Subtle trolling example?

[Penguin]

Hi exojirdik,



You'd mentioned in passing...

Honestly, I think aliens are an intellectual and social deadend. Nothing good can come of talking or thinking about them in any serious way. Yet, they have been successfully woo-crafted into the memescape for over 60 years now. I ignored it almost my entire life until I was freakin zapped, twice now, by somekind of alien synchromystical electrical current. It almost acts as if its a charged security-fence that limns some 5th rail of reality. I really would like to be a normal scientific materialist/secular humanist npr liberal - but no, not after these experiences.

I have been brooding on these things lately, after having sought to give-them-a-rest for a while.


Being 'Zapped'...


Would you give further details of your experiences?



I have had something like this also...if I understand you correctly...always, I know when it is going to happen...always, there are palpable 'presences' which so-to-speak, show up...arrive...in this, I also 'feel' their intention to (so-to-speak) 'Zap' me, and, then, they do so.


The intensity or approximate violence/severity of the 'Zap' can vary...as does it's effect on me, in terms of whether, or how soon I loose consciousness.


The 'Zap' has definite global or gross physical-Body effects, as well as auditory ones...and sometimes is accompanied by visual effets or vague vision being retained.


In my experience, it is always entirely paralizing, and, usually brutal, or very heavy-handed...


And...'Yes'...to my mind, talk or controversy about extra-terrestrial 'Aliens' has reliably, historically, bye-and-large, tended to miss or over-shadow, so-to-speak dimensions or actualities of the broader mystery, while trying to reduce some only of the ostensible features, into mere extrapolates of the mundane.


Certainly, to me anyway, mundanifiation, and, extrapolates of mundanification, has had many 'professors' sent into the limelight, to keep it that way...dammage-control...agents of mundanification as state-religion.

Carl Sagan...for one...

Ohers too...other stew...

Hmm.
I paid attention to the repeated usage of username Zap with a capital..And some other things.
Shortly before Oyenboten was suspended?

What do others here think? Am I reading too much into this post or do others see "Certainly, to me anyway, mundanifiation, and, extrapolates of mundanification, has had many 'professors' sent into the limelight, to keep it that way...dammage-control...agents of mundanification as state-religion.

Carl Sagan...for one...

Ohers too...other stew.."

Feel free to tell me Im an idiot. I know I am.

[cptmarginal]

A weird post, sure. He was maybe trying to be funny, it seems. I just kept thinking of Howard Beale in bed asking "Why me?" after he got "zapped"

[barracuda]

Do you think his references to Zap and Professor Pan are code for some kind of statement about Hugh? FWIW, a google search of the username brings up nothing but postings on gun-related sites.

p.s., exojirdik's first post on that thread was the awesomeness.

[IanEye]

[Penguin]

p.s., exojuridik's first post on that thread was the awesomeness.

You made a typo there
Yeah twas.

[exojuridik]

Hey thanks guys, and I did in fact get the term "zapped" from that Scott Baio extravaganza, however, other than that I have no clue as to what you are all talking about. Maybe its for the best as my paranoia spidey sense has been particularly jumpy lately.

[nathan28]

Hey thanks guys, and I did in fact get the term "zapped" from that Scott Baio extravaganza, however, other than that I have no clue as to what you are all talking about. Maybe its for the best as my paranoia spidey sense has been particularly jumpy lately.

You should hang out here more often. You'll wake up wondering if you are a disinfo agent.

[Zap]

Yeah, pretty sure he was one of the 'Hydra Troll's' sockity heads. But so are at least one of the posters above, of course.

They seem to like to discuss disinfo/trolling tactics which they themselves use. It's actually pretty interesting to watch - go through the archive, and start seeing (or imagining) tactical similarities, patterns, and networking etc between trolls known and trolls suspected ...

[barracuda]

Thta's a bit too coy for my tastes, Zap. Put your cards on the table or leave it alone.

[Penguin]

Do you think his references to Zap and Professor Pan are code for some kind of statement about Hugh?

I dunno, I mused about something like that.
Or maybe to just hint at some statement that really doesn't exist. Which would be just as well.

You should hang out here more often. You'll wake up wondering if you are a disinfo agent.

yeah

[compared2what?]

Yeah, pretty sure he was one of the 'Hydra Troll's' sockity heads.

Strongly agree.

[compared2what?]

Thta's a bit too coy for my tastes, Zap. Put your cards on the table or leave it alone.

Oops. Perhaps I also was too coy for a man of discerning taste.

