Meeting A Troll • Hacker News Board

Re: Meeting A Troll

#161

Post by blauwbilgorgel » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:06 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

That is a pretty compelling story. I'm not sure I could let it go without a bit more narrative around the 'game thing.' It sounds too much like 'making your bones' in a street gang.

  About how he'd become engrossed in conspiracy sites.

Anti-semitism is rife on conspiracy sites. I just assumed 'the game' thing was started on one such conspiracy site. Paranoia, hatred and naivety can be breeding grounds for these attacks.

I view it less as a street gang game, and more of a game of 'hunt the Illuminati'. Doesn't make it any less despicable. If anything these conspiracy sites (and its posters) carry part of the blame for incitement.

Re: Meeting A Troll

#162

Post by engtech » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:08 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #132

gaius wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a strong case in the modern world for upping the age of maturity to say, 25.

How will that help? You don't solve the problem of people being immature even into adulthood by delaying the official onset of adulthood yet more. You solve it by treating teenagers as adults in training. Which used to be the case until very recently. Now we avoid giving responsibility to teens, we treat high school like day care or a prison, and we wonder why our "kids" don't magically acquire maturity when they tur…

I think the answer isn't so much giving people consequences as giving them responsibility.

It's ridiculous that some kids get their post secondary education degree without ever having held a job (of any kind).

I find it amazing that teens walk around with $200-$2000 worth of electronics that their parents paid for them with no thought to their value because they didn't pay for it, and they know they'll be replaced if they whine enough.

Re: Meeting A Troll

#163

Post by sneak » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:16 PM UTC

That's not a troll, that's just a run-of-the-mill dickhead.

Trolling is a art.

Re: Meeting A Troll

#164

Post by fusiongyro » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:25 PM UTC

yelsgib wrote: post #96

minitrollster wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading this, I can only say one thing: you're living in fantasyland. This is the real world, not some libertarian utopia. And regarding your last point, what about pedophiles? Rapists? Should we just surround them with love and forgiveness?

Yes, I believe we should surround them with love and forgiveness. We also should -have- provided them with love and forgiveness so that they would feel comfortable talking about their problems before they could result in severe issues. What do -you- suggest we do? Beat them up? "Teach them a lesson?" What will that accomplish, exactly? --- Let me just say that I sense a great deal of pain in you. This is not an attac…

Sometimes what's best for society isn't what's best for the individual. Society benefits from having sadists removed from the equation. It doesn't matter much, from a societal standpoint, whether they're rehabilitated or incarcerated, as long as the sadistic entity is removed from the equation.

If there were no examples of sadists who could not be rehabilitated, your point would be obviously true. Unfortunately, there are many examples of sadists who resist rehabilitation. These people exist now, whether or not they could have been rehabilitated earlier by love and forgiveness. Even if you were strictly correct, you'd still have a bootstrapping problem, in the form of what to do with these people today.

I contend that there will always be people who become sadistic outside the reach of whatever institutions you attempt to create to shower love and forgiveness on them, and I further contend that many people who, once they become sadistic, cannot return to a state of empathy. For the first point, I only have to point to hunger. Food and shelter are obviously tractable problems, yet we continue to have a problem with hunger and homelessness. To think we can eradicate more complex social problems than those is really quite naive.

As to the second point I am open to scientific evidence to the contrary, but please bear in mind that from society's standpoint, a recidivism rate greater than zero may still be less preferable than lifelong incarceration for sadistic criminals. Most people would agree that once you've taken a few lives for the fun of it, it's not worth the risk to another member of society to "find out" whether you've been successfully rehabilitated.

Re: Meeting A Troll

#165

Post by blerrrgh » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:31 PM UTC

17 is OLD. This is a high school kid, and maybe he's immature, but he crossed a very serious line. The line between prank phone calls, and the types of coercive intimidation tactics he employed shouldn't be glossed over.

One other comment about this anecdote: I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Revealing your true identity online, on the internet can be very, VERY risky. Downright dangerous. The fact that Google+ and Facebook encourage this as a normal, casual practice is irresponsible.

The internet is high-powered super-charged tachnology, which needs to be respected as such. It's not like putting your name in the phone book. VIPs who retain attourneys, hire personal assistants, and hire other staff (possibly even professional security) have adequate countermeasure to cope with online stalkers. Average individuals do not.

