I am Damaged Goods

[walfin]

I wouldn't say Damaged.Goods was wonderful, but that I didn't suspect anything fishy. The only thing weird I noticed was the thing about getting past China's Internet control software (when, if I remember correctly, it didn't get implemented in the end because of widespread dissatisfaction). Everything else seemed improbable but possible (including the being 14 years old and in university thing). Then again I've never been a fan of Taoism and traditional Chinese stuff and the Damaged.Goods persona claimed to like all that.

What would people think if they found out that someone else on this board that they really admire was nothing more then another personality by our forums insidious troll?

Even a troll can post good stuff sometimes.

Look past all the fakeness to see if there's anything worth remembering in a post or not.

If he posts good, interesting, discussable stuff, then I don't care if he's doing other stupid stuff or not.

The less we get affected, the less likely it is that someone will bother with this sort of nonsense, since these people are all out to get attention and if no one cares, they'll just go away frustrated. I can't help thinking this guy must be a mental masochist to re-read snowqueen's long post about him to make himself cry.

Is it disillusioning to find out the truth?

Yes, kind of, but not exactly confidence-shattering. It is the Internet.

And for a place like INTPf, you get as much out of it as you want. If somebody is here merely to create lots of fake personas and think "haha I fooled them all", then more fool he, since it doesn't take a lot to fool people on the Internet where identity can't be verified. It's like robbing from a town where nobody locks their doors (cliche, I know), except that in this case the robber gains nothing at all. Obviously someone like that wouldn't learn anything from coming here, and wouldn't even get the relief most INTPs would get from talking openly to like-minded people.

Now, sexual predators are a different story. Since he wasn't one, it's not really a big deal. I just feel it's very sad that somebody gets his jollies from doing idiotic stuff like that. We already have to fake so much irl. Imagine having to be a fake even online, in a forum like this. Whole bloody life's a fake; living that way has got to be intolerable.

What would people think if they found out that someone else on this board that they really admire was nothing more then another personality by our forums insidious troll?

Then I would hope that the troll begins to take on that personality for real, but know that he can't, and I'd feel a little sad but it won't impact my life greatly.

Also, can we trust that nobody else here is another account from the same person? Can we trust that the accounts they claimed as theirs are actually their account (perhaps they just wanted to see us ban an innocent person)?

We can't trust anything.

But if he takes on a pleasant persona and doesn't post trollish stuff, why do I care that he's fake? Perhaps he's changed for real, perhaps it's another attempt at orchestrating foreign drama. Doesn't matter. It's not important who the account owners are irl. What does matter is the persona presented in the account. Let's say somebody has 2 accounts, account A, which breaks forum rules all the time and account B, a nice law-abiding denizen of the forum. If we ban account A, we don't necessarily have to ban account B, unless account B starts trolling as well, or outs itself by declaring that it's owned by the same person as account A (even then I guess an exception could be made if account B promises not to troll). I don't mind seeing the nice side of a schizophrenic on this forum.

Anyway, being mistakenly banned from an Internet forum is a relatively minor vicissitude of life. We like INTPf, but we're not dependent on it, after all (and those who are dependent would do better to get banned).

 

[Invoke Ninja's True Power]

I like this place but I hate having to guess how real/fake someone is being but I guess thats just life.

 

[snowqueen]

I like this place but I hate having to guess how real/fake someone is being but I guess thats just life.

Don't worry about it. Just enjoy yourself.

 

[EditorOne]

What Snow Queen said. Enjoy yourself. Someone comes aboard to mock us, nobody gets mad, we all just analyze the hell out of things. INTP on steroids, that's us.

Meanwhile:

"For someone to be irrelevent in an INTP forum is a pretty tough thing to do."

Invoke, funniest thing I've seen in a week, I laughed out loud. Thanks for a great moment.

 

[Sapphire Harp]

Look past all the fakeness to see if there's anything worth remembering in a post or not.

If he posts good, interesting, discussable stuff, then I don't care if he's doing other stupid stuff or not.

