http://www.xkcd.com/438/

Was there ever a time that the editorial pages were used just for the impartial and public-minded musings of the good and great, and never sullied by commercial imperatives to get people hot under the collar and coming back for more?

Apparently I was the first person who had given him the right answer. I wonder why….

Anyway, back on topic. Didn’t journos always engage in troll-like behaviour. I tend to have the point of view that the only difference between opinion piece writers and bloggers is who you know.

Certainly, it seems to be the case that most political commentators in Australia either provide the same level of wiki/google based research as most bloggers or they survive off the scraps of information provided by insiders who want to tactically leak stuff.

these trolls remind me most of some of the church sermons that i saw as a kid and some of teh evangelicals i made myself check out when i was in the US. of course the trolls are generally more vulger than anything i ever saw from a pulpit, some of the soapbox speechifiers fit the bill more closely.

I sometimes think that trolling on the inter tubes has a lot to do with the troll’s mourning for Authority. it is as though the troll is so devestated that not everyone genuflects as the feet of their guru that they must up the volume. They also remind me of those desert lizards with the frills that make them look three times larger than they are. you can see some of them up the ante as their arguments get deconstructed.

off the intertubes it is trolling for Authority, be it god, the flying wostershire sause monster or the legacy of Prescott Bush. My mum the Lev Bronstein tragic kept a collection of the lies that Stalin propagated about him for a long time. that is the earliest eg of trolling as Danah Boyd seems to construct it that i can think of, without of course the profit motive, unless you accept the soviet empire as profit enough. it had it all; the constant repatition of ‘facts’, the refferences to shadowy conspiracies, growing stridency, a distinct lack of respect and the construction and refferal to an authority that is unquestionable.

is there a soviet equivalent to Godwin’s law, and have i broken it? a quick google shows nothing.

SPOT ON…this Burchell sounds like a hand puppet. But who is making his mouth move? Perhaps the punch-drunk? Those who dominated the ring…but once some effective political & media-related Southpaws come along they can’t stand up to the heat, except by rigging the match perhaps? Or was it always rigged?

It’s not just the ex-GG that’s guilty though, nor even Murdoch papers.
A commenter at my blog recently pointed this out w/r/t Jim Schembri’s distinguished and measured remarks about jazz. Catherine Deveny at The Age is another one. They don’t specifically bait bloggers but the op-ed format is obviously viewed as an opportunity, nay an obligation, to be as provocative as possible.