Origins Of Trolls on Happier Abroad

[zboy1]

They did bring some interesting topics to the forum, but...even some HA members agreed that they were a bit trollish in their behavior and with their posts. I would not have banned them if I did not receive support for doing so...And, again let me repeat!: it wasn't me that wanted them banned: it was various HA members (both past and present) that wanted them gone....

As for the poll, as I said before, many posters did not vote on it; I'm not sure why, but I did receive quite a bit of pm messages telling me to ban quite a few of them, and thanking me afterwards. I also appreciate Kai's vocal support of me on various threads as well...

Hey...the members who supported the bannings, please speak-up! At least man-up and say you were involved in this; I'm taking-it on the chin like a man, and I'm not afraid to face my critics, unlike some of you guys hiding behind the curtains, anonymously, because you're afraid of being 'called-out' by some people. Face the music...

[chibolo]

Ok, I wasn't going to post here anymore, but I just wanted to say that I support Zboy 100% for banning racist, disrespectful trolls like ThePrimeBait. And yes, I asked for him to be banned.

[Winston]

Hey SilverEnergy I found another one. I remember having a small argument with a guy that sounds 100% like Admiral of Blacks before on another website.

http://disqus.com/FuriousGeorgeRockwell/

So BOOM! There you go! He trolls other websites about Black men dating other race women just to shit on them. This f***er trolls EVERYWHERE! ROK, Chinasmack, etc. If you dig through his comments, you can see word for word the same shit he posted here in some of them.

Once Again. Winston, Bond, Rock, make shit much harder than it needs to be. Banning trolls just takes a little bit of effort. They choose to believe everyone that posts here and they wonder why the site is a joke.

That guy needs to stay banned. Will ol' Winnie unban him? Of course he will, along with all the other trolls.

No I won't. You assume too much. I don't unban people that are banned, unless there is a really good reason. Otherwise, you will just have to trust Zboy's judgment. Everything happens for a reason. He seems to be pretty shrewd too.

Whether you agree with Zboy's decisions or not, at least he seems pretty rational and sensible. He definitely is not insane or psycho. So I would say that most likely, his decisions are well thought out and have a valid basis.

[kai1275]

Hey SilverEnergy I found another one. I remember having a small argument with a guy that sounds 100% like Admiral of Blacks before on another website.

http://disqus.com/FuriousGeorgeRockwell/

So BOOM! There you go! He trolls other websites about Black men dating other race women just to shit on them. This f***er trolls EVERYWHERE! ROK, Chinasmack, etc. If you dig through his comments, you can see word for word the same shit he posted here in some of them.

Once Again. Winston, Bond, Rock, make shit much harder than it needs to be. Banning trolls just takes a little bit of effort. They choose to believe everyone that posts here and they wonder why the site is a joke.

That guy needs to stay banned. Will ol' Winnie unban him? Of course he will, along with all the other trolls.

No I won't. You assume too much. I don't unban people that are banned, unless there is a really good reason. Otherwise, you will just have to trust Zboy's judgment. Everything happens for a reason. He seems to be pretty shrewd too.

Whether you agree with Zboy's decisions or not, at least he seems pretty rational and sensible. He definitely is not insane or psycho. So I would say that most likely, his decisions are well thought out and have a valid basis.

I will take you at your word then Winston. Good on you for having Zboy's back on this. Especially on that AdmiralofBlacks/Furious George troll.

[Devil Dog]

They did bring some interesting topics to the forum, but...even some HA members agreed that they were a bit trollish in their behavior and with their posts. I would not have banned them if I did not receive support for doing so...And, again let me repeat!: it wasn't me that wanted them banned: it was various HA members (both past and present) that wanted them gone....

As for the poll, as I said before, many posters did not vote on it; I'm not sure why, but I did receive quite a bit of pm messages telling me to ban quite a few of them, and thanking me afterwards. I also appreciate Kai's vocal support of me on various threads as well...

Hey...the members who supported the bannings, please speak-up! At least man-up and say you were involved in this; I'm taking-it on the chin like a man, and I'm not afraid to face my critics, unlike some of you guys hiding behind the curtains, anonymously, because you're afraid of being 'called-out' by some people. Face the music...

I didn't vote and I didn't request that anyone be banned, not because I didn't think some people needed to go but because it is not something which should be voted on. That is something which should be done by Winston and his moderators. This is Winston's house and it is his responsibility.

