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Okay, technically speaking, this isn't about spammers and trolls. This thread is, however, a way to help reduce their numbers. I've been thinking a lot about what motivates spammers to do what they do, and I think it is our elitism. Through various debate techniques that we might not even recognize we're doing, we give off a "holyer than thou" impression, and this is what I think causes spammers to want to do something to annoy us. These things I am about to describe usually aren't used by spammers, but are more often used by people who really want to use the ED as it was intended, maybe even people who would end up in this guild.

The Duck and Weave
A technique used by someone who doesn't know how to respond to your argument, but wouldn't dare to risk losing face and/or admitting that they are wrong. My example from this is in a vegetarian discussion; as you can tell by my signature, the main point I tried to make was that farming of grains and vegetables kills animals as well as the meat industry. It took me about six pages to finally force the person I was arguing with to answer my argument. During those six pages, he instead picked at the tiniest details of any analogy I made, and for a while went off on a tangent about how healthy being a vegetarian is. This technique is probably hard to recognize within ourselves, but very apparant to anyone you're talking to. If you can't argue with someone's point, admit it and move on, don't try to change the topic of the discussion.

The Defensive
This one is really annoying because it contributes nothing to the argument, ever. This is one of the many techniques employed by the people who's best argument is to try and give the impression that they are just so far above the people they are arguing against, therefor, the readers get the impression that the opposition is just ridiculous and not worth really listening to, which also sometimes excuses the culprit from having to respond. This move boils down to saying "I love it when ____ get all defensive". My most recent encounter with this was in a discussion on vegetarianism(The same one as above; it was that discussion that inspired me to make this thread). The person said "I love it when meat-eaters get so defensive about their diet when vegetarians point out suchandsuch a problem". This is what ran through my mind: "What the hell are you talking about?" It's a belittling method to try and reduce your opponent to the level of a child; a sort of pat-on-the-head-oohh-how-cute kind of thing. The fact is, even if the person you're talking about is in reality being defensive, so are you. By being in the exact same forum, you are being just as defensive as they are. If anything, this person was part of a group that was more defensive, as vegetarians have been trying to churn out studies for years about how great their diet is. Exactly how many studies have been done to prove how wonderful a meat-inclusive diet is? None. This technique can fit into just about any argument; try not to use it, and if you see someone do, don't let them get away with it.

The Selective Suspicion
I will admit, so far I have only seen this technique used by one person, because this one is pretty limited in topic range. This move only really applies to topics about "not being given the whole truth" or cover-ups and the like. The culprit of this will go on about how people should question more of what their told instead of simply accepting it, but whenever it is their argument that comes into question, the questioners are simply being moronic or close-minded. I won't give the name of this person(you may already know anyway), but he spent a good portion of the beginning pages of a thread talking about how people are too accepting and too prone to blindly follow what their told, but to anyone who questioned what he said he responded with "You people just get all worked up whenever someone proposes an idea that messes with your comfortable life." Translation: "You shouldn't agree with whatever you're told, but I'm completely right."

The Innocent Passer-By
Yet another part of the "I'm so above this" attitude. This is a more specific example that I have seen recently; the person in question claimed to have just "stopped in" on the thread to correct some error that someone had made, but then wound up getting pulled into the whole discussion. At the end of every series of her posts, she would take time to remind us that "Oh, I just dropped by to correct that thing, and now all these people are asking me these questions so I feel like I should help them(a.k.a. tell them why they're wrong/stupid)." Please, please don't ever let yourself say this. No one is forcing you to come back to a thread; if you really only looked at it to clear up one thing someone said, you would have done that and moved on, not stayed there for the next fifty pages arguing on the topic, occassionally bringing back your "real reason" for being there in the first place to make sure everyone knows you're still so much better than the whole thing in a detatched way.

All of these, I believe, contribute to why people don't like "EDers". This is why people who normally frequent GD and the Chatterbox even have a need for the term "EDers", because there are a fair number of us who try to seperate ourselves from the others by pretending or subtly hinting that we're better than them. Maybe I'll think of some more things and add them, but for now, try not to fall victim to any of these. If you see someone doing it, call them out on it; ED as a whole will gain more respect for this, and I think attract less spammers.

I've been there before. We were discussing the topic of cursing and they kept getting all defensive on me and kept telling me that my spelling sucked and anytime I said "Said" She kept telling me it was "typed". I eventually just got sick of it and left.

~ErikIsLife~

Was that me? sweatdrop



Okay, that was me.



...Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. >_> <_< >_>