Have you hugged your DDS combatant today?
By JoeAm
There are a lot of provocations around these days, social media visits from trolls and the presidents who hire them. I have learned that it is futile to engage people who are on a mission to confuse the conversation or poke people in the eye. I do admire the sophistication of the best of the trolls, particularly their ability to deploy fallacious reasoning as if they owned the copyright on all morality. The President is high skill himself, actually.
A year ago, I might have gotten angry. Today, I more often than not just block them and move on, or welcome them with warmth and appreciation. I laugh at them, privately, because their patterns are always the same. They complain about Mamasapano or Yolanda, demand we rummage the internet to prove our own case, refuse to answer questions when confronted with facts, change the topic if cornered, and otherwise introduce poor reasoning, always, always holding that they are personally qualified to judge you and anyone else who enters the discussion.
It is such an obnoxious form of conversation, isn’t it? Well, they are just serving their master, whether it be Marcos or Duterte or China or their own emotional need to defend the indefensible. Some of them are crazy, I think. Truly, they are emotionally insecure or hold a deep-rooted enjoyment of causing other people pain. They deny the real world trauma they are defending, for instance, the innocence of the EJK victims or the pain of the children left without fathers. They use fallacious reasoning WITH THEMSELVES, which I think is classic mental illness.
So I’m thinking they should be cared for with special handling. Now there are a few ways to do this, none yet approved by Doctor Persida Acosta.
- You can refer them to journalist Alan Robles on Twitter so he can give them shock therapy by issuing them their own, unique personal put-down. Maybe build a library of his insults which are often . . . well, shocking, and use them yourself until Alan threatens a plagiarism charge. I’ve shown a sampling of his work at the end of this article.
- You can thank the trolls or low-esteem hardheads for their attentions and offer your condolences for their condition. It is amazing how often they just go away.
- Sometimes it is fun to humor them with information or arguments that prove they are trolling. That is, hold up a mirror of ridicule so that the only possible target for their moral righteousness is themselves.
- Give them a warm thank you for the amusements they provide, and then block them.
Those are a few of my ideas. I say humor them because the last thing you want to do is allow them to push your buttons. When they get your goat, they have won. They feel grand.
So just hug them, give them a friendly pat on the tush, and send them on their way. If you have a spear to jab in their behinds, feel free . . .
Maybe you have your own ideas about how to deal with them. The discussion section of the article is a good place to give readers some ideas so we can all refine our techniques.
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Addendum
A sampling of Alan Robles’ compassionate treatment of trolls and other non-entities:
- See the ugly troll. Ugly troll is angry. See the ugly troll jump up and down. Ugly troll is locked out of his fake account. Tsk tsk
- you’re welcome. Let me not keep you from an undoubtedly busy schedule lecturing to world leaders, impressing everyone with your knowledge, withholding your golden 15 minutes of attention so precious, etc blah blah blah
- What do you get when you put military officers in charge of Customs? Very rich military officers
- (Re Korina) do I have the faintest idea what it is you’re gargling? Nope. But I have a better idea, totoy. Since you’re so important, YOU ask her
- all you have to do is speak your baluktotation english and people will be horrified. Then they’ll laugh hysterically. So you could star in a horror comedy. Maybe as a fake account cowardly sniveling dwarf?
- and your opinion matters because…you have three followers? Papaimportante mail order much?
- trolls comment using images because they’re too stupid to spell properly
- I notice though that you don’t post YOUR picture. And YOUR real name. So therefore: pangit ka na, duwag pa? What can you expect, you’re an evil troll
- these malignant Duterte prootwaddles have self-esteem issues. Either semiliterate menials or scammers, they are laughed at by their employers and coworkers
- What kind of idiot are you, professional or total?
- What a crushing disappointment you must be to your parents. They saved up all that money to put you through school, you failed and here you are, a hired troll. Tsk tsk
- Or else what? What will you do? Burst into tears?
- “a trash mind”. Tell us, little scrote, not that we particularly care but it might amuse us – did you pass grade 1? After how many attempts? Beyond count?
- Nobody has to please you that’s for sure. You’re close to being totally insignificant, people keep you around just so they can kick you down a hole. Like this
- pwede ba blah blah blah says sister Sanctimonia.
- Nobody cares what you think
- I understand. Too many facts and truths will make the polyp sized thing that passes for your brain swell and pop most disturbingly
- and we should listen to a loser chimp nobody like you because… you are now toilet trained? Congratulations! Now clean the latrine
- Aww poor little fake account coward troll – FB fumigated your nest? No more fake news home? Tiny violin music for the twerp please…
- are you finished with your little speech, roachling? aren’t you going to bow and wave your antennae?
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Duterte’s trolls are paid with our taxes. Our taxes used to confused us from what are fakes and genuine topics. We let them do it coz the president and our laws are toothless. Why not Facebook shut down these troll pages? Face book can see and detect troll pages without problem but why FB is with them???
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Emil, very good point.
*****
YES, Emil, FACEBOOK should shut them up! (I wonder why Facebook does not!)
FACEBOOK is for what it is; for profit is its reason for existence and incidentally for a little of something else like service and moral eche bucheche. There oughta be a law to make it do the right thing that won’t transgress it’s porous borders keeping press freedom alive and abused.