I didn't state the reasons for my strong agreement because they don't basically amount to much more than the poster's knack for meeting a certain subset of highly subjective criteria that I personally associate with a corresponding subset of bad actor that I've seen here before from time to time. None of which would have risen to a higher alert level than "mild, ambiguous and not indicative of any imminent danger" by my highly subjective lights until the twelve or so hours of what looks to me like intentional kamikaze action that ended the way you'd expect a successful kamikaze mission to end. Even had I been paying any attention. Which I wasn't.

So, you know. I wasn't and wouldn't have been sitting around thinking: trolltrolltrolltrolltroll to myself or anything. I just probably wouldn't have been surprised by the implosion when it occurred if I'd read the posts before it did rather than afterward. But either way, I wouldn't have started enjoying the perfect twenty-twenty vision of hindsight that allows me now so boldly to express my strong agreement until then.

Prior to that, I really wouldn't have had a very strong opinion one way or the other, in all likelihood, there not having yet been a strong reason to.

[barracuda]

Hmmm. My comment was more directed at Zap's notion that a poster on this very thread was entered in the frolicsome cahoots, i.e., "so are at least one of the posters above, of course." So in that regard I'm just noticing out loud how nice it would be to have the clarity of a focused, pointed finger rather than the ambiguity of an vaguely directed elbow. Because all that usually does is makes me go "hmmm".

Perhaps I also was too coy for a man of discerning taste.

I appreciate your clarity and your sentiments entirely.

[Col. Quisp]

Will everyone please stop speaking in riddles????

although i must admit the "Zap" was a bit weird but there's a lot of weirdness going on everywhere these days.

Nathan28: Good observation.

[nathan28]

Will everyone please stop speaking in riddles????

although i must admit the "Zap" was a bit weird but there's a lot of weirdness going on everywhere these days.

Nathan28: Good observation.

I apologize for the seriousness of this post, as well as my insistence on using emdashes to make parenthetical remarks. Also, in my own way, for a lack of specifics, for I have specific things in mind, but am loathe to direct anyone's attention to them. Part of my dodging here stems from the fact that a lot of these more questionable scenarios seem quite intentionally designed with strange loops, double-binds or the other cognitive equivalents of plausible denial.


I haven't been paying close attention as I've been busy, but the suggestion seems to be that a number of posters who showed up in the past couple days (at least two of which have been suspended) are just sock puppets for "the Hydra Troll." It could just be nasty forum weather, but I wouldn't be surprised if there had been a troll attack in the past few days.

Frankly by now I'm just used to that sort of gaming around here, which happens with enough regularity that I feel less bothered by it: desensitized, maybe. It's not like these are 4chan types showing up here posting hentai or silly macros, and sometimes it feels like some people have set their intentions firmly set on playing their own version of The Magus here.

Like it or not RI is a hunting ground of sorts for the internet equivalents of sociopaths, to the extent that being a jerk via the internet is a pathology and not just a mean-spirited pastime. Granted, if I start to think about it--e.g., if you see that one former poster here had "outed" someone--who went on to run a years-long miniature PR campaign against that poster, actively monitoring that poster's behavior while silently lurking--over a year before the poster's own run-ins with that character ostensibly started--well, you begin to see that being a psychopath on the internet is a complicated and many-faceted thing. You see that there are obviously people surreptitiously monitoring others closely, or close enough, and acting occasionally in a more or less effective manner--effective enough, i.e., to catch their quarry, to disable their imagined opponent, etc.

I will also stop to say that some of this gaming behavior is outright malevolent and clearly has an "IRL" component, though I'd suggest that the pathway is from the real world to the forum (and, mostly IMO on account of posters here simply paying attention to that sort of thing), not vice versa.

This is not all that surprising. Jeff made an avocation out of examining some dark material--just look at his latest post, which is excellent but also so pessimistic I can't imagine Midwestern soccer moms or R/E agents sitting down to read it--at least some of which I have no desire to review and less to research, but which I think that I may be better for, at the least, having been willing to see: one cannot flinch when hunting alligators. And while I wholeheartedly believe that we need to admit to the existence of, and look at, the dark, if only to realize the need for light, I won't deny for a moment that attempts to do so lack a pernicious side that draws cretins on a masquerade.

***BUT***

Please, do not take this too seriously. Do not think that RI is some lone voice crying in the wilderness, that it is the sole rebel broadcast, that some mysterious "THEM" desires to shut down. Frankly, there's people talking about aliens alongside people speculating about revisionist history alongside people bitching about Obama's healthcare plan, which to most folks would be discrediting enough. If I were going to think of metaphor, I'd think of an outbreak of disease: if just one person gets it and shows nasty side effects, it's not really a disease--what's important is that it forms an outbreak, and outbreak we recognize via its pattern.