Friday, February 04, 2011

Troll drollery assimilated

Whilst visiting Andrew Bolt’s blog in the course of researching my previous post, I encountered the work of a commenter posting under the name ‘Tracey Conlan’.

On a post of Bolt’s concerning attacks by Egyptian government operatives on protesters in Cairo, Tracey wrote:

More disgraceful behaviour by Kevin Rudd — the man is a joke — he is directly responsible for these attacks and must resign.

In fact, I have no doubt evidence linking him to the attacks will soon be found. Keep digging Andrew !

On another Bolt post, Tracey wrote in relation to Ross Garnaut:

What a pathetic man — I mean really — everyone knows there is nothing out of the ordinary in having multiple 1 in 100 extreme events like black saturday, Brisbane floods and an extreme cyclone in such a short time frame.

And even if their is a link to mankind activity with more extreme weather patterns, who cares — we’ll all be long gone and won’t have to worry about it by the time it gets really bad !

Tracey is obviously some kind of blog performance artist who’s taken it upon herself to satirise Bolt and his fans. Bolt’s rusted-on regulars have begun to wise up to Tracey’s trollery, so it perhaps won’t be long until she’s banned.

But the elegance of her work lies in that, to date, the moderators of Bolt’s blog seem to regard her shrill inanity as completely in keeping with the tone of the blog.

Long may she troll!

In honour of Tracey’s work, I’ve thrown together an Australian version of the Twat-O-Tron, which may one day be perfected to automate the kind of work Tracey has exemplified. See ‘below the fold’ (i.e., click READ MORE if you’re on this blog’s front page) to experience the . . .

BOLTaTRON

Click the Refresh button for fresh turdspurt

Yep, admittedly it loses it’s entertainment value after a few clicks, but there could be huge potential here.

Note this version simulates ‘rightard’ turdspurt, but pending sufficient commercial interest I’ve slated development for a ‘leftard’ version.

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hold the presses!

Bolt-hating Leftard blogger thinks Bolt-hating Leftard troll is witty and engaging!

The term "circle jerk" comes to mind.

5/2/11 1:58 PM  
Anonymous Jacob said...

"The term 'circle jerk' comes to mind."

If that's an offer, I politely decline as I have a long-standing better offer. You should try harder to not allow such images into your head.

And I don't hate Andrew, silly!

He has the potential to be at the very least a good, plodding, average journalist.

If only he'd wake up to the irrational hatreds that skew his entire approach to virtually any topic.

And eschew his habitual practice of cherry picking sources to suit his relentlessly partisan prejudices.

And renounce his unethical bid for ever more attention, cash and power by pandering to a fan-base of slavishly fellow-travelling apple polishers.

Not too much to ask, surely. Hmm?

Hey, maybe you could try talking to him. He might listen to you. Have a go when you hand him the next apple, there's a good Boltard.

5/2/11 2:49 PM  
Blogger Caz said...

That's funny Jacob.

The duped moderators would be the same who went on strike and/or required re-training so as to able to spot rude, inappropriate or off-topic comments and not let them through, yes?

Someone forgot to explain trolls to them, but then, comments to Bolt would be sleep inducing if not for a bit of trollery.

Alas (well, alas for me at least), the brainwashing, oops, re-trainin didn't include letting little ol' me through the gate. Doesn't matter what I send in my comments are never published (not even on the friggin' beauty blog for fook's sake) ... applies to Fairfax and Herald Sun blogs. (Seriously!)

I sent through an excerpt of the most relevant bit from my blog Jacob, noting that I'd already covered topic of Nixon & Bligh, with more relevance, at the beginning of the week.

I did not include a personal URL, no self promo involved, just the pertinent text.

I'm still trying to figure out how my comment was rude, inappropriate or off topic. (Even the grammar and spelling was OK.)

5/2/11 7:41 PM  
Anonymous Jacob said...

I still haven't seen anything in relation to the crisis of moderation at the Bolt blog. Seems so far it's successfully been kept in-shop. Would be interesting to know, perhaps, but I'm not all that vitally interested.

I'm aghast that nothing of yours is getting through! From what I've observed it seems once a post goes 'off the boil', they tend to no longer pass comments through. But if your comments are timely enough, then I'm stumped.

The comment I posted taking Bolt to task over the Egyptian thing was published without any snipping at all.

It attracted some mildly abusive 'correctives' from apple polishers (I'm not a journalist, but am an ignoramus) but ignored my point entirely - appropriately, since it's of no interest to them whatever.

The point being: Bolt wondered if the Mubarak regime was targetting Aussies. He didn't explain why he thought that might be the case, and it wasn't evident anyway that the regime was exclusively targeting Aussies, as distinct from other westerners. So why would the regime target Aussies, if not for the simple reason that Rudd had criticised Mubarak. And Bolt had been complaining that Rudd didn't go in hard enough.

I'm simply flummoxed: What do these people think they're playing at? It's all sport for them, but there are people dying and at risk in Egypt.

My mildly abusive retort, about "vocational advice and lessons in logic from apple polishers", didn't get through. I'm okay with that though, it's a complete waste of time getting into a to-and-fro with fucking brain-dead fans.

6/2/11 12:55 PM  

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