Tuesday, January 15, 2013

John Ibbitson - Media Troll

NOTE: This post ended up being longer than anticipated. I'm leaving this part as the description of Ibbitson as a troll and the critique of the column that inspired this is this subsequent post.

A troll lived under the bridge in the story "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." A troll is a mythical creature - an ugly, greedy, vicious thing. But the origin of the term "internet troll" came out of the habit of some people on internet discussion boards and what-not, to post nasty, vicious, outrageous comments that would invite an avalanche of criticism/attention that these sickos desired. It was said they were "trolling for comments" the way other people troll for fish, by dragging baited lines behind their boats. The two concepts of "trolling" and therefore being a "troll" have been mixed.

Trolls are genuinely sick, pathetic, contemptible and pitiful creatures. They're so desperate for human attention, of for some outlet for their own frustrations, that they'll post hideous insults to the departed loved ones on memorial pages put online by people to commemorate them. Look at this revolting specimen of humanity:

Look at the fear with which this man reacts when it's clear he's been found out. What was it all for? How small is his life and his brain that he behaves this way?

Well, that's armchair psychologizing for another day, ain't it? Most people don't really care. Just another stupid loser. Just another waste of sperm and a womb. One of millions. "Don't feed the troll!" is the response of many. I would eventually concede to this request on discussion boards, until it became clear that the lying, trolling troll wasn't going to be banned from the site. I don't mind debating people who think differently from me, if they'll stick to facts and logic and, when they've lost an argument, incorporate that reality into their subsequent commentary. But it would offend me to see racist, sexist, class-warfare style lying on what was supposed to be a progressive board. It's like this: If somebody graffitis the side of your house with abstract designs, you might be pissed-off, but if you don't have the money to pay to have it removed, few people will complain or blame you for anything. However, if somebody posts some large racist remark on the side of your building and you leave it up, it's going to start reflecting on you. I saw it as offensive to allow these idiotic comments to stand and these idiotic trolls to abuse us. I would quick off the mark to ask that some pussball troll be banned, for which my "free speech" credentials would be called into question. Somehow I doubt that these trolls would tolerate someone showing up at their house making disparaging comments about their parents' genitalia on a regular basis though.

Regardless, trolls are just attention-seeking losers. They say provocative things in order to obtain the only sort of human contact they apparently feel they're capable of getting.

And this, dear readers, brings me to John Ibbitson. Ibbitson wants two forms of attention: a pat on the head from his idol, stephen harper and Canada's corporate elites, and to outrage the progressives who have made this a semi-decent country in spite of people like Ibbitson, harper and their ilk. He's not an internet troll. His national newspaper soap-box and its online presence makes him a media troll. A culture troll. Just like other trolls (Christie Belchforth, Rosie DiMoron, Margaret's Brain-Wente, Ezra ("shitty lawyer") Levant) they're function is to make outrageous comments, stupid, hateful, evil comments, and thereby attract hits to websites, purchases of newspapers, letters to editors and etc.

Well, in my case at least, this tactic has pretty much backfired. Besides the fact that contract employment in the "new economy" is precarious and often low-paying, I've decided that I won't pay to be insulted. I will not give my hard-earned money to a corporate media institution that pays people to belittle me, while spewing lies and stupid delusions at the same time.

"Don't feed the troll!" I don't feed the troll with money. But sometimes, I'll admit to giving the trolls internet hits. I'll link to them and discuss/condemn them. Why? Because the fact of the matter is that trolls like Ibbitson and Belchforth aren't going to go away if we ignore them. And, just like the trolls on discussion boards who don't get banned but continue to pollute with their filth and lies, the noxious views of people like Ibbitson pollute the intellectual climate. Some people have breathed in so much poison, with minds already deformed in other ways, that they actually agree with the trolls.

It's like a dinner party. For some reason, the guy who goes on about feminazis and faggots and foreigners keeps getting invited. Maybe if everyone ignored him, he'd get the picture and go away (maybe not), but it turns out there's an inbred cretin at the table saying "You tell 'em!" and "Finally! A voice of reason!" You have to speak up. You can't allow intellectual and moral garbage to go unchallenged.

Which brings me to Ibbitson's latest puddle of puke. "[h]arper needs to stay the course in winter of native discontent."

To a sane and decent person, harper's "course" is a disastrous, inhuman one. Nobody but filthy, stupid racists believes that Chief Spence of Attawapiskat is a criminal. Sane, decent people know that a woman who is stealing money allocated for her people's shelter and safety from northern Canadian winters does not declare a state of emergency to draw attention to her callous theft. She does not go on a hunger-strike when the anti-First Nations prime minister responds to her state of emergency by trying to take over her community and send in auditors rather than try to fix the problem. Sane, decent people read that in June 2011, the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser reported that federal inconsistency in providing necessary (and obligatory) funding in a timely fashion, accompanied with stringent reporting guidelines for everything done with the money, and they respond to a timely (and cowardly) leak from the government about Spence's administration's lack of proper documentation with a reasoned, restrained attitude. Especially since Spence's period of leadership produced more thorough book-keeping than previous ones. Especially since Spence's life-partner ("boyfriend" to imbeciles like Ezra Levant, trying to insinuate things) helped produce this turnaround, and he did it for $120,000 and not the $400,000 per year that a national accounting firm proposed to charge them.

But John Ibbitson is not a sane, decent person. He's a shit-licking harperscum. He started out defending the murderously incompetent and the moronically racist Mike Harris government of Ontario. Yes indeedy, Ibbitson knows which assholes to tongue to become a part of the Canadian establishment. (Too bad for him and all the other assorted scumbags that this establishment has overplayed its hand and is about to be shown the door.)

