Troll Needs Food

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I think...no, I know, that this country`s institutions are (and have been for some time now) engaged in the most sustained and relentless dumbing down process ever seen. Excellence has been sacrificed on the blood stained altar of `INCLUSION`. The first time in the history of mankind that a society has willingly shifted into the reverse gear! Is this bait tasty?

― Troll, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Make this your homepage, Mr Troll, and investigate the hundreds of hours of intelligent arts coverage linked, none of which are any dumber or inclusive than they need to be. This is the media landscape we have now, thanks to the alliance of large state funding for unpopulist networks like BBC Radio 3 and the on-demand nature of internet archives.

Or make this your homepage and read any one of dozens of essays (the latest one on 'Classicism and Atrocity') written outside the academy and outside public funding, financed entirely by (and mostly about) commercial musical activities, and yet not in the least bit dumb (I hope) or dumbed down.

If you choose to give your attention to things you find dumb, well, you have no right to grumble, it seems to me. The art historian Winkelman (hero of my latest web essay), the son of a cobbler and a weaver, converted to Catholicism so that he could get access to the Pope's library and its unrivalled collection of books. Today's intellectual pagans (Winkelman wasn't exactly a Christian) don't have to take quite such drastic steps.

― Momus, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry, my HTML got dumbed down, the link to the essay should work now. And if you're interested in Winkelmann, there's something about him here.

― Momus, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(A better response, Momus, would have been that if the Troll would prefer not to be included in the UK's institutions that could probably be arranged. But my guess is that he/she is speaking in code as usual, and has someone in particular in mind who he/she contends should be ignored so everything can be how he wants it.)

― nabisco%%, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If things are being dumbed down, and noticeably so, when was the high point of British culture then eh?

― DG, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

just before the end of the first word of yr post, DG

― mark s, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, the joys of being a moderator.

― DG, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

grrr

― mark s, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ha ha pH34r m3 etc etc.

― DG, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ho ho ho ho, SNAP!

― nabisco%, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What's sad is that Troll probably missed that. :(

― nabisco%%, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The phrase "dumbing down" = does exactly what it says on the tin

― jamesmichaelward, Monday, 20 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Isn`t this fascinating. It`s like Groundhog Day! I make me assertion, and the waggon containing `da boys` speeds round to the thread, all with exactly the same stance on the issue! My central hypothesis is that `dumbing down` is being engineered for 3 reasons: 1. Because pushing the lowest up towards the highest is difficult. 2. Because the government needs `success` figures in things like GCSE results so the paper becomes the old eleven plus exam. 3. Left wing social engineers who want their constituency to get their fingers in as many of the `elite` pies as possible. This is ok, until your brain surgeon says "duh.....er.... I can`t do the operation, it wasn`t covered on me NVQ brain surgery course!" (sound of screeching wheels?)

― Troll, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

DG. Good question: for me it would be the Victorian era. (but then you probably woulda guessed that...right?!) And Nabisco - oooooh, you are SO threatened!! Whassup? Never met a Tory with a brain before? (dreads biting and cutting responses)

― Troll, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Why not drop this "ooh you are all so scared of me" routine, and actually talk about the things you claim to want to talk about? The Victorian Era was of course the highpoint of liberal social engineering in British history.

― mark s, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Troll -

Most people on the thread are pissing about and ignoring you - who exactly has the "same stance" and would you care to summarise it?

Also at some point you ought to realise that saying "I've heard that argument before" isn't actually much of a reply.

So - what institutions specifically? The House of Lords? Oxford University? Eton College? Bolton Sixth Form College?

― Billygoat, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My point is - why not invest in `clevering up` instead of `dumbing down`. I refer to things like TV shows aswell as qualifications etc. I think it makes sense to pull up the under-achiever rather than pull down the over-achiever. Surely not a controversial view?

― Troll, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If the Victorian era represents the high point of British 'excellence', surely the subsequent (mythical) 'dumbing down' of British institutions isn't exclusively, or mainly, the work of "left wing social engineers"? Why didn't Thatcherism, for example, effectively repudiate/reverse Murdoch's cultural 'dumbing down' of the fourth estate, and in particular that 'great' British institution, the Times?

― Andrew L, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But what if 'dumbed down' TV etc.* is what the ordinary average British want? Why champion their viewpoint at the ballot box but not at the remote control?

*Did anyone else watch How Not To Get On Big Brother last night and come away really despising the producers?

― Billygoat, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

TV is only as dumb or smart as the person watching it

― dave q, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Troll you keep getting on me for asking you questions, questions you'll have to answer to make much sense to those outside the UK for whom your vague codings ("the altar of inclusion") don't really point to much. As for your central question here, which is basically apolitical, I'm not sure how your requests to "clever up" connect with your assertions elsewhere that the west is dominated by a lentil- eating liberal elite: wouldn't a top-down "clevering up" basically involve those elites telling your "average English person" to ... well, eat some lentils? (To which, in your conception of the world, they should theoretically respond with righteous indignation and BNP protest votes?)