I once asked Alan whether he used to play Castle Wolfenstein. He said yes.
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1. I do so enjoy Alan’s rebuttals.
2. I do not know that I have the skill, the relish, and the tactless savoir-faire. Yes, I know, that’s an oxymoron.
3. My timidity arises from the fact that the barbs or, rather, the thunderbolts are ad hominem.
4. A second reason is the admonition not to feed trolls.
5. A third reason is that I have better ways to spend my hours.
6. The art of the insult is, in many ways, entertaining. Sir Winston Churchill used it to good effect. And Duterte and Trump have wielded it to gain political office and maintain dominance.
6.1. In my personal code, it is inappropriate and cruel to use insult as a political tool. Or to conduct discussion, whether in person or in social media. I sometimes falter.
7. And yet, I cannot deny Alan’s gusto. And I cannot say that his victims are undeserving of his attention. The burns are well deserved.
7.1. And, oh, it must be so satisfying.
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I’m sure it is. I would not want to be on the receiving end of his ‘analysis’.
Trump, and his base supporters “savaged” Gillum — the Florida Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate — in the words they used against him: stone-cold thief, lock him up.
Gillum riposted in equal or sharper words, which I believe appropriate in the instance “… as my grandmother told me — never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it. So ignore him and vote, Florida!”
There is a legend of a quote attributed to Winston Churchill [now known not to have happened]:
When Nancy Astor, Britain’s first female MP, told Sir Winston Churchill that: “If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee,” Churchill famously replied: “Nancy, if I were your husband I would drink it.”
Gillum’s response to Trump and supporters is not as artful as the supposed retort of Winston Churchill to Lady Astor, but Gillum probably thought rightfully that any subtlety will not be understood by Trump and supporters.
Love those responses.
From popoy as Tweeto : Is this a kind of trolling or impertinent elaboration on humour as a weapon?
From JoeAm: “Sometimes it is fun to humor them with information or arguments that prove they are trolling. That is, hold up a mirror of ridicule so that the only possible target for their moral righteousness is themselves.
Give them a warm thank you for the amusements they provide, and then block them.
Those are a few of my ideas. I say humor them because the last thing you want to do is allow them to push your buttons.”
From popoy:
Pinoy Humour
Worse than lethal injection
That’s Pinoy humour.
Mightier than
“the pen is mightier than the sword”
that’s Pinoy humour
When Humour is the armor of anger
against tyrants
when humour is the dove of hawks,
who will fear the legal criminals?
when humour is a masked desire to kill
the hydra of the anti Christ
when humour is the only recourse of the
oppressed,
humour can be worst than a curse to the
legion of thieves.
-October 27, 2005
POSTED in Ellen Tordesillas Blog,June 18, 2005 @ 6:57 am ;
was in page 81 in CONSTANT WINDS, 2017.
In a jungle warfare, having sharp shooters around, snipers that switch off the enemy’s head, falling dead without twitching, makes the day of the platoon. Wearing the anti-dirt uniform proudly because of them.. having great head shooters around is comforting.
I’m afraid I don’t get the message or appreciate the cold brutality of the statement. I think the worldwide drift to bullying, racism, and brutality is unfortunate. It is easy to express on social media as a ‘lark’ but it is quite something different if it is your son who has his head shot.
Appropriate picture accompanying the Blog article and the irony in it. However, hugging that pest is not what I would like do. But it has been demonstrated for over two years that fellow pests hug the thing like crazy.
Engage them and they will you down to their stupidity and of course they will win by experience..and the more engagements they do the more money they make,,so stop feeding themp
Salamat, Joe Am, for this wonderful piece. It amused me no end. But will have to reread in the next few days when I have more time. Reread more seriously, ponder on things that would probably get the trolls’ goat, analyze and contribute my two cents.
Why, thank you, Mely. Humor can keep us sane when the rest of the world has gone bonkers. Glad you are amused.
OT: not since Eduardo Quintero in 1971 during the infamous Constitutional Assembly (where he exposed widescale attempt at bribing the delegates), had the entire apparatus of iron-fisted Executive feared an elderly person, as Sr. Fox questioned the sincerity of this government, who instead answered back with a vicious and legal-larded rebuke threatening to remove her presence in the country. Sure they have now made her leave, but sure she left quite an impressive mark of defiance, a pockmark upon this circus of a government.
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I remember how new DOJ Secretary Guevarra tried to impress when he “saved” Sister Fox from the Bureau of Immigration’s order to nullify her visa. He should be treated with the greatest respect (in the British sense of the phrase).
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Just like a Bishop said Duterte is a saint, let us pray to him:
https://amp.rappler.com/nation/215804-bishop-david-post-about-duterte-very-sick-man
only yellows do not know that Pope Francis just made him one!
https://cnstopstories.com/2016/11/01/pope-offers-new-beatitudes-for-saints-of-a-new-age/
quo warranto et ab initio in saeculo saeculorum
OT: Regarding journalism, I am obliged to say that it is of poor fact-checking if a news outlet quotes a questionable Panos Mourdoukoutas as “credible” reporting.
Indeed.