sorry folks: u forgot tha say 'please'
voltaremos quando vos for mais inconveniente

trolling along

♪ Lead a one man Revolution from your arm chair
♪ Talking cliches to listeners that aren't there

E no tópico de clarificar confusões que se passam parece-nos importante neste ponto distinguir entre dois trolls que se misturam arbitrariamente em qualquer discussão quando um universo de intenções os separa: trolls, e trolhas.

Trolhas: o puto imbecil cuja bravata se limita ao teclado, monitor e anonimato e que merece um par de chapadas. Fáceis de reconhecer, mais fáceis de ignorar, pequenos parasitas que têm o seu lugar na web-ó-sfera porque nenhum ecossistema está completo sem um verme rastejante nas suas partes mais obscuras. De vida curta, aparecem e desaparecem sem deixar rasto, sucedem-se em gerações com a novidade do contacto à tecnologia cruzado à idade de serem parvos. Here, trolli-trolli-trolli, here trolli-trolli-trolli... nice trolli.

Trolls, aqueles que nos merecem maior atenção: putas nazis. Estes trolls são autoritários, persistentes, e pouco devem ao menino malcriado acima descrito: possuem uma intenção que se estende ao real, seja na forma continuada de um bullying que já ocorre no recreio da escola, seja na prossecução de uma agenda ideológica, militar, metódica. O troll não desaparece quando baixas o telemóvel, é uma espécie muito mais nefasta cujas consequências dos seus actos transvasam para o mundo real com implicações igualmente muito reais nas suas vitimas. Ao contrário do trolha que entre dois comentários já se esqueceu que fazia e partiu para outra, o bully não será demovido até vitimar a sua presa, o racista não parará até cumprir o seu reino de supremacia [cor aqui] nesta Terra.

É com este último merdas que nos preocupamos.

Sazonalmente os tempos voltam-se a velhos temas com novas roupagens -mesmo se o ignoram- e lá lhe medimos o pulso nos media. Exemplo dos trolls: não é uma conversa que esteja a tantos graus de distância de clássicos como “os videojogos fazem mal aos miúdos”, do velhinho “a televisão faz mal às crianças”, do seminal “os comics fazem mal às crianças”. Importa assim também, antes de separar trolls e trolhas, notar que devidamente esmiuçado, é-nos raro encontrar uma coluna informada que faça uma distinção clara entre o abuso – ie, distorção- da web e a própria web. Invariavelmente, parecemos sempre encontrar no core dessas argumentações o same ol’: o/a [inserir meio aqui] faz mal às crianças. Não senhores, as crianças 'r alrite, e o meio é o que passam neste - não é isento, mas não igualmente sujeito. Importa portanto não confundir temas: se não gostas do jogo joga outro, se não gostas do programa muda de canal. Em qualquer dos casos, desliga a coisa. O trolha – que muitas vezes passa por troll – esgota-se na habitual supressão da sua dieta: não o alimentes. Claros sobre censura? Continuemos.

I

Da peça "How the alt-right uses internet trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology" 11 jan 2017, a supramencionada confusão que procuramos separar. Não invalida o artigo, mas ser-te-à mais proveitoso se o leres com essas duas dimensões em mente: imediatamente concluirás sobre perguntas que o autor ainda estará por fazer.

Trolhas, e trolls, enrolados:

Trolling used to be online performance art. Increasingly, the performance is real.

For decades, the word “troll” was web-speak for that one rude commenter on a forum who just wouldn’t shut up or go away; the one who kept trying to goad the average reasonable person into a fight (...) most people who’ve been on the internet for a while are quick to write off trolling itself, to view it as a harmless prank. After all, trolls gonna troll.
in "How the alt-right uses internet trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology" 11 jan 2017

Enter o novo troll nazi.

Things get really confusing, really fast.
But “don’t feed the trolls” failed spectacularly as a tactic during the 2016 election cycle, stunning many people who assumed the alt-right’s tactics were juvenile and easily seen-through. (...) It’s not a failure of human intelligence that many people failed to take “trolling” more seriously. Much in the same way that fake news on Facebook was easy to dismiss until people realized its potential to massively influence many voters’ viewpoints, trolling obfuscates truth and reality, often through satirical means, in order to mask sincere propaganda.
in "How the alt-right uses internet trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology" 11 jan 2017

Um troll cruzado à apropriação do humor que costumava ser nosso exclusivo.

Because “trolling” is such an easy-to-dismiss behavior, members of the alt-right have successfully used it to obscure the movement’s sincere objective: to support and promote hateful ideology.

Trolling distorts reality in order to trick you into dismissing its message. One of the most significant and pernicious ways that members of the alt-right use trolling is to create a sincerity-proof chamber of distortion surrounding what their actual message is. They do this by pretending that what they’re really doing is satirically spoofing how progressives and members of the media view conservatives (...) to distract and intimidate their opponents while spreading false or misleading information.
in "How the alt-right uses internet trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology" 11 jan 2017

Com as implicações conhecidas.