Or can we just put it down to the entirely apolitical complaint just about all educated people have -- that the culture and entertainment around them are aimed at a populous less educated than they are? This is a complaint that's rarely worth voicing beyond a grumble, unless you're okay with the idea of an elite cultural oligarchy whereby builders are left nothing to read on the toilet apart from the London Review of Books. The only way you'll clever people up is the blindingly obvious way: better education in better schools.

By the way I suspect you've misinterpreted my "Troll probably missed that" comment: I was referencing moderator typo-correction hijinks above, which you'd have had to look at the thread during a particular five-minute span to have caught.

― nabisco%%, Tuesday, 21 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

nine years pass...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2036935/Sean-Duffy-Internet-troll-taunted-teenager-deaths-jailed-18-WEEKS.html

― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 13 September 2011 20:32 (fourteen years ago)

"sending malicious communications" - i wondered what they'd actually done him for. dunno how i feel about this, guy obviously has issues but otoh don't think i'm comfortable with magistrates drawing the line in future

― Chapman Pincher Overdrive (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 13 September 2011 20:35 (fourteen years ago)

Duffy's lawyer Lance Whiteford said he could offer no mitigation but that Asperger's and alcohol abuse went some way to explaining why he committed the offences.

(something about ilx etc)

― Once Were Moderators (DG), Tuesday, 13 September 2011 20:43 (fourteen years ago)

proof of diagnosis or give him another 3 months imo

― Chapman Pincher Overdrive (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 13 September 2011 20:44 (fourteen years ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyophYBP_w4

― am0n, Tuesday, 13 September 2011 20:53 (fourteen years ago)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14898564

― Once Were Moderators (DG), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 13:23 (fourteen years ago)

Thinking about this, don't Littlejohn's "People's Prostitute" piece or Jan Moir's "Gately Died of Gay" meisterwerk leave themselves open to prosecution seeing as they're widely available on the internet?

― Chapman Pincher Overdrive (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 13:52 (fourteen years ago)

they'd probably enjoy the 'persecution'

― Once Were Moderators (DG), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 13:59 (fourteen years ago)

http://trialx.com/curetalk/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2011/04/gcelebrities/Sean_Duffy-1.jpg

WI Congressman ~~and famed internet troll~~ Sean Duffy

― Tal Berkowitz - Vaccine advocate (DJP), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 14:03 (fourteen years ago)

Dommy P better get himself a good lawyer

― The Eyeball Of Hull (Colonel Poo), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 14:23 (fourteen years ago)

holy lol

― Tal Berkowitz - Vaccine advocate (DJP), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 14:36 (fourteen years ago)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/14/troll-sean-duffy-internet/print

― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Wednesday, 14 September 2011 22:47 (fourteen years ago)

seven months pass...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2141430/Pictured-The-internet-troll-threatened-kill-Tory-MP-Louise-Menschs-children.html

― nakhchivan, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 00:19 (thirteen years ago)

kind of offended that the Mail are confusing the noble art of trolling with "being a stalky psycho"

― like Joe Pasquale and Gandhi (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 9 May 2012 07:39 (thirteen years ago)

Internet troll: Frank Zimmerman, 60, of Gloucester, leaves Gloucester Magistrates Court, after his sentencing was delayed

― buzza, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 07:42 (thirteen years ago)

Does an internet troll live under a network bridge?

― 'scuse me, while I Rim the Sky... (snoball), Wednesday, 9 May 2012 08:24 (thirteen years ago)

Is there a link to that story not from the Mail?

― emil.y, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 13:14 (thirteen years ago)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/08/louise-mensch-troll-face-jail

he's still an idiot no matter who's reporting on it...

― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Wednesday, 9 May 2012 13:20 (thirteen years ago)

Well, the Mail are still fascists no matter what story they're reporting. Not giving them clicks.

But yeah, wow. Had heard about a vague upset with an internet nutbag, but this guy sounds like a proper psycho.

― emil.y, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 13:24 (thirteen years ago)

sophie's choice seems to have overtaken catch 22 in the overused literary allusion stakes

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 13:26 (thirteen years ago)

in fairness he was working to a closer def'n of its original meaning than 95% of ppl who invoke it

― listicular fortitude (DJ Mencap), Wednesday, 9 May 2012 14:50 (thirteen years ago)

one month passes...

Addressing her as the "slut of Twitter", Zimmerman said: "We are Anonymous and we do not like rude cunts like you and your nouveau riche husband Peter Mensch. We are inside your computer, all your phones everywhere and inside your homes.

― too cool graham rix listening to neu (nakhchivan), Monday, 11 June 2012 22:52 (thirteen years ago)

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