That said, people on this board are a little bit confused about "freedom of speech". There is no place in the world (in real life, not online) that these misfits can go and yell their racist insults and call women sluts and whores. Is there freedom of speech in the US? Go to a McDonalds restaurant and start pontificating about the intellectual inferiority of blacks or give a little speech about how all American women are whores and sluts. I don't mean yell something out and then walk quickly away. Open up a discussion. Please let us know how it works out.

[gsjackson]

I didn't vote and I didn't request that anyone be banned, not because I didn't think some people needed to go but because it is not something which should be voted on. That is something which should be done by Winston and his moderators. This is Winston's house and it is his responsibility.

That said, people on this board are a little bit confused about "freedom of speech". There is no place in the world (in real life, not online) that these misfits can go and yell their racist insults and call women sluts and whores. Is there freedom of speech in the US? Go to a McDonalds restaurant and start pontificating about the intellectual inferiority of blacks or give a little speech about how all American women are whores and sluts. I don't mean yell something out and then walk quickly away. Open up a discussion. Please let us know how it works out.

To be precise, "freedom of speech" is usually used to refer to (A) a right held by American citizens against government and protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, restricting significantly government's ability to curtail expression. It does not apply to private companies, such as McDonald's, or to private individuals. Or (B) a set of arguable-at-best theories developed in the 19th century in Britain and the US, holding that truth is best determined through the clash of competing ideas, and will inevitably emerge if a robust "marketplace of ideas" is left unregulated. This website ostensibly is devoted to the latter proposition, though it seems to depend on Winston's mood of the moment.

It pretty much goes without saying that there are almost no environments in the real world that are conducive to free speech, especially in the US, where Tocqueville noted 186 years ago that there is less free speech than any other country because majority opinion is such an effective censor. Indeed, in most places it is actively suppressed. Yes, go into a McDonald's and launch a racist diatribe, and see what happens. The same thing will happen if you make a rational criticism of the latest US military intervention, or speak in support of Vladimir Putin. The government cannot prevent you from burning an American flag, as such expression is deemed to be purely political speech protected by the First Amendment. But try it in public, and a dozen citizens good and true will descend on you, and probably beat the crap out of you.

Most people fear freedom, free thought and free expression, and they will do whatever is necessary to make it go away, whether that be simply ignoring it, attempting to marginalize the thinker, or pummeling him. That is why whatever little corner of the world makes a heroic effort to stake out a comfort zone for it should be applauded and encouraged. Since we have the internet, why not let a thousand flowers bloom? You want regulation to a faretheewell and a group of posters marching in lockstep, go to Roosh's forum; free speech come here. I'm not saying it works, or that the 19th century theorists were right. But one thing I will say is that the self-congratulation characteristic of virtually every internet forum I've been on is a little less in evidence here.

[C.J.]

I actually haven't seen a lot of troll posts, except odbo and some other guy.

Some posters do deserve their ban... odbo for example, up and posted obscene pornography(pictures/videos) all over the forum. It wasn't even GOOD porn!

If I was a staff member, he wouldn't have been banned otherwise but those things are NOT permitted on the forum, even I know that and I haven't looked at the forum rules. I don't know what came over odbo though.

So try not to bash the staff TOO much. Some of their decisions are of sound judgement.

[Rock]

Hey SilverEnergy I found another one. I remember having a small argument with a guy that sounds 100% like Admiral of Blacks before on another website.

http://disqus.com/FuriousGeorgeRockwell/

So BOOM! There you go! He trolls other websites about Black men dating other race women just to shit on them. This f***er trolls EVERYWHERE! ROK, Chinasmack, etc. If you dig through his comments, you can see word for word the same shit he posted here in some of them.

Once Again. Winston, Bond, Rock, make shit much harder than it needs to be. Banning trolls just takes a little bit of effort. They choose to believe everyone that posts here and they wonder why the site is a joke.

That guy needs to stay banned. Will ol' Winnie unban him? Of course he will, along with all the other trolls.

No I won't. You assume too much. I don't unban people that are banned, unless there is a really good reason. Otherwise, you will just have to trust Zboy's judgment. Everything happens for a reason. He seems to be pretty shrewd too.

Whether you agree with Zboy's decisions or not, at least he seems pretty rational and sensible. He definitely is not insane or psycho. So I would say that most likely, his decisions are well thought out and have a valid basis.

