Conservative and/or Russian Trolls Don't Care

[Tom Rinaldo]

They don't care if it is "Progressives" dumping on Hillary or "Loyal Democrats" dumping on Bernie. From their perspective it doesn't matter. Especially now when neither of them became President and Donald Trump did. They don't care which role they play in any divisive debates so long as they goes on and on and on. Especially when we become increasingly frustrated/angry with each other in he process

Plenty of good sincere Democratic or otherwise left of center bloggers/posters have strong honest feelings about what the two leading candidates for the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination have politically or personally done right or wrong in their lives in the past, or might still do in the present/future. Having feelings and stating them does not make one a troll. But know that they are out there (and on here) egging us on. Their work isn't over because the presidential election is now behind us. They are busy throwing tacks on our trail to victory in 2018 - seeking to deflate us. They can only do so at DU until our Administrators and Moderators manage to flush them out (Thank You!). But troll decontamination must always be approached cautiously less the innocent get swept out with the dirt. Meanwhile there are loads of innocents who get sucked into the mosh pits where it's an elbow for an elbow, and a knee for a knee.

I'm there sometimes too, but as a past partisan in the most recent primary wars I can say this: I was for Bernie and I still support him. But I am very very careful, and think long and hard of it, before I write anything that can be construed as an attack on Hillary Clinton here. We had weeks to sort those feelings out, if it was important to enough to those of us from either "side". I could post knocks on Hillary here easily if I wanted to. Same is true for others about Bernie. The scripts to do so are dog eared and worn. All of them are laced with poison. There is nothing easier than to keep ill will stoked. Healing is much more difficult.

[Warpy]

1. No, they really don't.

The Russian trolls exist to get a reaction and drive us apart. The conservative trolls are either whinging about the lack of lockstep unity during the primary or the fact that some college kids refused to vote because they didn't get their pony. Both of those are divisive.

I was gratified today to see an anti Sanders post removed. Quickly. I hope that continues, along with the already quick removal of anti Clinton posts.

Enough. The primary has been over for six months. If people can't manage to move on from it, perhaps politics is not their game and they need to try to find something more productive than playing a combination of "what if" with "those meanies!"

I've added 3 to my ignore list over the last day. Damn. I'd just finished cleaning it out of the PPRs and inactive posters.

[Tom Rinaldo]

4. I don't keep an ignore list - though I can see why some choose to

I guess I want to know what people are up to more than I don't want to read all the crap.

[Warpy]

5. I know what they're up to.

My eyesight is not good and it's often a struggle to read. Eliminating the CRAP is a good way to weed it out.

[Tom Rinaldo]

6. Yup. Thread clutter is sometimes used as an intentional tactic

It can "soil" an otherwise positive thread and turn people away from it rather than have to wade through the garbage.

[captain queeg]

2. hard to believe, I just figured out what trolls are

I was posting something to Reddit a few months ago, I don't really post very often. Some guy jumped in my shit out of nowhere so I looked his user name up. he had thousands of posts, and about 50 the night he jumped on me. You could tell he was up late. i looked back thru some of his posts. He was an alcoholic, know-it-all, and jumped on all sorts of people. I though to myself "this is what they mean by a troll" and looked the definition up; yes he was. I realized what they really want is to get you pissed off and in a posting war so I ignored that guy. But I have to admit, once in awhile when read a yahoo news feed or something and see some dumb-shit talking about libtards or praising Trump and denying reality I can't help but post something like "go back to Russian you soviet troll", then never look back to see if there is a response. I'm pretty sure they aren't soviet trolls, but likely some loser sitting in front of his computer all day in his underwear drinking beer and I hope I have pissed them off.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. Maybe there are two kinds; the amateurs and the pros

Some do it for (warped) personal reasons - attention seeking, bitterness, whatever. Some do it to achieve a desired political purpose. We've had a lot of practice at DU with trolls coming over here from Free Republic trying to mess with our heads, some are better at it than others. Most are terrible at it actually, but he ones who are skilled can do a little damage. I still haven't gotten my mind around foreign sponsored trolling yet. It seems so far fetched to be real but at least to some extent it does seem real. We may all be very minor targets here at a forum like DU when seen on a global scale - but then again so are individual soldiers during a war, and words are cheaper than bullets. My first hint of Russian sponsored trolls came with the sudden surge of Russian source news stories here covering how all the Ukrainians were supposed shelling their own people and the like (such as shooting down airliners) to make Russia look bad etc.