ericspinder's Journal: My Great Crime of Over use of the Bold tag!

Over the past couple of days I have been draw into a circular argument with (to coin a phrase) a Format Troll. He jumped into the middle of a thread about political spying, and kindly explained to "all of Slashdot" that (something like) "I am trying to fool everyone" or "my writing is crap" mostly because the last couple of posted used the hated BOLD tag. I checked his last couple of posts and found that he wasn't in it just to be contrainian (like the professional trolls), and responded to his complaint. It was rude insulting to me and clearly off-topic. I, in return, flamed him for his over use of white-space, a minor compliant, but I built it up a little. We knocked back a couple of post, now we have desolved into "word analysis" and who insulted who first.

His last post says that he never directly insulted me, but that I had (pervious to comment asking him if he's 12 yo) insulted him. I think in the pissing contest about who insulted who first he is clearly the winner, just look at his first post (and every other post). Granted he did say the general term "the Author", and then only associated me directly to the most insulting of the two insults, but I think that his intentions were clear. In his last post he states his case for "you [me] giving the first insult":

You said "So rather than burst out with something truly useful (which apparently you can't)". The word "can't" means lack of ability. I can't see any way to interpete that statement other than that you said you think I "never have anything to say". Please explain the meaning you intended.

That I want to respond to directly, the opening sentance said: (quoting myself)"I, on the other hand, suspect that Grammar Trolls, Spelling Trolls, and Format Trolls, often disagree with the posts they FLAME, but have nothing intelligent to say (at least on a particular subject)..." (BOLD for the important part) and then the offending line begins. I thought that it was a pretty good line, I have been hit with spelling and grammer trolls, and now it looks like I have a "format" troll (maybe "style troll"). The funny thing is I don't use bold that much. I only used it in this post to clearly indicate what I think are key points, very similar to what I just did (beside indicating the BOLD word). After the guy complained about the use in a otherwise insulting post, I had to use it more, just to get his goat at the very least. Then I ran into the "style troll" (I think I like that term better, less insulting because it has Style).

I was going to open this up to discussion here, but frankly I am bored with it.