Pretty shrewd? Disingenuous weasel is the accurate description of him..at least in the context of these recent bannings. He's been downright hypocritical.

And the guy bans people who sometimes contribute ideas, responses, or images which are thought provoking, creative, and/or outside the box. But what intelligent content has zboy1 himself provided? He's been in China all this time but I've seen nothing really original or different out of him. The pathbreaking China material we have here all came from other sources I believe. Bulk of zboy1's posts seem to be about how bad NE Asian guys have, how unfair things are for them, how bad white guys behave both at home and abroad, and other racially biased opinions.

OTOH, the ThePrimeBait seems to have deep and specialized knowledge about middle eastern people that he's willing to share here. He also has interesting ideas about female beauty which he backs up with images. Discussion between him and Ladislav about the Middle East, it's cultures and races would generate a lot of fresh and interesting brand new material.

Our forum is mature Winston. So much has been said, and rehashed here, over and over. Same-ole same ole. Man it gets tedious. New content relevant to HA themes or at least in some way entertaining is precious here at this stage. Some of those most capable and willing to generate it also seem to ruffle certain feathers or offend guys like zboy1 who will say, "No it's not me, I'm just doing what others want, just look at the poll results (oops!)...well, I've gotten tons of PMs from the silent majority". Give me a break! Is that what you consider shrewd?

As for the racism. Yes, blacks suck bigtime. But whites suck just as bad. And so do Asians and everyone else. The human race is highly flawed. But people keep whining and complaining here, about racist posters and comments, about American and Anglo women, about Winston, etc. etc. Then some of this gets selectively used as justification for bans. Hmm.

Zboy1 does NOT seem to be a good judge of who's who. He just caters to the squeakiest elements, the whiners who cry to him by PM the most. Or else...he has his own agenda so he's grossly exaggerating this business about all the complaints and PMs to justify carrying out his personal bias. Either way, he's being destructive.

If we are moving to a model where certain non-spammers get banned, especially without warning, please at least, don't do it Youtube style and don't do it Roosh style either. "Everything happens for a reason?" Well don't you think we are entitled to know those reasons (what you seem willing to blindly trust as zboy1's 'valid basis')? So offer crystal clear transparency. Don't let subjective mods contaminate the system with their own bias.

1. Spell out the posting rules and guideline in as much detail as possible (nothing too broad brushed, general, ambiguous, or subject to interpretation), preferably something the HA community can largely agree on.

2. When a violation occurs, mod gives a public warning, cites the specific offending content, and which rules and/or guidelines it broke. (Winston, at least when you were the mod, you would usually give people ample warning before banning them).

3. If within a certain timeframe (say 3 months), same poster breaks the same guide line again, ban him temporarily (Again, Winston, you would do this).

4. When a temporary ban expires, affected poster is on probation for a period (say 3 months). If he repeats during that time, he's out.

Something like the above would be a lot more reasonable on a site which touts itself as a haven for non-PC no holds barred free speech!

Comments, questions, thoughts, anecdotes, ideas on the above anyone?

[zboy1]

Rock? How long are you going to complain about me? Let's just move on...

It's just a waste of time complaining...

This goes for everyone else; let's get to focusing on the forum again.

[Rock]

Rock? How long are you going to complain about me? Let's just move on...

It's just a waste of time complaining...

This goes for everyone else; let's get to focusing on the forum again.

I'm suggesting a solution here. Unfortunately, you've been part of the problem I wanna solve. So I am focusing on the forum here - exactly what you are advising.

[gsjackson]

Rock? How long are you going to complain about me? Let's just move on...

It's just a waste of time complaining...

This goes for everyone else; let's get to focusing on the forum again.

The inadequacy of this as a response to what Rock wrote is just staggering. Focus on the forum? The forum is an entirely different place now that you have exercised your fiat, contradicting yourself all along the way, and providing no justification whatsoever for your actions. It's like you're having some sort of cerebral event.

[Devil Dog]

I didn't vote and I didn't request that anyone be banned, not because I didn't think some people needed to go but because it is not something which should be voted on. That is something which should be done by Winston and his moderators. This is Winston's house and it is his responsibility.

That said, people on this board are a little bit confused about "freedom of speech". There is no place in the world (in real life, not online) that these misfits can go and yell their racist insults and call women sluts and whores. Is there freedom of speech in the US? Go to a McDonalds restaurant and start pontificating about the intellectual inferiority of blacks or give a little speech about how all American women are whores and sluts. I don't mean yell something out and then walk quickly away. Open up a discussion. Please let us know how it works out.

