So just to be sure; you're [isober[/i when you write this stuff?

Depends how big the bottle is

You don't ever "win" an argument with anyone, ever.

What usually happens is that the one who can talk the longest just bores the other to death so that eventually he/she just agrees to get rid of them, its why things like double glazing contracts have a "cooling off" period, the person didn't really want double glazing, they just signed the form to get rid of the boring tw*t who'd just wasted hours of their life in their own living room.

For genuine internet trolls just apply the rule of the pub tap room - decide for yourself whether or not the suspected troll would have the balls to say those things to you, or anyone else, in a crowded pub tap room - the answer will invariably be "no", or at least "no, not without serious injury anyway", and hence, you have your troll*.




* This rule does not apply to the troll formally known as "AP" - he really does say those things in pub tap rooms

Oh, that's a blast from the past.

The thing with the net is you can't convey tone or have a facial expression that says 'hey don't take me serious, this is just a light off the cuff comment'.

What i hate, on here as well as other forums is when you offer an opinion contrary to the popular one and are labelled a troll.

Say being a Wire fan and i venture over to the Wigan forum and offer a genuine opinion and all i get is 'love off troll', winds me up.

The internet seems to be a place of polarized opinion rather than discussion at times.

Don't see why some people fail to acknowledge others opinion because they are different, for me i usually disagree with 70% of Mintys opinions, not because they are wrong just we have a different view on life based on experiences but sometimes, as all humans should, i stand up and applaud some of her views.

Is discussion dead on the internet?

Oh he's still around. Though has been very quiet since the Grand Final.

Except that's also a fairly routine internet posturing excercise too. No doubt the occasional user is also a champion cage fighter and well-disposed to casual and extreme violence but it is a clearly suspect assumption that A could beat B in a fight just because B upsets A. The law of averages alone would suggest that would only be true 50% of the time. The two putative combatants have no idea who or what the other is, much less what "balls" they may have, so in reality you would have no basis for such a decision.

Secondly very many users of the internet who are in no way trolls are likely to be unkeen on violence, and wouldn't even consider that any sort of way to resolve an unpleasant internet exchange would be to kick the schit out of the "troll". So whether they could, or couldn't, is not the point.

Macho posturing is therefore both illogical and, even if you could beat B in a fight, that wouldn't actually mean you had won the intellectual fight, or that B was a troll, or that you weren't. Where would your rule leave people like Stephen Hawking, or Gandhi?

I used to argue in pubs all the time when younger. So, I am clearly not a troll.

Absolutely agree with all of this. Only this week as someone who I thought was an ok sort of bloke, deleted and blocked me from fb because I shared a difference of opinion and wasn't afraid of saying what I thought in a thread that everyone agreed with him. I've also had the same done on a Hull FC fb group for not conforming to opinion. I refused to heap Gareth Raynor with praise when he retired because imo he is a convicted criminal and thug and not a hero or role model for Hull FC. Who wants to be in groups and forums if you can't have a differing opinion, its very boring if you ask me.

Ah-ha!

But my learned friend you are assuming that by using the phrase "have the balls to say it" I am inferring that they would be beaten to a pulp or vice-versa, whereas that is not the case.

Imagine the scene down in the Donkey & Droppings tonight, in the tap room, with the usual crowd, all stout men hale and hearty quaffing their hand pulled bitters from sleever glasses, when in walks a stranger who takes up a position at the corner of the bar and declares to all and sundry "I think the landlord is a fink".

You would be correct in your assumption that the stranger has balls in that situation to say such a thing being that he hasn't even been served yet and the landlord now has the opportunity to serve him from a dirty glass and/or from the slop bucket, and yet no undertone of violence has been offered to or from him.

I beg to differ, in that situation the quality of his putative pint would not be what yer man needed to be worrying about at the top of his worry list!

I'm not. Don't know if he is.

These boards are absolutely fascinating from a psychology perspective and that article about trolling gave an insight into how one (and only one) of them thinks. You can actually learn a lot about people's behaviour just from the Sin Bin. How people may troll on this entire site and how people react to them. Kirkstaller for example.

As another example. Your honest revelation about your relationship with religion a while ago was both interesting and revelationary to read. You gave a small insight into your behaviour. I could talk to you for ages on that subject.

Eek.

You are the Sin Bin's very own [ifemme fatale[/i.

Underneath ze lantern
By ze barrack gate
Dahling I remember
Ze vay you used to vait ...

I'll hold my hands up to trolling Guardian's CIF, but I've never posted an inflammatory comment on here without my tongue being firmly in my cheek.

Are you stressed? That tends to make one indecisive.

Are you, perhaps, poised on a knife-edge, psychologically speaking, as a result of the posts of me and RB? The whole thing is becoming fascinating now we are all trying to read deep meaning into every 'utterance' on these boards. Who will be first to crack (or second - after Standee a month or two back)?

Wigan_Fan is still locked in Minty and tb's cellar.
There's room for you yet Dally.

Don't worry Mintball, me and my counselling chairs are 10,000 miles away. Though I will be back in London when my NRL season finishes next year.

Phew!