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Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

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11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

#11

Most journalists are. If they weren't, nobody would pay attention to them, and if nobody pays attention to them, they don't make any money. (Ergo, they can't be a professional without being a troll...)

The difference is that Dvorak is little more than a troll.

Re: Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

#12
post #10
post #7

Can't the same thing be said about people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter? They twist and turn facts, drum up controversy and spread hate/fear.

Oh, definitely. But they might not be trolling on purpose; there is the off chance that they actually believe the stuff they're saying.

Possible. But people like Hannity purposefully edit videos (President Obama's speeches, for example), twist the facts - that seems trollish to me. But I guess, they get paid to do that. Sad thing is, they are good at it (judging by the audience of Fox network)

Re: Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

#13
post #7

Can't the same thing be said about people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter? They twist and turn facts, drum up controversy and spread hate/fear.

Absolutely. I hardly think that's good company for Dvorak to want to be in, though. :)

edit: Then again, those morons make a lot of money with their hate speech, so whether or not Dvorak would want to be counted among those ranks depends on his moral compass, I guess.

Re: Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

#14
post #10
post #7

Can't the same thing be said about people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter? They twist and turn facts, drum up controversy and spread hate/fear.

Oh, definitely. But they might not be trolling on purpose; there is the off chance that they actually believe the stuff they're saying.

Nope, not even possible. They manipulate the facts and intentionally make provably false statements on a regular basis.

That said, they may believe that the ends justify the means.

Re: Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

#15
post #10
post #7

Can't the same thing be said about people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter? They twist and turn facts, drum up controversy and spread hate/fear.

Oh, definitely. But they might not be trolling on purpose; there is the off chance that they actually believe the stuff they're saying.

[deleted]

Re: Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

#17
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, definitely. But they might not be trolling on purpose; there is the off chance that they actually believe the stuff they're saying.

Possible. But people like Hannity purposefully edit videos (President Obama's speeches, for example), twist the facts - that seems trollish to me. But I guess, they get paid to do that. Sad thing is, they are good at it (judging by the audience of Fox network)

Fox could be more accurate than much of the rest of the media (their manipulations are presumably equally as deliberate and they'll deny their bias despite the fact the vast majority openly support Democrats - http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/scalliwag/200908/why-mos...) and I suspect that better explains their audience (but also the decline of the mainstream media as a whole). There's a reason more people read the WSJ than the NYT though most people don't realize it.

The irony is that Fox News was scored by UCLA study as being left of center: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Media-Bias-Is-Real-Find...

disclosure: I don't watch Fox, I read the WSJ and the NYT though I find CNN particularly infuriating and I'm quite far from being a Republican.

Re: Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

#18
It's interesting how there seems to be a niche for 'tech gossip' much along the lines of the celebrity gossip magazines and websites.

I always thought the IT world was above that but it seems that I'm mistaken.

It is almost like an echo chamber where the likes of Dvorak, Carr (not Nicholas, the 'other' one) and other compadres stir up this amazing foam of controversy and plain bull shit in order to generate page views and the crowd laps it up.

By posting and re-posting this drivel we are actually contributing to the effect.

Re: Is Dvorak a Professional Troll?

#19
post #4

Yes.

I believe he is. However, I believe a lot of news organizations/blog owners are trying to do it these days. They will have very controversial/eye catching headlines with no substance in the article to gain more traction. Dvorak is a few steps ahead, he tries to justify those headlines by pulling fake data.

A frequent offender is Alley Insider and the entire Business Insider set of blogs. Henry Blodget's Internet Outsider blog used to be great, and SAI started nicely, but now it has devolved into a trolling + link-baiting mess. A search for 'killer site:businessinsider.com' shows how many titles they have that are -killer such as 'wikipedia-killer' 'google-killer' etc. They frequently take a poor claim or projection based on little to no evidence that is likely to be controversial, assume it is incontrovertible and publish a litany of bad arguments, stupid opinions and ridiculous forecasts.

The comments on these posts reflect the type of people to enjoy such a blog.

Peter Kafka used to blog for SAI and during his tenure there his posts were as bad as any other on that site and since he's moved to AllthingsD his posts have improved wholesale and are now informative, interesting and frequently make headlines on memetrackers such as Techmeme. I think it's some kind of policy, and I don't think it works given the greater exposure Kafka gets now than before when he was with SAI.

/rant

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