...Since we have the internet, why not let a thousand flowers bloom? You want regulation to a faretheewell and a group of posters marching in lockstep, go to Roosh's forum; free speech come here...

Cornhole pronounces that any woman working for a corporation is a whore whose only purpose is to be banged by the men there.

Another poster lectures endlessly on the inferiority of "niggers".

You see a thousand flowers where I see piles of dog shit. The Roosh forum stays on topic and members are not allowed to abuse other members. Interaction between members is similar to interactions that people have in real life. Over time it has become a huge storehouse of information, organized and easily searched. Compare that to HA. A small fraction of HA is on topic, while the rest of it is dominated by the increasingly extreme and increasingly loud children who have nothing to offer except strong dogma, repeated endlessly.

HA needs trip reports and observation / opinion posts from people who have traveled. Those types of posts are becoming less and less common. I recall three posters explicitly stating that they will not post trip reports on HA because they don't want to be subjected to the abuse that often follows. But you have freedom of speech, and that's the important thing.

Meanwhile, Winston is off in a corner, starting a new post of "Look at how sweet and innocent this airbrushed Ukrainian woman appears to be" or "Here is proof that Paul McCartney was replaced by a double". He has a potentially valuable property here but he allows the jerkoffs to come in here a shit all over the place.

Because of this soft headed misuse of the concept of "freedom of speech", interactions on HA are nothing like real life. AiB left because he was not able to adjust to being openly insulted by the little shit flinging monkeys on HA. He no longer contributes. But adhdDavid is still here, offering the benefits of all of his life experience. Gotta love that freedom of speech and everything that it has done for HA, right?

[Rock]

I didn't vote and I didn't request that anyone be banned, not because I didn't think some people needed to go but because it is not something which should be voted on. That is something which should be done by Winston and his moderators. This is Winston's house and it is his responsibility.

That said, people on this board are a little bit confused about "freedom of speech". There is no place in the world (in real life, not online) that these misfits can go and yell their racist insults and call women sluts and whores. Is there freedom of speech in the US? Go to a McDonalds restaurant and start pontificating about the intellectual inferiority of blacks or give a little speech about how all American women are whores and sluts. I don't mean yell something out and then walk quickly away. Open up a discussion. Please let us know how it works out.

...Since we have the internet, why not let a thousand flowers bloom? You want regulation to a faretheewell and a group of posters marching in lockstep, go to Roosh's forum; free speech come here...

Cornhole pronounces that any woman working for a corporation is a whore whose only purpose is to be banged by the men there.

Another poster lectures endlessly on the inferiority of "niggers".

You see a thousand flowers where I see piles of dog shit. The Roosh forum stays on topic and members are not allowed to abuse other members. Interaction between members is similar to interactions that people have in real life. Over time it has become a huge storehouse of information, organized and easily searched. Compare that to HA. A small fraction of HA is on topic, while the rest of it is dominated by the increasingly extreme and increasingly loud children who have nothing to offer except strong dogma, repeated endlessly.

HA needs trip reports and observation / opinion posts from people who have traveled. Those types of posts are becoming less and less common. I recall three posters explicitly stating that they will not post trip reports on HA because they don't want to be subjected to the abuse that often follows. But you have freedom of speech, and that's the important thing.

Meanwhile, Winston is off in a corner, starting a new post of "Look at how sweet and innocent this airbrushed Ukrainian woman appears to be" or "Here is proof that Paul McCartney was replaced by a double". He has a potentially valuable property here but he allows the jerkoffs to come in here a shit all over the place.

Because of this soft headed misuse of the concept of "freedom of speech", interactions on HA are nothing like real life. AiB left because he was not able to adjust to being openly insulted by the little shit flinging monkeys on HA. He no longer contributes. But adhdDavid is still here, offering the benefits of all of his life experience. Gotta love that freedom of speech and everything that it has done for HA, right?

Look, we can't be all things to all people. Should HA just copy the Roosh model? Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to move over rather than try to recreate all that here? Either we are a free speech or not. Yes, there can lines and limits drawn but they should be explicitly stated and formalized. Otherwise the free speech and non-PC principal here will become as valid as the concept of freedom and constitutional protection of individual rights has become in USA. Cus it will be to the subjective evaluation of whoever is in charge to make those calls.