With a former Breitbart editor headed to the White House to serve as Trump’s chief strategist, many are asking a different question: Where does the trolling stop and the new administration begin?
in "How the alt-right uses internet trolling to confuse you into dismissing its ideology" 11 jan 2017

II

Aqui entramos em alguma sociologia porque, again, a distinção é relevante quando tácticas se confundem. Do "Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality" 28 fev 2017 *, novamente o enrolar de trolhas e trolls no mesmo saco.

* Por um autor que nos é repetente e pertinente: provavelmente estaremos a incluí-lo nas leituras regulares a continuar a tendência.

Is 4chan a clever invention from a group of fascist conspirators? No. It evolved organically among young, often jobless, often sexually frustrated men, who sought refuge in a world of their own making, and live there through almost every waking hour. As their online world of ironic self-reflection expanded, their contact with the real world shrank, until nothing was serious – except their hatred of women. Like adolescent boys and man-boys everywhere, 4chan’s users, [são] “deeply sensitive and guarded”. They disguise this sensitivity with extreme insensitivity to other people’s suffering (...) Whatever they do or say – posting swastikas, racist memes, incitements to bully and abuse – is just “for the lulz”. None of it, in the airless, affectless world in which they spend almost all their time, seems to matter.
in "Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality" 28 fev 2017

Ainda que o autor não a faça, onde a distinção começa a surgir, e a saberás reconhecer agora:

Until they collided with anti-fascist demonstrators, their far-right politics were just more lulz. When they make the mistake of stepping into the real world they find it a hard and terrifying place. “Very brave behind a computer screen”, these people are “absolutely unequipped to deal with any suggestion of real-world consequences”.
in "Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality" 28 fev 2017

Atrás, os trolhas. Agora quando começam a confundir-se ao nazi, novamente o humor.

Breaking down the barriers of acceptability through humour is now a deliberate tactic of the far right. PewDiePie might see his “jokes” as harmless and fun, but they mesh with agendas that are neither. The Nazi website the Daily Stormer notes that PewDiePie “could be doing all this only to ... stir things up and get free publicity. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, since the effect is the same; it normalizes Nazism, and marginalizes our enemies”.
in "Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality" 28 fev 2017

Ressalva necessária: humor e outros comportamentos anti-sociais como propaganda disfarçada em prol de militâncias ideológicas? Culpados. Mas onde não nos devem confundir ao trolha: estes existem exclusivamente no digital, como o nazi, nós começamos e acabamos no real.

We are separated from the world by a layer of glass. Climate change, distant wars, the erosion of democracy, resurgent fascism – in our temperature-controlled enclosures, all can be reduced to abstractions. It is no longer rare to meet adults who have never swum except in a swimming pool, never slept except in a building, never run a mile or climbed a mountain, never been stung by a bee or a wasp, never broken a bone or needed stitches. Without a visceral knowledge of what it is to be hurt and healed, exhausted and resolute, freezing and ecstatic, we lose our reference points.
in "Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality" 28 fev 2017

Já levaste pontos? Já foste mordido por abelhas? Já dormiste ao relento? Já te perdeste por matas e montanhas? Nós também.

Parte dois: onde não nos devem confundir com o nazi: nós queremos a anulação deste. Como? Continuando a promover aquele tipo de cultura que suporte o mais abrangente leque de experiências possíveis aos miúdos: onde mais vão eles ler bd de propaganda punk-veggie anti-nazi?

In a fiendishly complex world, the only hope we have of assessing competing claims is often to draw on our own experience. Without experience, we are lost.
in "Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality" 28 fev 2017

Citação extra para introduzir última peça de hoje a fechar comparações de trolls:

I suspect this has only just begun. Virtual reality is in its infancy. Once people retreat into the land behind the headset, in which they can no longer even see or hear what surrounds them, they are likely to become still less connected with the real world. (...) This is more fundamental even than filter bubbles. This is about what it is to be human, what it is to lose that essential element of our existence: our contact with the real world. The political, social and environmental consequences are currently beyond reckoning.
in "Our greatest peril? Screening ourselves off from reality" 28 fev 2017

III

E chegámos ao contacto com o mundo real, heads on.

Have you heard the one about the boy who cried Fake News?
This is a story about truth and consequences. It’s a story about who gets to be young and dumb, and who gets held accountable.

A partir do exemplo do Yiannopoulos. Why not?! Here bulli bulli bulli!

I have never in my life seen someone so obviously and emphatically asking for a smack in the mouth, and the only reason he doesn’t deserve it is that he wants it too much.
in "On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right" 22 fev 2017

Yiannopoulos.

