Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

tracingwoodgrains.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 192 posts

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#81

Post by smabie »

kazinator wrote: post #62
andybak wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't more than one thing be important at any one time?

Undoubtedly. But, generally speaking, an unimportant thing and an important thing cannot be important at the same time. I don't think that the "Internet troublemakers" did anything wrong, on the face of it. Making a joke forum where you pretend that you're a Texan who is seriously bounty hunting women for the crime of abortion is no worse than, oh, Jonathan Swift writing an essay about how poor people could improve t…

So what's the problem with the post? Are you saying he shouldn't be spending his time writing it?

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#82

Post by throwawaylinux »

quantified wrote: post #48
grapist420 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iirc there was an actual tip line, so nonzero. The content was very obvious satire though

Sometimes hard to tell, especially after all these years of Trump. Is “the election was stolen” satire? The difference between satire and reality is in the intent of the author, harder and harder to detect as people read less and less of it

I completely agree -- hell, I still can't work out if "Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election" was satire or if people actually believed it.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#83

Post by kazinator »

paulpauper wrote: post #75
kazinator wrote: post #21

Trace Underwood looks like a douchebag here with his tone-deaf narrative. Women have their rights trampled upon in Texas, but let's focus on the "internet troublemakers" who draw attention to this situation using satire?

Then go to medium. Com and write an article about just that. I am sure it has not been done before.

Why would someone who wants to write comment Y in response to something on hackernews should instead go to medium.com (or elsewhere) and write an entire article with totally different content X?

Is that what you do yourself; or else, why are you recommending it to me, then?

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#84

Post by hexane360 »

zizee wrote: post #80
drdec wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be true, but it is so revealing of the mindset of people who think that way.

> It might not be true, but it is so revealing of the mindset of people who think that way. Is this sarcasm/irony? Or are you doing precisely what this post talks about? Or perhaps I am parsing your words incorrectly? The CS Lewis quote from the article: > Wishing that black was blacker, conviction that false stories reveal deep truths about opponents

Now you're falling victim to it!

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#85

Post by msrenee »

deelowe wrote: post #58
lr4444lr wrote: post #31

Groups like this are very important to have around for the rest of us to periodically recalibrate our bull@#$% detectors against. That people whose professional reputation and livelihood it is to keep well-calibrated fell for this, is leagues more dangerous than these jokesters themselves. Sad!

Same sort of bs is happening with the horse paste stuff now. The story about hospitals being overrun due to people oding were wildly inaccurate at best. Whatever fits the narrative I guess…

Horse paste? It's not you specifically, but you're not the first person I've seen recently who has referred to it and didn't appear to understand what the substance is. Someone I know called it a "horse tranquilizer" in a conversation the other day. It's Ivermectin. It's a dewormer. It shows some promise, but more research is needed into its efficacy.

Anyone who has a baseline knowledge of medicine would call it a dewormer. It's pretty much the standard one. I feel like the fact that so many people don't have a mental compartment for a basic medical term like that nowadays really has a lot to do with how much trouble we've had controlling this virus. Of course an mRNA vaccine is scary to someone who doesn't know what mRNA is.

We're never going to escape this cycle without better science education.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#86

Post by prvc »

tyingq wrote: post #69
kodah wrote: post #14

The journalist in this article, Steve Silberman has an entire Twitter filled with strongman rhetoric. I'm not really surprised someone with this style of rhetoric was so easily duped. I am concerned that he works for a major publication like Wired.

He's not my cup of tea either, but his bio is fairly impressive: https://www.stevesilberman.com/about-steve/

>but his bio is fairly impressive

Perhaps, that one may be impressed merely by reading such a blurb is part of the problem.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#87

Post by tadfisher »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #82
quantified wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes hard to tell, especially after all these years of Trump. Is “the election was stolen” satire? The difference between satire and reality is in the intent of the author, harder and harder to detect as people read less and less of it

I completely agree -- hell, I still can't work out if "Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election" was satire or if people actually believed it.

You do recall the months-long investigation into this question ? One that resulted in 37 indictments and 5 prison sentences? Even if it exonerated the Trump campaign, which it didn't, I don't think you're very accepting of alternate viewpoints.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#88

Post by seabird »

jolux wrote: post #55
grapist420 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subs like transpets illustrate more how ridiculous it is people are fooled. Thousands of upspergs on posts about dilating dogs or castrating cats. People are absurdly gullible and it’s really just terrible.

> People are absurdly gullible and it’s really just terrible. Have you considered how far we would have gotten as a species if we had a pervasive assumption of bad faith in our interactions with other people? Complex societies depend on assuming good faith. People who assume others are always acting in bad faith are often traumatized or suffering from other forms of mental illness. I don’t find it “ridiculous” that p…

There _is_ a pervasive assumption of bad faith. People almost always consider the possibility of bad faith when they don't know the other party, at all levels of society since the beginning of recorded history. A bad actor can have a massive (sometimes irreversible) negative impact; it's an important behavior that we should encourage.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#89

Post by shephardjhon »

so what exactly should have tipped off the journalists or commentators? and yes, I mean not just the bounty hunters but also the trans one. If the idea was that this was some elaborate puzzle to solve, what EXACTLY was the solution and how should they have come to it? This is not a cleaver joke, the people supporting this aren't Sacha Baron Cohen. In Borat, there were many things that would tip people off beyond just the absurdity of what he was saying or doing. So what EXACTLY were journalists on either side supposed to pick up on?

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#90

Post by thebooktocome »

msrenee wrote: post #85
deelowe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same sort of bs is happening with the horse paste stuff now. The story about hospitals being overrun due to people oding were wildly inaccurate at best. Whatever fits the narrative I guess…

Horse paste? It's not you specifically, but you're not the first person I've seen recently who has referred to it and didn't appear to understand what the substance is. Someone I know called it a "horse tranquilizer" in a conversation the other day. It's Ivermectin. It's a dewormer. It shows some promise, but more research is needed into its efficacy. Anyone who has a baseline knowledge of medicine would call it a de…

Horse paste is an intentionally derogatory term for it. It's not meant to be scientifically accurate.
Post reply on HN