There's too much to be done, too much to be resisted, and time is at a premium, especially for someone of my advanced age who wants to do the little I can by sharing commentary here that seems valuable to me and I hope will be valuable to many others.

And, when all is said and done, the distraction-discrediting trolling is often an act of hostility targeting someone who writes about matters — say, religion and cultlure — that someone else sees as absurd.

#NoKings #SocialMedia #trolling
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Another form of discrediting I experienced in my threads this weekend: attempts to draw me into going-nowhere arguments about whether the Nazis really were or were not massively repressive, such that any German resisting them was tempted or forced to hide her or his real sympathies and go along with the regime.

Trolling by distracting-discrediting is classic trolling designed to undermine solidarity, to siphon off hope.

I have no time for it, frankly.

#NoKings #SocialMedia #trolling
/5

This is a distinctly odd and ill-informed position to take when a nation has an international footprint such that whatever happens in that nation — say, a turn to fascism — will inevitably have serious effects everywhere in the world.

And where solidarity with those living in that nation making a turn to fascism would seem to be essential rather than bullying and trying to silence those who are organizing and resisting….

#NoKings #SocialMedia #trolling
/4

A subset of those seeking to bully others into labeling their postings with content warnings particularly targets postings featuring commentary on US news, with the implication that news from the US is and should be of no interest to people living anywhere else in the world.

How can what's happening in the US affect me over here in, say, the UK, or up here in, say, Canada? I don't want to hear about it, read about it, know about it.

#NoKings #SocialMedia #trolling
/3

In the Mastdon federation, there's always that particular kind of bullying that takes the form of issuing imperatives to this or that person to use content warnings on postings.

This is, quite simply, a form of bullying in which someone imagines that she or he should have the authority to leap into someone else's feed and issue a command for that other user to label postings with content warnings.

When any of us has the ability to scroll on at any time….

#NoKings #SocialMedia #trolling
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The first two threads I posted this morning contain commentary noting various ways in which those intent on discrediting the No Kings gatherings this weekend have been operating: accusing commentators of lying, trolling attempts to gain accurate estimates of crowd size, issuing taunts about the ineffectiveness of mass demonstrations, and so on.

My own threads here in recent days have been trolled by people using various tactics to try to bully and discredit.

#NoKings #SocialMedia #trolling
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