Stop acknowledging trolls.
I know, i sound like a bitch lately, with all my complaints about this community, but here's another thing i wanted to throw out.
The dislikes are dumb. I wish they wouldn't be there at all. I'm sure we all think the same, because of all the dislike trolls and other people who disagree with other's opinions so they dislike, dislikes do nothing but bring you down really, to put it in a punny sense.
And that's what i'm not liking in this situation. The fact you people care about those. It was alright at first, but now a lot of threads i'm visiting have a lot of posts dedicated to making smuggy remarks about downvoters, just..dude...that's not what the topic is about!
There's a basic forum rule, and that is, if you go to a thread where for an example, people talk about theories if Kenny's alive or not, you're gonna expect to see posts about that. Then there's a basic forum breaker, which is derailing, it means moving the thread towards a topic nothing related to what the OP was trying to insist.
This situation is like a story i just made up for this thread. People are talking about their favorite ice cream flavors while playing some good ol' fashioned football outside. Suddenly, two teams of basketball players rushes into the field, shoves away the football players down the hills and starts playing their own game of basketball, while smack talking each other's rivals!
To make the point straightforward, i'm saying is, it was okay to bring up the random downvoters a few times but now you talk about it everywhere as if the downvoters are gonna give a shit...wanna get a hint? They will, but not in the way you want them to. The fact you bring up downvoters does nothing but derail a thread and make the trolls laugh.
Here's an example of a thread that really grinded my gears.
The OP presented here, we'll call him Johnnyson because i prefer that over Mark, Johnnyson shared his top 10 favorite threads, and as the title suggested, he wanted you to give your top 10 or 5 of your favorite threads too. Nobody done that. You know why? Because instead, they spent their time on insulting downvoters and commenting about how glorious upvoting was.
Your dislikes and likes weigh as much importance as an ant. You may have been downvoted, but this is the internet and not real life. Being disapproved in real life is an entirely different case, because in real life you got to take things more seriously otherwise you're not gonna get far, maybe as a comedian if you're into that. But becoming a popular comedian is a tough job.
On the internet, you shouldn't care. Except right now, you really do. You can say you don't care about trolls, you can say you don't care about your dislikes, but you do because you keep talking about those. If you didn't care, you just wouldn't mention it because it wasn't anything meaningful to you. In real life most people you meet are someone you remember fresh in your memory as you see their face, and if he was being a huge dick, you could kick his ass right here and there, it's a direct contact, and it's more impactful then on the internet. The reason is, in the internet, people are nothing more but text. You don't know who these people are, so why should you care if they got insults towards you? If someone who loved me and i loved her would say i'm a horrible person, i would be shocked, because i would know that person, and i would be attached to her.
But it's just some asshole who's being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. Nothing more, nothing less. The problem with trolls though, i seen, i think Ohyoupokedme, who thought acknowledging trolls was good because they deserved it. You mean, as in, they deserved to get insulted? Because that's a terrible idea, they insult you too. You think they're gonna be offended if you insult them? No, of course not, they'll just go for more insults, they won't stop, they won't cry, they won't give up just because you hit them with the sickest burn ever. Trolls don't work like that, between innocents and people who want to wreck havoc, so trolls, there's no win or loss, it'll just keep going an d the trolls will enjoy every piece of the attention you're giving them.
What would happen if we ignored trolls? What would happen if we didn't respond, we acted like they were never there? Well, the troll would see no point since he's not angering anybody because no one cares about him. That's the definition of not caring by the way, what i just said, poking them with sticks is the exact opposite of not caring. If we all just stopped acknowledging trolls, the world would be a better place. But that's just not what's gonna happen, huh..?
I think my brain said all it can. Click.
Comments
I've moved out all discussion I could to the suggestions to improve the forum thread. Please keep all of your suggestions to improve the forum and how to handle trolls in there, as this subject has already been discussed in length there, and it's much harder to follow conversations when the same topic is being discussed in multiple threads.