Roots of Modern Trolling

 

I'm just over 60 pages into Nathan Popper's "The Trolls of Wall Street," and so far I'm most struck by Popper's description of one of the founders of Reddit's Wall Street Bets subreddit, a central focus of the book, and associated other unerdlinings of the Internet that have led to some not-so-nice places.

I don't know how old the guy is, but I suspect post-Millennial. From the book:

There had always been something of a split between the different sides of Jaime's personality: the class clown and the theater nerd, the party guy and the intellectual, the wonk who liked the options matrix and the trader who enjoyed big risks. He had learned to reconcile the conflicts - or at least repress the more boisterous side. He knew the rowdy young man in him wasn't so welcome in the polite society of the modern world . . .

. . .The conversation in the chat room made it clear that this little community was providing something of a similar release for many of the other regulars. They would jokingly recount the police conversations they had all day as they kpet it together at work. Jamie and outsquare and several others generally put some limits on the freewheeling spirit. They did not fully give in to the worst impulses of he locker room and often made fun of the homophobia and misogyny that still permeated so many traditionally male environments. INdeed, part of the reason the chat room was so attractive was that it gave them a new kin of masculinity that didn't just focus on macho bravado. . .

Boys being boys, you might say.

But a bit later:

But WallStreetBets also played directly into a rising current of defiant young men who had been energized by the political currents roiling the American scene in 2015. During the final years of the Obama presidency as progressive movements like Black Lives Matter gained steam, 4chan gave voice to a growing group of angry young men who were unhappy about their own diminished place in the world and angry that Obama seemed to be elevating the political priorities of women and various underrepresented minority groups. This swirl of anger and activity led to a new universe of online communities taht catered to the young men who did not see their interests represented anywhere else.

We'd do well to remember life and politics and economy are not zero-sum games; gains for one don't have to come at the expense of another. But we seem prone in politics and nature to continue to fall for this fallacy. Giving in to baser influences or feelings doesn't elevate -- well, it might temporarily, but rarely for long and never for good. So maybe I worry less about the time I spend on Facebook exchanging MASH and Simpsons quotes with my friends, as long as I'm getting other stuff done in the real world and not betting butthurt that my need aren't the center of everyone's lives.

Thanks, Trump. Part II

UPDATE: Thursday, the Dow fell more than a thousand points. Trump come, Trump go.

Markets up remarkably. Trump pausing "new" tariffs for 90 days. Who the hell knows what's going on? The situaton may be, as they say, fluid.

Poor, Poor Solomon . . .

Solomon Ibra of the "PayPal Security Team," not content to try to scam me once, tried within the span of ten minutes this morning to scam me four times, and I haven't even checked my spam filter yet.

[Checks spam filter]

Nope, nothing from Solomon there, but plenty of people warning me that my iCloud account is about to go belly-up.

Just out of curiosity, I opened each email. They all say exactly the same thing, right down to the bogus reference numbers.

Most scammers aren't that bright, but the current crop are about as dumb as a sack of hammers.

NaNoWriMo is Dead

UPDATE: As of noon on Tuesday, April 8, the NaNoWriMo website is still acvtive, with no news whatsoever about its closure. So either what's posted below is the product of a rogue board member, or the demise of NaNoWriMo has been exaggerated. Or they're in denial. Who knows?

Found out late last night that NaNoWriMo -- the originators of National Novel Writing Month -- have pulled the plug on their website.

One of its board members posted this video to YouTube on April 1 (an odd day to do so indeed):

The video does address, albeit briefly, the two elephants that have been in NaNoWriMos's room for the past few years: Allegations that people who were grooming youngsters on other sites also had a presence in NaNoWriMo forums and such -- I don't know that there was any evidence of grooming at NaNoWriMo -- and the board's flip-flopping on the use of artificial intelligence as an "assist" in completing the novel-in-a-month writing challenge the group started on.

You'll see in the video, however, that this board member pins the site's demise on poor financial performance, though even that is lacking in quite a bit of detail. Many in the video comments take offense that the board member is pinning NaNo's demise on "the community," but without actual figures shared, it's hard to tell whether that's true or not.

