1.3.7 What should I do when someone posts a flamebait?
Description
This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
1.3.7 What should I do when someone posts a flamebait?
If you come across a posting that is an outrageous attack on truth,
decency and everything civil, cross-posted typically to a very large
number of news-groups, congratulate yourself for having spotted a
"flamebait". If you feel enraged by the message, leave your terminal
for a little while, take a walk around the house, drink a cup of tea,
and come back relaxed and calm. It is strongly advisable that you then
proceed to press 'n' or whichever key your newsreader uses for
skipping to the next article, and ignore the post altogether, perhaps
completing the procedure with a 'k' for kill-file and imagining, with
a relieved smile on your face, an audible plonk as the cretin drops
into your virtual garbage bin.
Leaving nazi trash unchallenged in normal communication or media isn't
a good idea, I agree, but this isn't normal communication nor is this
a normal media; this is the Usenet, and here the only effecient way to
deal with it is to ignore it. Trust me. Although, in some cases, if
the villain does or says something really bad, it can be better to
complain to his postmaster; for more on this, see section 1.5 below.
As a general rule, these postings are made by individuals who want to
piss you off so that as many people as possible will react, causing as
annoying a thread as possible to be generated, and the general level
of confusion to jump as high as possible. Don't think they want to
discuss whatever it was that they posted, chaos is the only goal of
these kooks. If you follow-up to their articles and flame them, you've
in effect swallowed the bait and made their day. (There exists also a
less malicious variant of this sport, called "trolling", which just
adds spice to a discussion by intentional posting of false statements
in order to elicit attention by unneccessary corrections; with it,
too, you should try to remain as calm and collected as possible lest
you reveal your newbieness. For more information about trolls and
trolling see for instance:
<http://otto.cmr.fsu.edu/~kings/humor/troll.shtml> or
<http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/faqs/legends/legends3.html> in the
Usenet legends.)
And even if the person isn't a sophomoric joker but a genuine
hate-monger, don't think you can convince him to come to his senses.
You might or might not succeed in that were you to meet him face to
face, but in Usenet you won't; non-verbal signs of your anger don't
travel in the bitstream and your words, no matter how sincere, will
lose their power to convince. All you'll ever accomplish is lowering
the general signal-to-noise ratio, helping a flamewar to be born,
making Usenet in general an unplesant place to be, and perhaps
generating a few mocking chuckles at some terminal somewhere.
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