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The Pickleball Troll
- msla 4y agoOh, look. Another article trying to normalize racism.
- themodelplumber 4y agoThat's pretty funny. Some of his posts reminded me of playing in my local group back 10+ years ago. After a while I started to notice that the players I respected most would kind of dip in and out of activity. They were supportive when they could be. They never, ever played in the tournaments. Then I played my first tournament and got absolutely smoked first round by a player who played really well, and complained to judges a lot, AND cheated every chance he got. Then he destroyed just about everybody else, and seemed to get even more angry with everybody else that he played. This at a _pickleball_ tournament. It felt like we were moments away from somebody throwing down. From that standpoint, I could _absolutely_ see somebody going home and deciding to mock tf out of this sport.
- twobitshifter 4y agoHe seems to be the Ken M of pickleball.
- rectang 4y agoKen M is the greatest internet pickleball player.
- LesZedCB 4y agowe are all the greatest internet pickleball player on this blessed day
- function_seven 4y agoSpeak for yourself
- labrador 4y agoKen M: "I went to buy some pickleballs for my granddaughter but the dang local grocer had none in the condiment section"
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoThe low key swingers post is hilarious.
- RajT88 4y agoIt reminds me when I was a regular player at Ultimate Frisbee. As my friends and I who played got older, we'd of course not be able to run up and down the length of the field all night long as much. There became a bit of a competition around nabbing the younger players when they would come to be on your team so you could get the good runners for the hail-mary plays. So then some of the older guys who were smokers decided to start trying to get the young runners to come hang out in between matches, where they'd try to get them to smoke pot. It worked! The young runners were both inexperienced, and lightweights. This became an effective tactic to cut the advantage the other team would gain by nabbing the younger runners with more endurance. Anyone else have this problem playing bee? It got really out of hand.
- pkulak 4y agoDon’t know if troll…
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoLike in PCU https://youtu.be/YN07XxCh5kA https://youtu.be/YN07XxCh5kA
- goldenkey 4y agoDoug, is that you? :-)
- flobosg 4y agoTIL about pickleball: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickleball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickleball
- JetAlone 4y ago<Excerpt> When the hard pickleball paddle strikes the hard ball a sharp popping sound can be produced. The constant sound during play has generated conflict between pickleball court owners and other nearby property owners.[60] An intense backlash in many communities has coincided with the rapid rise in popularity of pickleball.[61] In September 2020 one park in the Portland metropolitan area had to institute a ban on pickleball, despite having just installed new pickleball courts five months earlier. Residents nearest to the pickleball courts said they were unable to hold conversations inside their homes due to the noise from the pickleball courts. Despite the ban, the next year people were still making use of the pickleball courts. In June 2021, at a West Linn City Council meeting, one resident said the noise resulted in family gatherings being, "... wrought with discord and physically debilitating stress." Some described the noise as "trauma-inducing".[62] </Excerpt> I'm picturing boomer wojak playing pickleball. It really is a sport for trolls.
- astrange 4y agoHomeowners appear to think anything happening within a mile of their house personally traumatizes them, except for the actual noise issues of car sounds and leafblowers.
- wellthisisgreat 4y agoThis is like a glimpse the good old internet of some 2008 era
- extr 4y agoWarms my heart to see someone getting into trolling at his age!
- chris_wot 4y agoWell, nobody ever did a better job of trolling than Egg Troll. His troll in alt.fan.starwars is legendary, in it he ponders what would happen if the Millenium Falcon versed the Enterprise in a battle. Sadly, cannot find it any more, but at one point someone asked him if he was trying to "Trying to stir up trouble in the two main Nerdocracies"... Edit: the only surviving troll I can find is on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=832820 https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=832820 Edit 2: oh, I found him on adequacy.org: This is one he had posted to a C++ newsgroup: Hello Gentlemen, I'm a first year programming student at an Ivy League school and I've just finished my Visual Basic classes. This term I'll be moving onto C++. However I've noticed some issues with C++ that I'd like to discuss with the rest of the programming community. Please do not think of me as being technically ignorant. In addition to VB, I am very skilled at HTML programming, one of the most challenging languages out there! C++ is based on a concept known as Object Oriented Programming. In this style of programming (also known as OOPS in the coding community) a programmer builds "objects" or "glasses" out of his code, and then manipulates these "glasses". Since I'm assuming that you, dear reader, are as skilled at programming as I am, I'll skip further explanation of these "glasses". Please allow me to make a brief aside here and discuss the origins C++ for a moment. My research shows that this language is one of the oldest languages in existance, pre-dating even assembly! It was created in the early 70s when AT&T began looking for a new language to write BSD, its Unix Operation System (later on, other companies would "borrow" the BSD source code to build both Solaris and Linux!) Interestingly, the name C++ is a pun by the creator of the language. When the first beta was released, it was remarked that the language would be graded as a C+, because of how hideously complex and unwieldy it was. The extra plus was tacked on during a later release when some of these issues