Furthermore, if you want to be taken seriously, you don't endorse the unilateral abrogation of treaties and sworn government promises. That's called arbitrary government don't you know. harper used to bray like a jackass about how we had promised NATO we'd continue to bomb Afghan villages to smithereens and impose a narco-gangster-pedophile government on the people of Afghanistan, and therefore we must do so, destroyed Canadian soldiers, billions of dollars in taxpayers' money and war-crimes notwithstanding.

Well, our treaties with the First Nations are even older than our promise to NATO. So why doesn't harper feel bound to respect those? Apparently, the answer is that (according to the Globe & Mail editorial board and other idiots) those treaties are old.  ...  Yep.   .... They're old. "From the early 20th century" in the case of the treaty affecting Attawapiskat. We're too imagine that one day, John Ibbitson will push Jeffrey Simpson in front of a streetcar and it won't matter because Simpson is "old."

Yep.

Such is the brainpower of our corporate media elite.

Oh yeah. And, of course, those dirty, drunken First Nations can't really be imagined to constitute a "nation" can they? Just because this is their land. Just because we obtained their land via treaties on a nation-to-nation basis. Just because they're a separate people with their own cultures and languages. They just don't measure up to us (supposedly) therefore we can do as we like to them, solemn oaths and promises be damned.

My god! The garbage that sits and stinks inside the skulls of these corporate media elites!

Of course, I myself have encountered US-Americans who say the same thing about Canada. Here on this blog you can read their asshole comments. We're a pipsqueak pissant little shit-hole to them. A cold, barren version of the poorest parts of Alabama, ... and that's when they're being charitable.

Lyndon Johnson grabbed our prime minister Lester Pearson by the lapels and lifted him off the floor and shouted obscenities in his face. Hell, Johnson told the Greek ambassador to Washington: "Fuck your parliament and fuck your constitution!"

So, it's really not in Canada's self-interest to go around abrogating treaties. Let alone something that serious, sane and decent people would do ever.

Rachael Maddow talks about trolls in the same way.

5 comments:

opit said...

"trolls are just attention-seeking losers" http://truth-out.org/news/item/7284:infiltration-of-political-movements-is-the-norm-not-the-exception-in-the-united-states PAID INTERNET TROLLS « The Burning Platform
Oct 15, 2012 ... For a little over six months, I was paid to spread disinformation and argue political
points on the Internet. This site, ATS, was NOT one that I was[ ...
www.theburningplatform.com/?p=42355 Are Right-Wing Libertarian Internet Trolls Getting Paid to Dumb ...
Dec 14, 2010 ... There are daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the
state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.
www.alternet.org/story/149197/are_right-wing_libertarian_internet_trolls_getting_paid_to_dumb_down_online_conversations Daily Kos: EXPOSED: Astroturfed Teabaggers PAID TO TROLL ...
Dec 29, 2010 ... It details current Chinese and Western Neo-Corporate paid astroturfed trolling
online. For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly ...
www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/29/932182/-EXPOSED-Astroturfed-Teabaggers-PAID-TO-TROLL-liberals-online-to-enforce-corporate-propaganda What an Academic Who Wrote Her Dissertation on Trolls Thinks of ...
Oct 15, 2012 ... As internet culture -- and by extension, trolling culture -- has become .... As Adrian
Chen explains, they were tolerated by Reddit's paid staff and ...
www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/what-an-academic-who-wrote-her-dissertation-on-trolls-thinks-of-violentacrez/263631/

How about it, Thwap ? Doesn't this post compete with trollery for disinformation ?

thwap said...

opit,

I read one of those links a couple of days ago. And, of course I heard of the Israeli government's online comments sections.

I remember the public relations hacks who came on the blogs when the report on how Canada's mining firms were the worst abusers in the world for that industry.

Even that liberal shill, Michael Bryant, when his self-serving book came out, I remember the paid p.r. people spamming the CBC's comments about what a guy he was and what he's gone through and judge not and ye shall not be judged.

I'm actually writing about something different: Mainstream media hacks like Ibbitson, Wente and Blatchford who say outrageous things in the same way that internet trolls say "rot in piss nigger" on a facebook memorial page.

The stuff you're talking about is related, but those Israel flunkies at least made arguments once in a while. Genuine trolling is just saying something offensive to get attention.

In the end, they're both a blight on our culture and, yes, fwiw, the mainstream media seems systemically adverse to hiring left-wing flame throwers to get attention and notoriety and sales.

But it's still slightly different.

Owen Gray said...

Ibbitson began at the National Post in praise of the Harris government, thwap. The paper has changed but the mindset hasn't.

Not a lot of growth potential there.

thwap said...

Owen,

I don't see any hope of any sort of progression in Ibbitson's life. He's sunk himself beyond redemption.

Gloria said...

I thought everyone viewed National Post, as the funny papers? Ibbitson and Wente, are Maggie and Jigs. They are so bizarre, I can't believe anyone, takes them seriously? The nasty articles towards the F.N. people? The cruel comments, are no different than Goebbles propaganda machine, used against the Jewish people.

We are still in touch, with Dutch people, my brothers met during WW11. They were in the Liberation of Holland. I have given them National Posts site. I gave them the names of blog sites. They are very grieved by what is happening, in their beloved Canada. They worship our Canadian boys, right to this very day.

Harper has brought, utter disgrace and shame upon this once, good and decent country. Harper is a Traitor, for giving Canada to Communist China. He belongs in prison, for doing so.