Lately, I'm seeing more and more "reign in" on Slashdot and I've got to say, I'm disappointed.

I need a new system on which to run asterisk, bonus points if I don't have to configure it from scratch. I'd like to spend less than $200 (ideally I'd pick up something used if necessary for $100) but I have storage devices available, whether CF, SD, USB, or what have you. It can have wireless, but it doesn't have to because I have a routerboard for that. I have found my pogoplugs to be unreliable at best.

Wow, it's been 15 years but I've finally got my own personal troll! :-)

I must apologize to everyone I've ever called a troll now that I've seen a real one. Yeah, there are trollish comments, but this... it's a different league. If you ever wondered who these brain-damaged morons were who set up geocities homepages with blinking purple text on blue background with red dots in Comic Sans - that kind of different league.

Now it does make me wonder about trolls in general. Has there been a study on this? I really wonder if psychologists have tackled this because quite honestly, you cannot be mentally stable and post in this and this content at the same time. So I do wonder if trolls on the Internet (the real trolls, not the people occasionally posting something stupid) do have a mental problem. It definitely looks like it. Probably insecurity issues, definitely an exaggerated need for attention, might be related to borderline syndrome or schizoprenia.

And, of course, the Internet provides:

• The Worst Internet Trolls Might Be Mentally Ill
• Internet trolls are narcissistic psychopathic sadistic
• Internet trolls might be mentally ill
• Most Internet trolls are mentally ill
• If Trolls Are Actually Mentally Ill People, What Do We Do About It?

As someone who has had to deal with family members suffering from mental illness, let me tell you that it's not funny. So despite the fact that they are, in fact, obnoxious, aggravating assholes, these sad little fucks also need help and their miserable little existence is not something you'd want to trade for yours, no matter how much you think your life sucks. Trust me, with a mental illness on top, it'll suck more.

Obviously, we can't offer therapy to people who usually comment anonymously and will often go to great lengths to avoid being tracked down. What we can do, however, is get a better understanding for how they act this way (they can't help it, mental illness is stronger than your conscious mind) and that the best thing we can do for them is to not continue the feedback loop. "Don't feed the trolls" - old wisdom there.

The last link in that list contains a few more ideas.

Now that I'm at the end, I kind of regret the smiley face at the top. But I'm leaving it in because this journal entry is a bit of a journey, even if it is short. Thanks to some Internet resources, a bit of research and connecting the dots, I've come a short way, changing my mind a little on this particular sub-sub-sub-part of life.

-----

A short additional statement on how to treat trolling. From what I've gathered from the resources above, a few comments (both here and in the various spammed threads) and my own life experience:

First, don't feed the trolls. Most of them seek attention, so if you stop giving it to them, they become frustrated and go away. Notice that they seek attention, not validation. A rebuke or an angry rant or even a shootout of personal insults satisfies them as much as anything else. Much like the old PR saying "there is no negative publicity", it is all about the attention itself, not about its content.

Second, stand your ground. Do not leave the site or stop commenting just because you're being trolled. It takes a bit to do that, yes. Trolls consider it a "victory" if they shut you up, either by simple flooding or by frustrating you enough to disappear. In their twisted minds, it gives them validation and somehow proves that they were right.

Third, if you see someone else being trolled, give them support. Doesn't take much - a single sentence is more than enough. Someone under attack by a real troll is being flooded. The troll will commonly post under multiple aliases or otherwise attempt to appear as more than one person. Psychological experiments such as Solomon Asch's show how we humans as social animals experience conformance pressure. So give that other person support by showing him that the flood he's getting is no the only opinion around. It doesn't matter if he consciously knows it's just one troll, the pressure is subconscious.

-----

I'd like to have comments disabled on this journal entry, for obvious reasons, but you can't publish a journal entry with comments disabled, so... 1000:1 bet that he's stalking the journal as well and will add his drivel below?

Also, if the formatting looks atrocious, turn off beta and revert to classic. Seriously.

Not so well, huh? India is usually cited as one of the Green Revolution's successes, but it's easy to watch the ongoing failure.

I decided to try out nosupportlinuxhosting but they appear to have suspended hyperlogos.org without notice or explanation. I sure hope I don't have to issue a chargeback, that would be stupid. I'm already waiting for Amazon to process two returns that have been sitting around at their facilities for weeks.

I'm not talking about the content, that has always been shit
I'm talking about what happens when I try to modify my relationships.

OK

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, admin@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at slashdot.org Port 80

Of course I reported the error. Of course I never heard back. Now I'm seeing it again.
Slashdot is basically unusable without friends/foes lists.

Subject says it all. If I can't read your content without javascript, either you are an idiot, or you're evil, or you're an evil idiot.

Google will tell you that their collection of "anonymous" location statistics is opt-in. That is, technically, true. However, on Gingerbread it is not opt-out. Once turned on, there is no option to disable it, that was added later. That, or I have forgotten all I once knew about google-fu. I can find how to change your mind about this on ICS, but not on GB.

I became curious (about Slashdot achievements, silly) and searched to no avail. Anyone have any clue?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42911081
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42911043
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42910999
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42910763
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3464373&cid=42910725

Slashdot, why for you no let me use Plain Text in my journal any more?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3436185&cid=42803807
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3436175&cid=42803841
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3430839&cid=42803897
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3436185&cid=42804399

I can afford it.

Modtrolls troll mod. Film at eleven.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3428941&cid=42771455
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3428941&cid=42771437
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3426877&cid=42770781
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3427061&cid=42770777
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3427083&cid=42770769

Pretty sure this time I offended an iFanboi.

Too bad you can't tag things "slashdot"

Every time I get a modtroll I get validation. Here are the five comments in question, all downmodded in a row by someone too lazy to even spread out their punitive moderation.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3411745&cid=42715053
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412111&cid=42714885
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412141&cid=42714871
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412263&cid=42714843
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3412263&cid=42714801

I should very much like to demand satisfaction from people who are badly in need of correction. Namely, those who use insults against me in lieu of argument. (I am not above answering insult with insult, of course.) When are we going to get internet VR boxing, so that I can realistically challenge some random dipshit who talks a lot of shit to a boxing match and announce his cowardice should he decline?

Well, some mod douchewaffle spent all his points on me because I'm anti gun control. I heart slashdot.