were fixed. The language would still be graded a C, but it was the highest C possible! Truly a clever name for this language. Back to the topic on hand, I feel that C++ - despite its flaws - has been a very valuable tool to the world of computers. Unfortunately its starting to show its age, and I feel that it should be retired as COBOL, ADA and Smalltalk seem to have been. Recently I've become aquainted with another language that's quite recently been developed. Its one that promises to greatly simplify programming. This new language is called C. Although syntactically borrowing a great deal from its predecessor C++, C greatly simplifies things (thus its name, which hints at its simpler nature by striping off the klunky double-pluses.) Its biggest strength is that it abandons an OOPS-style of programming. No more awkward "objects" or "glasses". Instead C uses what are called structs. Vaguely similiar to a C++ "glass", a struct does away with anachonisms like inheiritance, namespaces and the whole private/public/protected/friend access issues of its variables and routines. By freeing the programmer from the requirement to juggle all these issues, the coder can focus on implementing his algorithm and rapidly developing his application. While C lacks the speed and robustness of C++, I think these are petty issues. Given the speed of modern computers, the relative sluggishness of C shouldn't be an issue. Robustness and stability will occur as C becomes more pervasive amongst the programming community and it becomes more fine-tuned. Eventually C should have stablity rivalling that of C++. I'm hoping to see C adopted as the de facto standard of programming. Based on what I've learned of this language, the future seems very bright indeed for C! Eventually, many years from now, perhaps we'll even see an operating system coded in this langauage. Thank you for your time. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Egg Troll https://www.inadequacy.org/stories/2002.5.10.153857.142.html https://www.inadequacy.org/stories/2002.5.10.153857.142.html
- ClearAndPresent 4y agoI just read the "What is Pickleball" page on that site. Are we sure that Pickleball isn't just a made up sport?
- boomboomsubban 4y agoAs opposed to a natural sport? I played it in middle school for PE ~20 years ago, it supposedly has been growing in popularity. Basically this generations racquetball, a sport that's existed for a while getting slightly more popular but will never surpass tennis.
- daltont 4y agoI had that same thought. I was really into racquetball in the late '80s into the early '90s. Pickleball doesn't require an expensive indoor court. (No one I knew played racquetball on those partially enclosed outdoor handball courts).
- gadders 4y agoIt's old people tennis is what I understand.
- dwaltrip 4y agoIt’s super fun and easy to get started with.
- petesergeant 4y agoIt's like tennis with a much, much shallower learning curve. You can have an enjoyable match virtually straight away with no experience.
- Thlom 4y agoTo get good at tennis you have to start young. If you start playing late in life progress will be slow and you will never really master it (or so I've heard). With pickleball and paddle tennis you can pick up a racket and play and have fun really quick.
- EarlKing 4y ago> Pickleball Stop trying to make Fetch happen, Gretchen. Its not gonna happen.
- SilverBirch 4y agoI think it's interesting that "Troll" now covers a range of activity from "Mildly amusing but fake anecdotes designed to trigger a reaction" to "Sending violent rape threats to people on the internet". It's beautiful to see the craft of some of these posts though, the repeated reference to (female), the slight stretching of the possible. But I think the funniest part is the pure lack of sense of humour in the people he's trolling - that's always the best part. If I were a part of a group like that I would far prefer to allow the trolling to continue as an in-joke rather than the ridiculous move to ban him. It's like banning a Dilbert cartoon.
- dsr_ 4y agoIt would be much more like banning a Dilbert cartoon if there was a box drawn around his posts and a subheading "Doug Wanoy by Greg Doe". This isn't that. As John Scalzi said, "The failure mode of clever is asshole."
- bilsbie 4y agoRe pickleball as a sport. I started playing two years ago. I was worried it was a sport for old people but every age plays and matches get really competitive. Here are the benefits I see that make it a pretty unique sport: Open play times and venues all over my county. I can go play almost any time I want without having to coordinate with other people. Very social sport where you meet a lot of new people. Easy to start playing and actually have fun but it can take a lifetime to master. There’s enough of a strategy element to the game that an experienced 80 year could beat a beginner 18 year old. (Yet speed and athleticism plays a major role between equally skilled players.) It’s a great way to get hours of intense cardio without even realizing it. (This is all coming from someone who hated tennis every time I tried it.)
- prepend 4y agoIt’s funny to me how much trolling goes on on the internet. And how “normies” don’t realize this and think everything is genuine and take posts at face value. I pretty much assume every personal story on the net is fake or mostly fake. Or at least if there’s some real world effect like making people upset or concerned or whatnot. I suppose it’s similar levels to IRL and makes me get into a “what’s real” mental loop as I expect most people randomly encountered have some projection rather than their real self.
- gopher_space 4y ago> and makes me get into a “what’s real” mental loop as I expect most people randomly encountered have some projection rather than their real self. There's no objective reality in life that matters on a personal level. Everyone has different aspects to their personality just like you do. You're not seeing a "fake side" of someone, you're seeing the part of their personality they've chosen to present to you.
- shaftoe444 4y agoI'm sure that the (non-)existence of pickleball is the real troll here.