

Gremlin wrote:

In addition to the physical damage it's also psychologically bad for the children, since it tells them that their parents think that they're so broken that they need to go to extremes like poisoning them.

That's one reason why a lot of the autism support groups run by people with autism are extremely opposed to that kind of thing, particularly since autism groups run by parents are prone to promote abuse by the parents as they desperately attempt to get their children to conform to expectations.

I listened to a podcast ripping the awful 'Vaxxed' movie and that's one of the things that just drove the hosts incendiary. These parents would say to the camera, "My little Johnny was such a bright promising little boy and then the shot gave him the autisms and now he's a useless broken little blob" right in front of the f*cking kid.

BadKen wrote:

I recently read a story about a missionary in central Africa administering bleach as a miracle cure for children, and not just for autism. I'd like to see chapter and verse where the bible a) says that is a good idea, and b) says that missionaries should pretend to be doctors.

Yeah, they were trying to cure malaria.
The bleach thing I’ve already covered in the medical quackery thread. And as a parent of spectrum kids and being on the spectrum myself, it makes me - so - angry.

Sure, if my parents were forcing me to drink urine, to cure me of “X”... I’m pretty sure I’d come up with some way to “feel better” just so I could stop drinking urine.

What happened when I met my Islamophobic troll

I stood in front of a house on a quiet, suburban road just a few miles outside of Birmingham city centre, finally about to meet my anonymous online interlocutor. A middle-aged man opened the door, wearing a pair of three-quarter-length khaki shorts and a plain blue T-shirt with two yellow stains on the front.

True Brit immediately shook my hand and welcomed me into his home, warning me not to take off my shoes in case I accidentally stepped in cat poo. He introduced himself as Phil. He was short, with broad shoulders that rolled forward as he moved into his default slouch. In harsh light, a slight paunch was visible. He had thin wisps of light brown hair that barely covered his receding hairline and uneven stubble covering his face.

Phil lived on his own. On his kitchen walls were drawings by his young daughter and photographs of them together at theme parks, restaurants and outside Cardiff Castle. Since Phil’s divorce a year earlier, his daughter had moved to a different area of Birmingham with her mother. Phil said that the end of his marriage “broke me emotionally”.

He didn’t want to talk about it much, but told me that since then, he had spent most of his time alone and at his computer, watching videos, reading articles and browsing message boards. “I started off just wanting to read about politics,” he said as he made us tea. “I voted for Brexit – the first time I’d ever properly voted – so I used to spend my time reading about the whole process, how the government would negotiate with the EU. I wasn’t really that political, but it was just seeing everything that happened during the referendum. All the fighting, name-calling and the hypocrisy from the media – how they were insulting anyone who voted leave, but they just don’t understand what we go through.”

Phil told me how he had been let go from a steady, decently paid job a couple of years earlier, and had struggled to get back on his feet as a self-employed handyman. At one stage he was claiming benefits, which had made him embarrassed, as if he “had lost all dignity”, being made to fill out endless forms at the local jobcentre and attend countless interviews for jobs he didn’t want, just so he could claim the little money he was eligible to receive.

Around the same time, amid his marital trouble, Phil began spending more and more of his free time browsing websites that “weren’t the mainstream media or the biased BBC”. He started off reading obscure blogs he found on Google, including Truthseekers.org, which posted about the Illuminati and accused “elites” – politicians, celebrities and journalists – of having secret meetings where they ultimately planned to control the British population. From these blogs, Phil moved on to reading about the “great replacement”, a rightwing conspiracy theory claiming that white British people are being discouraged from getting married and having children, as part of a sinister plot to replace them with non-white Muslim migrants and refugees.

I've removed a single word from this text so we can play a game. Read this excerpt and then take a wild guess what very popular website he went to next to get inundated with white nationalist conspiracy theories.

Surely it's not facebook?

Its a tough choice between Facebook, Youtube, Breitbart and Fox.

I am going to say Youtube.

