... to be tired of the Goady Fuckers?

[MmeLindor]

Is it just me or has there been an increase in goady thread derailing in the last couple of weeks? It seems even the most innocuous of threads are being deliberately diverted by posters who only post offensive or ridiculous comments then refuse to back down.

Here's what I use MN for:

Fun
Support
Advice
Chat
Activism and feminism
Bloggers chat
Politics

Not to have arguments with Goady Fuckers who are sitting at home delighted to have got us all off topic.

A lot of threads I've been on in the past few days have been taken completely off topic or detailed. Have we been invaded MNHQ or is it the work of a couple of fuckwits individuals?

Who wants to join me in an Anti Goady Fucker Campaign?

I vote that when someone tries to derail a thread that we all ignore and do a mass report to MNHQ. They are fed up hearing from me in the past weeks.

MNHQ certainly thought something was up.

Not sure about the sock puppetry though.

Good grief.

When I logged off it was becoming a fairly measured conversation.
I had hoped it would continue in that vein because one of the damaging things about the 'regulars will gang up and bully you' is that new posters must be wary of posting.
I would hate to think that anyone would hesitate about disagreeing with me because they thought I might call up some mates.
It's a horrible lie to promote as fact. Really mean spirited.

Maryz. Did you just ask me if Hully was awake?
What on earth do you mean.

She was named, Pag.

Yes, Maryz, I do agree that the labelling of some posters as "regulars" and using that as a cudgel is frequent and tedious. But equally, the "goady fucker" label is unfair. There are just posters, and their behaviour is usually a mixture of good and bad.

Of course, if "goady fucker" means nothing other than troll, it does refer to bevhaviour that is beyond the pale, but what I see very often is the use of the term "goading" to extend the category of "unacceptable poster" beyond the category of troll. I think an "initiative against goady fuckers" would be guilty of that. We don't need any new initiative against trolls, since they are already dealt with in the talk guidelines.

The reason it bugs me is that it chimes in with so many other debates, outside of MN, about the way things go wrong in internet conversation.

Ah. I see.
Well there have been desperate attempts to have a 'take cheap shots at the regulars' thread for ages. It was bound to come.

Fortunately I suspect Hully will recognise a crock of shite when she sees one.

Oh I watched tv with dh last night and missed it! What a bore.

The logical consequence of being asked to name names should not be the naming of names, but the realisation that such an OP should never be started.

Goading/prodding/winding up is trolling, though ... isn't it?

I think of goady fucker as trolling because it is all about derailing normal debate, being provocative and having an agenda.
It's nothing to do with ordinary debate and rarely relates to the original post/thread topic.

It is, Mintyy

Yy BIWI.
I thought that was obvious but it seems not.

I think "regulars" are much less likely now than they were a year or so ago to descend on other people's threads in a concerted derailment of a conversation that they judged to be bad in some way. It used to annoy the hell out of me, but I haven't seen it for a long time.

I think GF is more insidious than trolling, for exactly the reasons Floaty describes. It appears to be part of the debate - but actually the posters aren't interested in the debate itself.

... but yes, it's still trolling.

I don't think so. Regardless of what you might think about them - and whether or not we think something is PO is surely subjective? - that kind of response is a genuine one in regard to an OP. The intention behind them is not to derail but to put forward another point of view, surely?

Really? Someone started a thread about you? That's horrible. I hope MNHQ deleted it?

Its all so subjective, though. Someone might be angry and preoccupied with a subject and repeatedly post about it in a provocative way -- and we can pretty much choose whether to respect their anger and determination or castigate them for goading. Of course at the extremes there is a clear difference between a t troll and an impassioned-but-possibly-dense-and-inflexible conversationalist. But there is a massive grey area and it does seem pretty clear that people will colour in the grey according to whether the poster shares their own stance on an issue, whether they happen to have spotted the personal sadness that underlies the behaviour, whether the poster is known to them, etc etc.