Opinion of concern trolling

[Sir Mohamed]

Hillarious practice, funny at times.

[Virginiá]

Annoying

[PragmaticPopulist]

Horrible practice. I'm still don't quite know how this forum became such a target for concern trolling. It seemed to start with LimoLiberal after the whole "RAIN IN NOVA" thing.

[Virginiá]

Horrible practice. I'm still don't quite know how this forum became such a target for concern trolling. It seemed to start with LimoLiberal after the whole "RAIN IN NOVA" thing.

This forum loves debating predictions and trends, so that kind of dynamic is already prone to spirited debates and heated arguments. When you throw in someone who people believe to be throwing bombs for fun, it can get heated.

As far as forums go, Atlas is relatively serious/academic. It makes sense that trolling would bug people. But, not to say there aren't people who aren't bothered by it that post here, although I'd wager they are in the minority of users.

[YE]

HP but seems to have gone down lately.

[dead0man]

can i get an example?

[Torie]

In the current context it means a perception that someone is disingenuously deprecating the electoral prospects of Democratic candidates. Personally, I don't care what posters predict. In general, it does not offer much value added (unless a poster is well informed about an individual race, and based on such information, thinks there will be movement over time from what the current situation looks like), but others seem to care about it, rather than just ignore the useless noise.

[The Dowager Mod]

Concern trolling.

Trump has a positive 53-44 approval rating in this poll.... blue wave narrative is taking some hits.

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

can i get an example?

see: literally every Limoliberal post

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

can i get an example?

see: literally every Limoliberal post

add King Lear and Horus too, among other users.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Also Beet before he changed parties.

[IceSpear]

Horrible practice. I'm still don't quite know how this forum became such a target for concern trolling. It seemed to start with LimoLiberal after the whole "RAIN IN NOVA" thing.

I'm guessing lurkers saw how well Andrew was doing at getting under people's skin (and faced no consequences for it) and decided to get in on the game themselves.

In fact, I'm almost certain that King Lear would not have signed up, or at least would not have been anywhere near as prolific, were it not for Andrew paving the way.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Also Beet before he changed parties.

And IceSpear (only half the time, the other half he is reasonable)

[Xing]

It gets annoying and old very fast. The reason that this forum is prone to trolling is because everyone responds to the trolls as if they're actually making serious points and have a legitimate argument.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I think people get accused of it too much: obviously people like hofoid are tedious idiots, but many people who get placed under the "concern troll" umbrella are merely extremely pessimistic.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I think people get accused of it too much: obviously people like hofoid are tedious idiots, but many people who get placed under the "concern troll" umbrella are merely extremely pessimistic.

I think the line can be drawn when you have people like hofoid and LimoLiberal who intentionally misrepresent data, skew polls, flat out lie about things, and the sort of morons who actually argue things like that a sex scandal will make it MORE likely that a Republican Congressman will be re-elected, etc.

[NOVA Green]

I think people get accused of it too much: obviously people like hofoid are tedious idiots, but many people who get placed under the "concern troll" umbrella are merely extremely pessimistic.

I think the line can be drawn when you have people like hofoid and LimoLiberal who intentionally misrepresent data, skew polls, flat out lie about things, and the sort of morons who actually argue things like that a sex scandal will make it MORE likely that a Republican Congressman will be re-elected, etc.

Both BRTD and Crabcake have good points here, and I lean a bit more towards the BRTD perspective (Possibly because of a few individual posters we have seen since the '16 GE that have made it a virtual "schtick" associated with their online persona, more than anything else)

Sure, currently I suspect that the '18 OR-GOV election will likely be closer than some outside observers might suspect only +5% D (Pessimist).

Still, I have some actual reasons that I can use to back up my pessimism and "gut feelings" to post a slightly pessimistic interpretation of future election results, as opposed to consistently posting my own "gut feelings" as gospel, and simultaneously derailing every single thread upon which I post.

I suspect that "concern trolling" is also driven my multiple other factors"

1.) Various individuals sometimes appear to associate their prestige or respect on Atlas based solely upon false metrics such as total post counts, or overall Forum visibility.

These behaviors are inherently counter-productive and detrimental to the overall health of the Forum.

I would just as soon see 1-5 solid / effort posts per day from Atlas Posters versus 30-50 weak and crap posts, in many ways intended to jack up visibility and post counts to gain "Gravitas" stature on Atlas....

2.) In many instances, we see individuals of various political persuasions attempting to treat Atlas, as just another Political chatboard, where they believe if they shout loudly enough they will somehow convince people to change their partisan political identity, core belief systems, and "convert" to their own individual perception of the Political Universe.

This is not the reason that I first joined Atlas over Ten Years ago, where generally Atlas was a bit of a "safe space" on the Internet, where Political Geeks could attempt to discuss objective reality versus solely partisan hack talking point memos of the day.

3.) There are multiple negative impacts caused by these types of behavior patterns:

       A.) It makes many threads virtually unreadable without taking the final step of putting posters on ignore mode (Never done it myself, since I believe in Freedom of Speech, and one day a poster who made a few months of "Trollish" comments suddenly starts posting some really good s**t after the DEM/PUB Primaries of DEM/PUB PRES GE Elections are over.

      B.) It shuts down the door to new Atlas Posters, many of whom in their very first post(s) demonstrate a much more thoughtful and insightful Political Analysis than even many seasoned posters.

       Just because someone has been lurking for awhile, recently discovered the Forum, and makes an effort/epic post gets "smacked down" by individual posters with an extremely high Post Count on a "Higher View Post Thread", doesn't make the Forum appear to be more open and inclusive (Which is one of the very issues that frequently pops up on Atlas Forum threads) so we can actually more effectively "crowd-source" some of the various research projects and analysis that so many of us "OG Atlas Posters" actually really enjoy doing.

"Concern Trolling" in and of itself shouldn't be anything like an offense that is ban-worthy, but I'm fully of the opinion that Atlas hasn't really been able to get a full handle on how to Mod this is a way that helps make the Forum a place that both contributes to the overall body of knowledge, makes it accessible to new posters, but still reigns in all sorts of poor Internet Board practices such as thread derailment, Trolling, etc....