General Discussion

FarCenter

(19,429 posts) Tue Apr 29, 2014, 12:14 PM Apr 2014

Terrific comment regarding internet cranks

The following is a comment by a reader on another internet site, quoted here verbatim except for names.

Alice, you are wasting your breath on Bob. One doesn’t get to be an internet crank from following arguments and looking dispassionately at the evidence. One gets there by adopting a bizarre view and then trying to force all evidence into that view. Nothing must be allowed to show that the view is just nonsense.

It’s natural selection at work.

We have to imagine herds of internet cranks drifting across the wireless plains. When one comes upon a watering hole — a forum — he will try to colonise it, by urinating on the nearest stationary object. Then there is a conversion process — everyone must repeat his catechism, exactly as he dictates. Weak and unfit internet cranks will crumble when there is sufficient evidence put against their view. They become extinct — hollow shells mumbling their view to general derision. They are like alkies begging a drink from the nearest bar. The successful internet crank has seen what has happened to these lesser creatures and knows that he must not show even a moment’s rationality. Flash some credentials — but not slowly so that anyone can see what they are, and then repeat often that you have them; insult the majority who disagree with you — why, they are lesser simply by being more numerous. They lack the heroic isolation that true idiocy rewards. And — and this is most important — always go on at far greater length than your opponents. Remember: no one ever got to be a successful internet crank by being succinct. Only if he follows these rules can the internet crank hope to pass on his memes to some poor unfortunate simpleton who believes that ‘hey, the guy must be on to something’.