Dude is mad [homophobic slur] and [ethnic slur] think his Trump shirt promotes hate

@wwth

I feel the same way. I’m not the type to celebrate the death of a person (or animal), but the reality is that a truly vile person who had a lot of power is now gone. Zero sleep lost.

5) “Wants you to do their job”: Troll tells you in vague or non-specific terms to look for evidence that would support their assertions.
Example. Fifth Sibylline tells us to go to Pope Hat and look something up that they should already be providing us.

6) “Downplayed non-literalism or humor”: Troll claims something was meant ironically, sarcastically, humorously or other non-literal form which attempts to ignore the fact that the themes are still offensive or otherwise carry themes with social effects.
Example. In this post Fifth Sibylline is not directly downplaying racism because they use “ironic” in scare-quotes, but it’s a very common tactic.

7) “Minimization of social/personal effects”: Troll tries to claim or imply that something is not actually a problem in order to take social attention off of it and its related effects.
Example. In the same post as linked in 6 FS downplays the harm that Trump’s offensive meme posting supporters could do when the spreading culture is damaging enough since it reinforces and even grows community among xenophobic bigots.

I’ll do the rest later since I need to do some other things.

A lot of this is comparable to other things but I like to represent things as actions taken in communications so they are more readily recognizable. I tend to see arguments the way other people might see a fighting style like grappling.These are tentative titles and descriptions and I will be trying to improve them.

GOP has already reared and said they’ll block anyone President Obama is trying to appoint.

Ted Cruz has already come out to say that Obama shouldn’t get to nominate the next Supreme Court justice and that it should be the next president who gets to nominate someone.

So, we’re just supposed to go a year with only 8 justices? With only 8, there will be ties, and then what? I’m so tired of this tactic. It’s just like forcing the shutdown when Congress didn’t agree on the budget. They don’t like what’s being done, so they’ll make sure that NOTHING gets done at all.

Brony’s last message was superb. I can go to sleep with that piece said!

@ monzach

I’m perversely proud of the fact that, although I’ve done legal work for three professional football clubs, I’ve never been to a football match. 🙂

@bluecat

Anyone else read Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy? The utopians in that have a gender neutral pronoun “per” (short for person) which I found very plausible.

(I haven’t read the entire thread yet. Apologies if I repeat what others are saying.)

Yes! It’s been years and I still think about it. I love that book.

Here’s another one of Piercy’s that I love: He, She, and It. It’s another sci fi book, although most of her works are not sci fi.

I read the book when it came out in 1991, and in hindsight it seems prophetic in its vision of a dystopian future. Of course, the heroes fight this dystopia. Just like we do.

Must reread!

Note that I’m using an odd idea of “troll” here. To me a “troll” is simply a person that causes a social disruption, and may or may not be doing it deliberately. For example more than one person has been accused of trolling by conservatives who wanted to discuss communism at the academic level. Also Libertarians who are being earnest have sometimes been accused of trolling. social disruptions can be caused by people being honest or dishonest.

@WWTH
Thanks for the tip about links!

@Kat
Thanks! One more set tonight. I was longer on what I was doing than what I thought. I hope to post the rest of them tomorrow, but this is only up to the second page of this thread and I’m finding it fascinating.

8) “Fake in-group member”: Troll claims to be either a member of a group or ally to boost reputation. Often combined with “opinion only”.
Example.
(also contains “redirected social momentum”)
Note that claims that this person is female is not a claim that I would challenge given the social situation. However fake ones are usually pretty good at adding detail that makes that identity irrelevant.

9) “Outrageous fake ally”: Troll pretending to be an in-group member or ally says bad, outrageous, incorrect or other things that can be used to discredit your group.
This is not present in the set of comments from FS from what I can see (your mileage may vary, I’m male and masculine), but I’ve seen it from time to time. It came to mind while I was working on this.

10) “Defend words that aren’t yours”: Without quoting you (presented as paraphrasing you) troll claims you took a position you did not take.
Example. In this example FS referred to generalizations in a non-specific way that makes it impossible to tell if they referred to me honestly, and referred to “flame-outs” when I never referred to people losing control (it was a matter of people knowingly posting shitty things).

11) “Pretends to answer your question”: Troll gives an answer that does not relate to your position.
Example. Same link as the last link. The entire section having to do with taboo breaking and “meme bioweapons lab” had nothing to do with the harm caused by people with reputations damaged from no practice and shitty acts.

12) “All bark and no bite”: Troll uses insults while performing badly in terms of providing evidence or argument so that emotion has more effect than objectivity.
Pretty much starts here. Since they don’t provide any substance the insults only add emotinal content.

13) “You’re going to regret that”: Troll claims that something you are doing/saying will end up hurting you or your side of a social conflict, usually with “opinion only”. The thing you are doing/saying is often something important to you strategically.
Example.
Troll claims that the narrative provided by Paradoxical Intention will only attract people angry at the narrative, as if that were not the reality of anyone trying to spread feminism.

@Brony:
You should start a website collating trolling tactics and providing links to people using them, as a reference guide for people everywhere. Something like logicallyfallacious.com.

By “you should do it” I mean “your analysis is excellent and your approach of seeing it as a series of fighting moves is superb; if you lack the bothered to put this up on a website then I’ll gladly do it for you.”

The internet would benefit from such a resource.

Third paw up for troll tactics source.

@guy

To clarify, I do not have any opposition to people knowing multiple languages.

No worries, nothing in your earlier comment made it seem so. And just to be clear: neither do I oppose people learning multiple languages, I warmly encourage people to do so.