As with all things, however, there's probably a grain of truth to it. I participated in NaNo for three or four years in the aughts and such, and never made a contribution to the site. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Yet in this video, there's no accounting for how many employees the group has -- they mention pay and benefits as a major expense -- nor how much they were compensated. I don't know all the ins and outs of running a site like this, or a nonprofit like this, but if you're going to nail your community for not supporting the group through donations, you probably should have an honest accounting of how many employees the organization has and how much they're paid, and how much work they're doing.

In other word, transparency. It's lacking in this video, so it's easier to brush off the accusations of non-support from the community.

Hard at Work

Caught Isaac in a candid moment working on his 1992 Ford Ranger.

Out of Quests. Sorry.

I play this game called Sea Port on my Kindle Fire. I'm on Level 930, and apparently have completed all available Story Quests, as you can read in this announcement I got on the game.

I understand that maybe they didn't expect people to hang on as long as I have, but that's my schtick. It'll be interesting to see what the "soon" means in more quests arriving. Quests are a way to earn extra in-game items, so they're helpful. Not a crippling stoppage, but an interesting one.

"The Road to Freedom," by Shawn Pollock

I've read a fair amount of literature connected to World War II -- I'm a male over fifty, after all; it's obligatory. I have generally stayed away from fiction related to the war, figuring there's enough non-fiction out there that tells the stories of individuals involved, whether it's Art Spiegelman's "Maus" or "The Good War" by Studs Terkel.

But reading "The Road to Freedom" helped me hark back to the time I did read fiction set during wartime, particularly Anne Holm's "North to Freedom" and "Snow Treasure" by Marie McSwigan. Shawn Pollock's "The Road to Freedom" isn't necessarily written with children in mind (as are the two other books mentioned in this paragraph) but the tale told has the versimilitude, tone, and narrative style I'd associate with the best World War II ficton I've read, right up to Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief," which I read last year.

That one of the main character is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adds a personal connection that makes the book that much more enjoyable to me.

Don't be scared off by that -- the book isn't preachy in any way. A character in the book happens to be a "Mormon" and that plays into the story, showing one character anchored in a religious-based morality that helps him keep his head together as other characters in the book swim about in events and lives without a defined moral compass, though some characters' compasses are stronger than others, or at least pointed in a more humane direction.

What the story stresses to me above all is that we need to set our values now, and not let them bend despite the circumstances we find ourselves in. That can be harder to do than we like to think -- I had a weak moment this past week and did not live up to my values. I have repented of my fault. Reading this book and the battles the characters fight hors de combat made my own experience more meaningful to me as I look to right my own compass.

Thanks, Trump

Ordinarily I wouldn't blame one person for a serious tanking of the stock market. But this is fallout from Trump slapping tariffs on just about every island and nation on earth, including some populated solely or mostly by penguins.

He's golfing today while my retirement finds have dropped . . .at least $10,000 in one day. And one account hasn't updated for today's massacre.

And Starbursts that I used to be able to get for about $2.70 a bag are now more than $4.

I'm not impressed.

But I am learning still. This video might be the best explanation of the tariff situation that I've listened to. Yes, he makes fun of putting tariffs on penguin-oriented territories, but I think gives a balanced view on the discussion.

I Might Be Having A Stroke. Best Get on Social Media

 

I saw this post on Facebook about three minutes after it was made.

I couldn't access it, meaning it was likely removed in the three minute interval from when it was posted to when I saw it (if Facebook's timestamps are accurate).

I suspect the people who commented on it suggested this man was having a stroke or some other kind of medical issue and I hope they recommended getting off social media and calling an ambulance. A friend of mine had something similar happen, but he had the common sense to get himself to the emergency room rather than talk about his condition on social media. He was indeed having a stroke.

Maybe it was a good thing he posted, in that he (maybe) read the urgent calls to get himself help and quickly, so I can't exactly mock him. Still . . .

THE NEW CHORE LIST IS HERE!

Spring is here (well, by the calendar, not necessarily by the weather) so that means the chore list I typed and saved last fall is now printed out with EXCITING cross-outs on it as I did complete some of the indoor chores during the winter.

Bathroom isn't as far along as I'd hoped it would be, because of the whole toilet flange thing, but nevertheless progress was made. Hoping we can pick out additional tile for the tub and backsplash this weekend between Conference sessions.

I've also made a lot of progress on the work connected to the "ethernet switch," except I haven't got the wire from the upstairs router to the basement in the walls yet. That'll be a bigger job that I just haven't tackled yet. And it'll be all done just in time for me to have to go back to the office this summer.