Before this week, Yiannopoulos was a bratty, vicious court jester of the new right who made a name for himself by saying grotesque and shocking things that he may or may not have ever believed. Yiannopoulos has cashed in hard on the cowardice of American conservatives, exploited their complete allergy to irony.

Now it’s payback time. As I write, Yiannopoulos, the fame-hungry right-wing provocateur and self-styled “most dangerous supervillain on the Internet,” is fighting off accusations of having once endorsed pedophilia. Former friends and supporters who long tolerated his outrage-mongering as childish fun are now dropping him like a red-hot turd.

Now he knows just what it is to have the Internet turn on you and take away your control of the narrative. Now the entire alt-right is realizing, in full view of a few million popcorn-munching online leftists, that they were never the new punk.
in "On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right" 22 fev 2017

E assim se conclui o rise and fall deste senhor.

Infelizmente, os popcorn-munching online leftists também não saem bem desta história.

If Yiannopoulos is as screwed as he seems, (...) he has been brought down, after all, by the one weapon we don’t want to give power to. He has been brought down not by reasoned liberal argument, nor by moral victory over his cod theories, nor by anti-fascist agitation. He has been brought down by conservative moral outrage. (...) This is not liberalism winning the day. This is the victorious far right purging the brownshirts.
in "On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right" 22 fev 2017

Mas voltando aos trolls, e porque concluímos com esta peça, "On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right" 22 fev 2017"rewind two weeks":

His tour bus smells of sweaty teenage trolls.

Hordes of teenage fans follow him from speaking event to speaking event, hanging with desperate loyalty off every word that comes out of his face (...) Yiannopoulos’ entourage is exclusively male. Apart from the trainer, the tour manager, and the security staff, they are all under 20 and almost all painfully straight.

The team is mostly composed of young men. Extremely young men. The sort of young men who are very brave behind a computer screen and like to think of themselves as stalwart fighters for the all-American right to say whatever disgusting thing they please, but who are absolutely unequipped to deal with any suggestion of real-world consequences.

These are not the scheming crypto-fascist masterminds I was led to expect. (...) These are not the “just following orders” kids. These are the “just making my career” kids. The two are functionally the same in the United States, but this still feels filthier.
in "On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right" 22 fev 2017

Putos. Putos e $$$. E onde os putos têm o seu choque com a realidade.

Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the University of California–Berkeley, but the event has been shut down. It was shut down because thousands of anti-racist and anti-fascist protesters decided that there should be no platform for what they called white supremacy. They are marching to say that free speech does not extend to hate speech [and] if the institutions disagree, students and allies are entitled to throw fireworks and smash things until the trolls run away. Which is exactly what has happened. Police in full riot gear are everywhere, and the whole place is evacuated because of the real possibility of everyone inside getting a serious — and arguably deserved — kicking.

As the evacuation gets going, the young men in Yiannopoulos’ gang seem scared. They’re right to be — these protesters aren’t playing, and there has already been real violence at these events. (...) The impression that this is all an exciting adventure in pranking the left, a giddy game of harmless offense where nobody actually gets hurt, is not holding up so well. Whatever anyone claims, it’s hard to shake off being run out of town by 3,000 people screaming that you’re a Nazi. It’s the sort of thing that gives everyone but the coldest sociopath at least a little pause, and most of this crew don’t have the gumption or street smarts to function outside of a Reddit forum. They’re not the flint-eyed skinheads that many anti-fascists are used to fighting.
in "On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right" 22 fev 2017

Concluindo: na próxima literatura que te encha a caixa de correio sobre os perigos da web e suas criaturas fantásticas, mesmo se embrulham todos sob uma só categoria de troll lembra-te que também entre estes a fauna é rica e variada, e serás mais eficiente nos resultados se souberes adequar a cada qual a estratégia correcta quando apontas baterias - pun intented! Tens putos, e tens nazis, estes últimos em missão, os primeiros em passeio.

I’m not a brawler, but I’d wager that these kids could be knocked down with a well-aimed stack of explanatory pamphlets, thus resolving decades of debate about whether it’s better to punch or to reason with racists.
in "On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right" 22 fev 2017

Além de que, entre o que se passa por trolling hoje em dia, indo para lá do óbvio, algum recomenda-se.

♪ This is my medium ♪ Cause medium murdered reality
♪ Fires been burning for years ♪ Soon its gonna bubble over

A segunda ideia, a irreverência, era o monopólio dos inteligentes e atrevidos, denunciavam tudo com um sorriso divertido nos lábios. Era um talento frequentemente mencionado aos necrológicos e nos artigos que se apresentavam aos recém-chegados ao mundo das notícias. Raramente se fez notar que quando nada é reverenciado, a irreverência deixa de constituir um sinal de pensamento crítico.

a resistência resiste