Reaper81 wrote:

I am going to say Youtube.

Same.

Trick question. It's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, AND InfoWars.

Favorite line from the article (paraphrased): it's not possible to lie when you make a video!

JeffreyLSmith wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

I am going to say Youtube.

Same.

Circle gets the square!

Prederick wrote:
JeffreyLSmith wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

I am going to say Youtube.

Same.

Circle gets the square!

When I was working with youth populations, a good 20% of my clients were heavily engaged with all manner of insane Youtube conspiracy video crap. It usually started with a kid trying to learn more about a musician or video game and then suddenly they’re watching a video about the Illuminati or white replacement.

As an aside, I found Waypoint’s analysis of that “Losing my son to the Alt Right” or whatever to be terrible. They should have included a developmental psychologist or pediatrician on that cast to really help inform the discussion.

Teens are incredibly suggestible and impressionable and the cast’s consensus that the kid was already pretty deep in Alt Right or meme culture is a very narrow and misguided perspective.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/GXU7tHJ.png)

Reaper81 wrote:

As an aside, I found Waypoint’s analysis of that “Losing my son to the Alt Right” or whatever to be terrible. They should have included a developmental psychologist or pediatrician on that cast to really help inform the discussion.

Disagreed. A developmental psychologist or pediatrician wouldn't have been able to account for how contrived and suspicious much of that piece was.

Jayhawker wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/GXU7tHJ.png)

Well, this should be easy enough to counter. Just post some unaltered videos of Trump talking at his rallies. Or pretty much anywhere.

Videos of Trump slowed down have been around since at least 2016.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

As an aside, I found Waypoint’s analysis of that “Losing my son to the Alt Right” or whatever to be terrible. They should have included a developmental psychologist or pediatrician on that cast to really help inform the discussion.

Disagreed. A developmental psychologist or pediatrician wouldn't have been able to account for how contrived and suspicious much of that piece was.

I think either would have been more than capable of discussing parent’s motivations to lie, minimize, or justify a child’s behaviors. They also are qualified to discuss the behaviors of the child directly... More qualified than a bunch of non-parent bougie art critics.

halfwaywrong wrote:

Videos of Trump slowed down have been around since at least 2016.

You do realize the issue isn’t that he is mocking her, right? It’s an attempt to frame her in his supporters eyes as old and out of touch. He’s pretending that the video he sent is legitimate.

It’s the same crap they pulled with Hillary, who they portrayed as sick and too old and feeble to be president.

Jayhawker wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/GXU7tHJ.png)

And Trump tweeted the video last night...

How does that motherf*cker still have a Twitter account?

OG_slinger wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/GXU7tHJ.png)

And Trump tweeted the video last night...

How does that motherf*cker still have a Twitter account?

Because Jack Dorsey is a coward.

Stengah wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/GXU7tHJ.png)

And Trump tweeted the video last night...

How does that motherf*cker still have a Twitter account?

Because Jack Dorsey is a coward.

Or a happy collaborator. Take your pick.

Tanglebones wrote:
Stengah wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/GXU7tHJ.png)

And Trump tweeted the video last night...

How does that motherf*cker still have a Twitter account?

Because Jack Dorsey is a coward.

Or a happy collaborator. Take your pick.

Both: he's a happy collaborator, but twists and squirms away from admitting it whenever he's called on it.

Reaper81 wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

As an aside, I found Waypoint’s analysis of that “Losing my son to the Alt Right” or whatever to be terrible. They should have included a developmental psychologist or pediatrician on that cast to really help inform the discussion.

Disagreed. A developmental psychologist or pediatrician wouldn't have been able to account for how contrived and suspicious much of that piece was.

I think either would have been more than capable of discussing parent’s motivations to lie, minimize, or justify a child’s behaviors. They also are qualified to discuss the behaviors of the child directly... More qualified than a bunch of non-parent bougie art critics. ;-)

The one who brought up the article, and later had misgivings about the framing and credence given to the child, is a parent.