Oh, Poe

That's it, I have officially lost all ability to tell nutjobs from liars. The internet has become so full of poorly done satire (AKA trolling) and genuine crazies that I cannot tell them apart any more. The trolls, as they call themselves, range from people attempting satire and failing, either due to a lack of physical expressions or just a lack of talent, to people who mean what they said but try to cover for it when the negative reactions pour in. Trolls often want to either mock the crazies or elicit emotional reactions out of normal people. The ones attempting satire are ok, they just need to be very clear that is what they are doing. The others, the assholes, are no better and often identical to the crazies.

It is like the rape jokers. They make rape threats and jokes then claim they were mocking or just getting reactions out. These people are still misogynists. They just don't have the guts to stand by their craziness.

Then their are the actual crazies. One downside of the internet is the ability to only hang out with people who are equally crazy, thus making you feel validated. Where before you had to at least fake reason in polite company, now you can discuss insanity with other insane assholes. Fundamentalist Christians and conspiracy theorists are the worst of these. And at this point, I can't tell these people apart from the two types of trolls. The things being said are so outrageous that the trolls try to be even more outrageous, which only reinforces the outrageous ideals of the real fundies. As far as they know they are being supported, thus giving more force for their argumentum ad populem.

The isolation and reinforcement and groupthink of the nutjobs is only getting worse, while the trolls struggle to keep up. The Onion looks more and more like reality, although they are at least explicitly satirical. Even that isn't always enough, going by the constant pick up of satirical articles by mainstream media and bloggers and Facebook. We have come to expect crazy so a satire can easily be passed off as real, even accidentally.

I give up. I will pretend they all mean it unless they explicitly said otherwise up front.

Logic Priest