I also really hate to say this but you completely missed my point:

I think English (the widespread variants are mutually intelligible so selecting one in particular is largely arbitrary) is probably the best candidate;

I think the relevant question here is why English is spoken so widely as a native language. The original inhabitants of North America, India and Australia didn’t have it as their native language (or lingua franca in India’s case) until comparatively recently.

Language and culture are interrelated but not inextricable,

(I know I’m quoting you out of order, please allow it for now: I’m trying to make my reply flow better.)
I have to disagree with this to some degree: languages tend to die when the culture around them dies or changes drastically in a short period of time. Different languages also have different ways of saying things and have words for different concepts and as such carry with them the baggage inherent in the culture in which the language was born and developed.

To give an example: English is unfortunately fairly useless at discussing weather, since it lacks an amazing amount of words for different kinds of snow and related phenomena.
(Just to be clear: the above is not a reference to the “Inuit has 1000 words for snow” myth, but to the issues of explaining the local weather situation to my foreign friends. Something that I can describe in one word in my native language requires one-paragraph-long explanation in English.)

While languages don’t necessarily create how you see the world, they help you categorize it. Whether for example the language has gender-neutral or gender-specific personal pronouns (as discussed a few pages ago) or suffices in nouns affects how much relevance is placed on knowing someone’s gender and whether everyone is assumed to have a specific, immutable gender. As you know Japanese puts a lot more stock in what is the social status of the person in relation to others than what English does which forces you to pay more attention to social dynamics when speaking Japanese.

This essentially means that pushing a language on people will also inevitably to some degree push a different way to make sense of the world to them. USA is already exporting its culture and with it, its prejudices and values, to the rest of the world and in some cases slowly killing or diminishing parts of foreign cultures. Creating a new language to be the lingua franca would be the only even remotely fair solution to the language barrier problem. However, I definitely agree with you that it would never catch on and as such is impractical. I would instead propose using Tagalog, Latvian or some other language spoken in a country not having so much power combined with such a holier-than-thou attitude as an alternative.

This discussion is obviously entirely hypothetical, though, since there is (thankfully) no central authority who could enforce any kind of language requirement to the whole world. The situation will develop as it does and we will adapt to it to the degree that we need to.

Just be aware that generally, the one who can communicate in the discussion in their native language always has an edge and has an easier time to be taken seriously by the audience. If for no other reason, then for the fact that they don’t need to have the time, resources, energy and opportunity to first study a foreign language for several years to even be able to participate in the discussion in the first place.

I gather that if you go to a country that doesn’t primarily speak either in general you will have an easier time finding someone who speaks English [than someone who speaks Chinese]

Unless you go to Asia, or at least I have been told that the likelihood of finding someone who speaks Chinese in, say, Malaysia is pretty high. Whether higher than English, I don’t know. Do we have any lurkers from the region who could provide more information?

Proficiency in any given language is pretty regional, though. I have been to areas in Italy where you were more likely to find a local speaking German than one speaking English. No offense meant but I have noticed that Americans have a tendency to overestimate how widely and how well English is spoken around the world.

…Maybe this is partly caused by the internet where you mostly run into foreigners who are good at English, since those who are not, tend to either lurk or stay mainly on the sites using their native language or a foreign language they are more familiar with?

But I am not a linguist, and may only think English is the best language for the task because picking it would mean I wouldn’t have to do any work.

While I appreciate your honesty, I would like to point out the other side of that coin: you are saying that everyone else in the whole world should learn a specific second language just in case they’ll need to talk with someone speaking a different language. The fact that there will be a need to converse with foreigners is not a given in all areas of the world. Should people in situations where it is unlikely still learn English just in case? I’m pretty sure you don’t mean that.

What if they only need to converse with one or two foreign cultures, neither of which speaks English as their native language? It would make more sense for them to learn the languages of those cultures instead of English.

Thank you for the explanation of how the language studies in US work. I was already familiar with it, but there likely are regulars/lurkers who weren’t, so it’s useful background information, since how foreign languages (and which foreign languages, if any) are studied varies a lot between countries.

For example you are legally required to learn one foreign language in my country, since we have two official languages and everyone needs to speak both, so you’ll start studying the one you don’t speak latest when you are 13 years old. Majority of people also learn English and one or two additional languages. The first language (whether the other official one or a foreign language) is started at the age of 9, the second at 10 and the third one at 13. All three are studied as mandatory until you are 15 (technically you can get out of studying a foreign language you have already started learning if your parents have the energy to fight your school over it – the other official language is mandatory, though).

Continuing learning the second official language is still mandatory in high school so you learn it for another three to four years. You can additionally pick other languages in high school and university or continue learning the languages you started in elementary school.

Summa summarum: you will learn at least one foreign language for at least 9 to 10 years. Most learn at least two additional languages for several years.

The reason I’m taking Japanese at the moment is honestly pretty silly,

Don’t say so: no reason to learn a new language is “silly”. You will of course get the usual “But however will it be useful for your career???” questions, but just ignore them – not everything needs to be a tool and we are allowed to have hobbies that don’t instantly turn into money.

You have taken on a difficult task to learn a language that is so different from your native language and whether you ever actually need it for anything or become fluent is ultimately meaningless: the fact itself that you stick with it for however long you decide to learn it is commendable.

Best of luck with Japanese! Don’t let the vocabulary and kanji feel too daunting – you can do it!

Verily Baroque, excellent post! As I hail from the same country as you do, I started English at 9 (some friends chose Swedish instead, as it was regarded very useful in the 90’s as an international language, though nowadays we regard it useful as a domestic langugae), and German at 10. When I went to Spain to study Spanish when I was 16 I had absolutely no use for my English but did very well in German with the locals.

The languages regarded as useful vary, and it has a lot to do with local interests.

@ IP

Arabic can get you a long way in large parts of the world.

Arabia for a start!