But if he takes on a pleasant persona and doesn't post trollish stuff, why do I care that he's fake? Perhaps he's changed for real, perhaps it's another attempt at orchestrating foreign drama. Doesn't matter.

Well, quite frankly, XIII's demonstrated all of these characters are simply a means to some end... presumably damaging the feeling of community and people's trust in each other or whatever. None of the characters are being created to actually contribute anything... if they do so incidentally, it's with an eye towards greater negation later on...

If XIII had anything real to communicate to us, there are ways it could be done... The stream of fake characters suggests exactly otherwise.
​

 

[echoplex]

That's not strictly true - XIII flooded the forum last time to the extent that the spaces on the forum that one had to go to to avoid him were very limited.

That meant that any potential new members looking in to the forum would not have seen much of the culture we've generated and been able to decide whether to join or not. Closing the forum and reopening it has brought in some really interesting new members. I think it's reasonable to try to keep the forum accessible and troll-free.

The non-directive and often-irreverent culture here is something we all value - it also makes us uniquely vulnerable to being over-tolerant to trolls like XIII who simply want egotistic attention rather than interaction and being a member of a community. It's not acceptable that we tolerate one persona to the extent they have power to take over the forum and force its closure and it's perfectly reasonable to try to avoid allowing that to happen. Ours mods and admins are doing a great job to deal with this.

Good points, Snowqueen.

I probably went too far to suggest it's easy to ignore everyone. In the case of XIII, people were certainly aware of him to some extent. And to take that to the extreme, if someone were to post loads of annoying spam threads, then that's certainly something where "just ignore it" doesn't work.

What I do think is possible though is simply choosing not to engage those who are obviously being vengeful and nasty -- and above all, disrespectful. Of course, it can be hard for us INTPs, who tend to be tolerant and fascinated with interesting characters, to identify who is a negative force -- as opposed to just a subversive oddity. I know it took me a while, but like Walfin said, getting fooled online is easy.

I also think that helping newer members know who not to take seriously is a good idea. Playing with trolls is one thing, but letting them upset you is just, as politicians often say, "letting the terrorists win."

 

[Claverhouse]

Whilst warning new members seems kindly there are a number of difficulties in implementing such a scheme. Placing a notice up of agreed odd posters might give offence to persons, or personas, publicly stigmatized...

Another method might to be to assign each established member up to 10 new users as acolytes to mentor and inform. Each graduating upon 500 posts to become mentors themselves and freeing up a slot in their leader's ranks. Whether this was done through a grand unified system using a database or through a revolutionary cell system whereby no-one outside each cell knows whom else is being monitored by whom, it would quickly become tiresome. Particularly if a troll was assigned to tutor new members.


Actually, I think most members are only pretending they were deceived by Damaged_Goods. The internal evidence was so ludicrous that intuition was not needed.

His mistake was over-elaboration --- had he stated she was 18 it would have had, a little, plausibility --- but... a 14 yr-old girl who wrote perfect English and attended her country's capital university ? Who counselled posters upon life's problems ? Who had broken through The Great Firewall in order to post upon a very select board devoted to one of the less common varieties from the MBTI and not to pour furious outrage to Hello Kitty Hell ?

Most unlikely of all, a 12 yr-old Chinese girl who had read the Libertarian Manifesto in English ? --- God Know's which one since there are more sects of libertarians upon the internet than fleas on a dog --- of any nationality: young girls have other, more interesting to them, things to do with their lives...



I quite like having the occasional troll around myself. They act as necessary acid to the tendency of every board to increasing sameness. Doesn't mean I wouldn't ban them; just that Mars Needs Trolls...



Claverhouse

:smiley_emoticons_mr
​

 

[echoplex]

^ I personally wouldn't agree to labeling members "trolls" to inform new members. But if, say for instance, someone has been known to offend members with nasty remarks in serious threads, it may help to say "oh, don't worry about him, that's just his way of [whatever]." Some people are sensitive and may not realize that some characters' musings are best taken with a grain of salt.

And yes, trolls are okay as 'class clowns'. But then again, if that's all they were, I doubt they'd be called trolls.

