MetaFilter posts tagged with troll

Trolling the head of the TSA

ChasFile — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:23:31 -0800

Trolling the Head of the TSA: Bruce Schneier [previously], consummate voice of sanity on all issues of security, co-authors an article in The Atlantic [previously] demonstrating how weak and ultimately pointless most of the new security practices put in place at airports since 9/11 are by, among other things, boarding airplanes with large amounts of liquid, using fake boarding passes he printed off his computer, and wearing an "I <3 Hezbollah" t-shirt. TSA head Kip Hawley then responds on the TSA's blog. Schneier then responds to the response on his blog. Hawley then leaves a comment to that post. Schneier fires back again in his monthly newsletter. Quite an interesting and intelligent debate, despite both men humorously falling victim to the idioms of the medium and getting increasingly snarky with each passing post. [via this month's crypto-gram, a good read all the way around.]

Malwebolence.

Sticherbeast — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:44:17 -0800

Zeno of Elea, Socrates and Jesus, Weev said, are his all-time favorite trolls. He also identifies with Coyote and Loki, the trickster gods, and especially with Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. “Loki was a hacker. The other gods feared him, but they needed his tools.” The New York Times investigates the ever-evolving, LOL-corrupting, epileptic-seizuring, iPod-leaving-on-gravestone-ing phenomenon of major Internet trolling, featuring interviews with Jason Fortuny, Weev, and a gentleman named Christopher Poole (prev). Choice bit from the article: One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as “god of the Internet” for the influence he exercised over the emerging network. In 1981, he formulated what’s known as Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.”...Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you.

He's not, like, a garden item.

orthogonality — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:25:26 -0800

Potrait of an internet troll (with actual potrait of the internet troll). Includes one-bedroom apartment, dead-end and part-time jobs, and not-so-secret underground lair.

How to deal with hecklers

LobsterMitten — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:31:23 -0800

Baseball fans heckle Vernon Wells, and he throws them a personally-inscribed baseball which reads "Here’s your ball, now please tell me what gas station you work at so I can come and yell at you when you’re working. Please sit down, shut up and enjoy the game. From your favorite centre fielder, Vernon Wells." (See the followups at the bottom of that article, with pictures of the ball.) This past weekend, Ken Griffey Jr. throws his jockstrap into the stands because a dude has been heckling him. (Everybody is laughing in both of these stories.)

This is not your grandmother's uterus

verb — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 08:58:01 -0800

Educational films about puberty... Then, and now.

Patent trolls suck. (I own that)

raaka — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:56:39 -0800

Where can a company that owns nothing but legal documents force another company that actually does make products to pay them? In the USA! You too can be a patent troll. Just patent any dumb idea you have -- you'll certainly be awarded the patent -- then sue anyone who makes a product that looks remotely like it could be based on your idea. Congratulations! You made money by punishing people who actually make things! Hooray!

maybe a pleasant demeanor isn't one of the many benefits of marriage

4easypayments — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:46:41 -0800

Single life is fine till about 30, then normal people marry. Neil Steinberg fires a trollish, yet illuminating salvo across the marriage gap.

NedKoppel — Thu, 05 Sep 2002 07:27:07 -0800

Dear Ann Coulter: You're fired.

aaron — Tue, 19 Mar 2002 16:04:40 -0800

College Girls: Unpaid Whores. So you think you're a great troller. You think you know how to spin your words with absolute precision to force your opponents into a saliva-spewing frenzied rage. Well, guess what? You're a nobody, an amateur. It's time for you to bow down before the One True Master: Cornell University doctoral candidate Joseph J. Sabia. I defy a single MeFite, of any ideology or political persuasion, to not find at least one statement in this article that doesn't completely infuriate them.

NortonDC — Mon, 04 Feb 2002 07:17:11 -0800

WHACK-A-TROLL^TM Laugh. It's funny.

tweek! — Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:49:41 -0800

French retards can sue their birth doctors for not killing them in the womb... I thought the link I posted about a woman suing her boss when she crashed her car after driving home drunk from a staff party was the height of lawsuit insanity, but this takes the cake: in France, if you are seriously disabled, you have the right to sue a doctor who failed to recommend an abortion to your mother.... .... Homosaywhat?