As for AiB, we didn't really loose him you know. We were made aware of him on this forum we now all know where we can find him. His material and vids are readily available to us all. His posts here tended to be stuff form his blogs and vids sprinkled in with intermittent jabs at his favorite punching bag Xiongmao.

ABCDavid is at least very intelligent and writes well. He can go deep into topics. So even though he doesn't travel, he's able to make decent contributions.

[gsjackson]

Cornhole pronounces that any woman working for a corporation is a whore whose only purpose is to be banged by the men there.

Another poster lectures endlessly on the inferiority of "niggers".

You see a thousand flowers where I see piles of dog shit. The Roosh forum stays on topic and members are not allowed to abuse other members. Interaction between members is similar to interactions that people have in real life. Over time it has become a huge storehouse of information, organized and easily searched. Compare that to HA. A small fraction of HA is on topic, while the rest of it is dominated by the increasingly extreme and increasingly loud children who have nothing to offer except strong dogma, repeated endlessly.

HA needs trip reports and observation / opinion posts from people who have traveled. Those types of posts are becoming less and less common. I recall three posters explicitly stating that they will not post trip reports on HA because they don't want to be subjected to the abuse that often follows. But you have freedom of speech, and that's the important thing.

Meanwhile, Winston is off in a corner, starting a new post of "Look at how sweet and innocent this airbrushed Ukrainian woman appears to be" or "Here is proof that Paul McCartney was replaced by a double". He has a potentially valuable property here but he allows the jerkoffs to come in here a shit all over the place.

Because of this soft headed misuse of the concept of "freedom of speech", interactions on HA are nothing like real life. AiB left because he was not able to adjust to being openly insulted by the little shit flinging monkeys on HA. He no longer contributes. But adhdDavid is still here, offering the benefits of all of his life experience. Gotta love that freedom of speech and everything that it has done for HA, right?

One thing you need to keep in mind is that your basic premise -- that all individuals are solely responsible for their fates, they and they alone; the culture has nothing to do with it -- is directly at cross purposes with the foundational premise of this site: that if you're discontent in the US or the West generally, it might help to go to a different culture.

It's great that you want to give the young guys here some tough love, bust their chops to get them to have some gumption and take some responsibility for their lives. I wish they could all have the experience I did of Marine recruit training at Parris Island and Camp Lejeune. They will learn very quickly that if they don't take some responsibility for their lives and get some direction, there are profoundly stupid and malicious people out there who will be glad to provide it for them. But anyone with some significant experience of life and a willingness to look honestly has to question your premise of individualism over all, and note its uniqueness to American culture.

We all get the message, constantly. It's ingrained in American life -- we are the sole authors of our lives; if we have a problem it's always a personal problem, not a cultural one. Hell, the meme even found its way across the Atlantic to supposed cultural revolutionaries of the '60s: "You tell me it's the institution; well, you know, you'd better free your mind instead." But this is a uniquely American way of looking at things, one that comes with a set of problems that include the de-politicization of the population. We don't vote, because we don't see any point in it. If every problem is ultimately a personal problem, what's the point in looking for a political solution? Let the crooked oligarchy do whatever they want in the political realm.

So, with that as backdrop: A big part of what goes on at HA is cultural criticism. And in that light, the contributions here of Cornfed (and ABCDavid, in a neophyte, searching sort of way) can be understood and appreciated by some. Granted, Cornfed was way out of line talking about your daughter. He gets that way regularly, obviously. But he is an insightful, and I would even say brilliant cultural critic. You can snidely dismiss his critiques of various cultural institutions, but that is not in any sense a refutation of them. If you want to do a point-by-point refutation of his carefully laid out critiques (laid out over the course of many posts), that would be great. But it's much easier to ban him and make all the inconvenient ideas that don't square with your personal views go away.

[TheAustralianMan]

Why ban them?

Just counter-troll them

If that was a joke it was not even remotely funny. I can see why HA might lose its fight against the non-obvious trolls....

Sorry mate, I do frequent another (completely unrelated) forum where trolling and banter is the norm rather than the exception.

Of course I don't intend to do any of that here. I am here for serious (and friendly) discussion with like-minded people.

My two-cents? This site is part of the escapism we all crave. Having just joined recently, it would be nice to keep it that way. Get rid of the trolls.