Troll Watch for March 31, 2022

 Today in the Troll Watch the first thing to think about are two of the more popular troll tactics. 

When you weigh in on a post with an opinion or facts that counter the troll's designated narrative their two most favored tactics to distract you are these:


1. On off topic response typically coupled with confrontational questions whose intent is to get you arguing about anything other than the topic on hand. 

Like if there's a topic about Washington apples and you make an observation about how tasty those apples are a troll is likely to respond with something along the lines of:

Oh yeah? Well what about what happened to the Branch Covidians? They had an orange tree and you pro-apple NAZIS murdered all of their children! Do you hate people who grow oranges? You want to murder their children, don't you? 

And if you allow yourself to get sucked in you'll now be defending yourself from irrational accusations, you'll be discussing oranges in a topic about apples, and if the troll is successful you'll give up and go away. 

The proper response is to inform the troll of the topic and invite them to stay on topic.  Every time. Don't let these fuckers win their stupid game. 


2. The irrational insults. As we see above the trolls like to use unprovoked insults to get you off topic. Sometimes the insult is little more than drive-by provocation, sometimes it's an insult designed just for you especially if the troll reads your home page and finds a soft spot they can poke at. 

The proper response is to ignore the insult. Just move on. You can also elect to use the counter-troll tactic of pretending the troll said something you wish they had said and then just respond to that. So long as it's on topic then why not troll the troll back to discussing the topic? 


The word "Neocon" is trending again as the Russians are getting their asses kicked in Ukraine.

It had dropped in popularity after Russia started the new war in Ukraine but it's been back with a vengeance. 

In total the word neocon has been used about 43,800 times on Free Republic since 1998. 

In the past month it's been used 5,208 times. In December and January it was used over 7,214 times. 

That usage is way outside of the normal trend. Draw your own conclusions here. 


That is all. 


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