 

[walfin]

His mistake was over-elaboration --- had he stated she was 18 it would have had, a little, plausibility --- but... a 14 yr-old girl who wrote perfect English and attended her country's capital university ? Who counselled posters upon life's problems ? Who had broken through The Great Firewall in order to post upon a very select board devoted to one of the less common varieties from the MBTI and not to pour furious outrage to Hello Kitty Hell ?

I think this episode shouldn't result in distrust and instant disbelief.

What separates us from the SJs is our ability to accept the amazing, the possible but improbable, and the new. An SJ would probably look at the 14-year-old in university thing and say bollocks. But unlikely as it may be, it's possible, and if Damaged.Goods were real she'd be quite an asset to the forum (how often do you find child prodigies, after all?). The English was far from perfect, and the use of some direct translations was what fooled me.

Most unlikely of all, a 12 yr-old Chinese girl who had read the Libertarian Manifesto in English?

I'm sure some of the female INTPs here had read political manifestos when they were that age. Not in first language sounds improbable but not impossible.

Playing with trolls is one thing, but letting them upset you is just, as politicians often say, "letting the terrorists win."

That's exactly the point.

Give the benefit of the doubt, but always remember you're giving the benefit of the doubt.

We get upset because it makes us feel stupid for not spotting the troll (I wouldn't say we feel hurt by the loss of trust or whatever, that is probably more true for the NFs). Don't feel stupid. You can't spot everything.

 

[snowqueen]

I'm sure some of the female INTPs here had read political manifestos when they were that age. Not in first language sounds improbable but not impossible.

[puts hand up] yes after an incident where I became aware of class difference, I went straight into the library and took out Das Kapital. I was 14.

Actually there are lots of extraordinary things in my life which if I wrote them would sound improbable.

But I probably wouldn't present those things here as my opening gambit. I'm so used to my improbabilities being misunderstood, misinterpreted or disbelieved that I tend to keep them to myself till I know people better.

 

[Claverhouse]

I first became aware of class differences much earlier, when I was about 4 or 5. I was riding my Shetland in the Great Park when I saw some ordinary persons, presumably of the middle classes, congregated waiting for cast-offs at the iron gates, the ones with Griffin sculptures, not the ones with the gigantic pineapples.

I turned to my nurse, shocked, and asked, "Maltravers, what on earth are those people ?"



As for Marx, I always agreed with the most formidably intelligent, if utterly useless, British prime minister of the twentieth century, Harold Wilson --- of a group that is nearly all grossly intelligent and grossly inept --- who famously claimed never to have got past the big footnote on the second page.


Claverhouse

 

[snowqueen]

I first became aware of class differences much earlier, when I was about 4 or 5. I was riding my Shetland in the Great Park when I saw some ordinary persons, presumably of the middle classes, congregated waiting for cast-offs at the iron gates, the ones with Griffin sculptures, not the ones with the gigantic pineapples.

I turned to my nurse, shocked, and asked, "Maltravers, what on earth are those people ?"



As for Marx, I always agreed with the most formidably intelligent, if utterly useless, British prime minister of the twentieth century, Harold Wilson --- of a group that is nearly all grossly intelligent and grossly inept --- who famously claimed never to have got past the big footnote on the second page.


Claverhouse

Thanks for that - I laughed out loud - that made my day.

I did read the whole book but never became a Marxist btw.

 

[The Fury]

I first became aware of class differences much earlier, when I was about 4 or 5. I was riding my Shetland in the Great Park when I saw some ordinary persons, presumably of the middle classes, congregated waiting for cast-offs at the iron gates, the ones with Griffin sculptures, not the ones with the gigantic pineapples.

I turned to my nurse, shocked, and asked, "Maltravers, what on earth are those people ?"




Claverhouse

Me pa told told me about that day, 'e did. He said that 'e was given a right good beatin' by the groundskeeper. He was right grateful for that, Lord Ashby down the road would ave brought out the Boss single trigger and finished me pa there and then.

Course, that might've been better than dyin' in the freezin cold tryin' to sell ribbons.