Consider that in ye olden days, predating even dial-up, there were notorious problems with local TV stations who would hire pretty women as their meteorologists. These were professional broadcasters that had problems with public exposure.

Craigslist has a firm understanding of some of the cold realities of the internet, in particular, prostitution, and they advise their users with very little whitewash. Twitter, Facebook and Google+ should do the same.

Re: Meeting A Troll

#166

Post by datalus » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:38 PM UTC

derleth wrote: post #122

datalus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You trolling? It never ceases to amaze me that people who read a blog post suddenly form hard lined opinions about a real world situation. To me, it's a bit sociopath-like to be so vindictive about a situation that you know next to nothing about. What's the relationship between the poster and the kid? He most likely knows the boy's past, he knows the family, and yet it's all too easy to forget all that and condemn so…

I hope I'm wrong and that the troll isn't a sociopath.

In all honesty, I didn't mean to jump all over your comment, there's plenty of worse offenders in the thread for that kind of reply.

However, it still stands that we just don't know enough to make any judgement call. It's in society's hands as it were now anyway, and all the best we can do is hope for something good to come out of this.

Re: Meeting A Troll

#167

Post by minitrollster » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:39 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #126

minitrollster wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing: actions have consequences. Bad actions result in bad consequences. Such is the learning process of lots of species. Do you think training pets by reinforcing good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour is modern and supported by "state propaganda", whatever that means? I do believe that prison systems can be good at rehabilitation. Maybe not in the US, where you seem to be from, but it's working in m…

Do you think kids should be trained like pets? It seems a lot of people do, they also think they own their kids somehow. Sad... As I said in another comment: personally I hope my kid will end up doing what is right because he believes it the right thing to do, not because of fear of punishment. Not saying that punishment is never necessary (I am not sure). Obviously it works, because people (and animals) can learn fr…

I do not think that kids should be trained like pets. They are more intelligent and react to a more nuanced approach. My point about punishment just means that bad actions should be sanctioned and good actions rewarded.

My parents never physically punished me, but as soon as I was old enough to understand what was going on, just knowing that I'd disappointed them would make me feel extremely bad. There's no resentment there. They taught me how to behave in a way that is acceptable in society and if I misbehaved I was aware that I was wrong. Hopefully that's how everything would go.

But as always, there will be bad apples (and good ones, too). What do you do when someone's such a sociopath that they don't care when they hurt other people? That's when I believe that punishment should be carried on by the society and not the parents, in the form of jail, probation, juvenile court, etc.

Re: Meeting A Troll

#168

Post by infinite8s » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 3:06 PM UTC

rooshdi wrote: post #110

zainny wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with the "loving community will fix everything" theory in a nutshell. Parents or friends of a person who is dangerous to society will turn a blind eye, be more easily coerced, manipulated, etc. A loving community will see the signs of recovery in a person, not because there is necessarily any, but because it's what they want to see.

There are outliers, but love has contagious qualities in most instances.

Except the outliers, as you mention, in which case nothing will help. True psycopaths cannot be reformed.

Re: Meeting A Troll

#169

Post by infinite8s » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 3:07 PM UTC

shurane wrote: post #151

Destroyer661 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17 year olds may be able to do all of those things, however we know that the average male's forebrain doesn't fully develop until much later, as much as 8 years later. Some males aged 25 still have not developed to the point of advanced reasoning. Reasoning like being able to see the consequences and harm done by stunts such as sending threats like this. It's certainly not enough to dismiss this and say "he's 17, he'…

Whoa, can I get a citation for this? That sounds so weird. This is particularly males? Males with healthy diets and lifestyles, ones with terrible diets and bad lifestyles, or across the board?

Especially since the average male lifespan was around 35 years up until a few millenia ago. Are you saying that most males died before they reached maturity?

Re: Meeting A Troll

#170

Post by voldemort12 » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 3:19 PM UTC

Am I the only one who feels like this story is hugely, hugely embellished? It is just too picture perfect. And absolutely none of the comments herein seem to question any aspect of it whatsoever. It is straight-up revenge-porn. My bet is that certain aspects of this actually happened, but things just don't happen this smoothly in real life.