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Since bigotry lately means "anything the person that call the other bigot don't likes" it is still quite broad. A direct insult is easier to enforce. The reas

Since bigotry lately means "anything the person that call the other bigot don't likes" it is still quite broad. A direct insult is easier to enforce. The reason trolling succeeds is that it is extremely easy to induce powerful cognitive dissonance into people with strongly held unprovable beliefs. (Human life has value, god exist, humans are equal and the likes) And the only answer is aggression. The right are as easy pray as the left - mostly because there are large logical holes in any ideology. That is because we use some axioms when we build our social order - but any attack on the axioms leave us unsecure and that the virtual tribe is under attack. The more a person has allowed himself to degrade to a single identity - the powerful the potential blow is. Probably one of the best (unintentional) trolls I have done is reducing old communist to tears by stating the rumors that Che was betrayed by Fidel with Raul as the organizer of said betrayal.

x0054 11y ago
It's also sad to see how people on either side of the debate on basically any issue what so ever are becoming more and more intrenched in their ideologies. It used to be that people were right wing or left wing. Now you have ideologies about everything, a cell phone you use, a car you drive, the type of food you eat or don't eat. With grater availability of free expression that can reach many people, the arguments that used to be civil and intelligent quickly devolve nowadays into shouting matches, where the messages shouted are the most extreme, and often the most idiotic, version of any given side's message. It's true on any board nowadays, even something like HN. It's very sad to see well meaning and intelligent people devolve to this, especially considering how ineffectual the actual messages people are shouting are. I generally try to form my own opinion about things. Which basically means that my views are generally hated by both sides in this increasingly polarized society. To the left I am a bigot and to the right I am a morally deprived tree hugging liberal. Not sure if comments are to blame exclusively though. Perhaps another lesson to take out if it would be the quote from one of the cinematic masterpiece of this century, Harold and Kumar: "There is no reason to get riled up every time a bunch of idiots give you a hard time. In the end the universe tends to unfold as it should."
Natsu 11y ago
I go by the 'hate' metric. The more someone is motivated by hate, the less I tend to agree with them. I'm sure someone might say, "what if I really hate Nazis?" in reply to that, but then I'd have to point out that the Nazis hated others to the point of mass-murder, which is a lot more than they're hated and say that I balance things out that way. In other words, some hate is just blowback and how willing you are to harm others for disagreeing with you is something to take into account when figuring out what people to socialize with.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Well if someone says that he really hates Nazis and is younger than 60 years, he is probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer... which is a huge red flag. Same with loving them - both require some form of temporal closeness. Edit: Hating or Loving the Nazi ideology is another beer - ideas are immortal.

x0054 11y ago

It's also sad to see how people on either side of the debate on basically any issue what so ever are becoming more and more intrenched in their ideologies. It used to be that people were right wing or left wing. Now you have ideologies about everything, a cell phone you use, a car you drive, the type of food you eat or don't eat. With grater availability of free expression that can reach many people, the arguments that used to be civil and intelligent quickly devolve nowadays into shouting matches, where the messages shouted are the most extreme, and often the most idiotic, version of any given side's message. It's true on any board nowadays, even something like HN. It's very sad to see well meaning and intelligent people devolve to this, especially considering how ineffectual the actual messages people are shouting are. I generally try to form my own opinion about things. Which basically means that my views are generally hated by both sides in this increasingly polarized society. To the left I am a bigot and to the right I am a morally deprived tree hugging liberal. Not sure if comments are to blame exclusively though. Perhaps another lesson to take out if it would be the quote from one of the cinematic masterpiece of this century, Harold and Kumar: "There is no reason to get riled up every time a bunch of idiots give you a hard time. In the end the universe tends to unfold as it should."

Natsu 11y ago

I go by the 'hate' metric. The more someone is motivated by hate, the less I tend to agree with them. I'm sure someone might say, "what if I really hate Nazis?" in reply to that, but then I'd have to point out that the Nazis hated others to the point of mass-murder, which is a lot more than they're hated and say that I balance things out that way. In other words, some hate is just blowback and how willing you are to harm others for disagreeing with you is something to take into account when figuring out what people to socialize with.

venomsnake 11y ago
Well if someone says that he really hates Nazis and is younger than 60 years, he is probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer... which is a huge red flag. Same with loving them - both require some form of temporal closeness. Edit: Hating or Loving the Nazi ideology is another beer - ideas are immortal.