Overnight Open Thread – Friday Night Death Watch (genghis)

Pardon the delay…technical difficulties (something to do with our new HAL 9000 server)

(I’m still working on this post and waiting on some breaking news, but thought I’d go ahead and post it and just add the news if and when it breaks. Or doesn’t. Or you can yak about anything else you want.)

Update: The news I was waiting on was the decision whether or not the Boston Globe was going to be shut down tonight. The NYT’s deadline had been set for midnight Eastern Time, but they and the unions have decided to extend negotiations (no specified new deadline). So the flaming skull will just have to wait.

Update: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! *sigh* So it appears the union has rolled over and played dead, making concessions which will allow The Globe to continue operations, at least for now, while negotiators wrap up some final details. Guess I'd better go throw some water on that flaming skull I lit earlier.

Meanwhile, near the front entrance to the building where negotiations were taking place, a Mr. G. Reaper leaned on his scythe while smoking a cigarette. When asked what he thought of the turn of events, he shrugged and said "In the end, it matters not. They can try to put it off, but will eventually enter my cold embrace. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law invited me down to the Caymans where he's got a time-share. Might do these old bones a little good to soak up some sun. I'll monitor events from there."

For those hanging around in last night’s open thread, I promised a less cryptic explanation regarding the troll. It’s below the fold.

Regarding “Adriana Lima:” Early on he (and I’m now assuming it’s a “he”) was pretty much your garden variety “concern troll” and the overnight morons engaged and debated him as they typically do with any troll (And I haven’t read every single comment, but it sounds like he was bringing it on himself with some pretty bizarre statements. But he seemed intent on giving as good as he got, so no problem there…nothing near worthy of deletion or even a warning…remember, just because someone is irritating, that’s not a reason for action.). Then he suddenly started ratcheting things up and the “concern” mask sort of fell away as he became more and more belligerent. But there was one comment that made my antennae go up and get involved. That was his comment at #182. All of a sudden things perfectly matched a pattern I’d seen before by another troll (ramp up slowly then quickly accelerate into batshit crazy mode) including almost the exact same language.

That’s why I thought he might be the “uber-troll” I was talking about: Deb Frisch. But I wanted to confirm it was or wasn’t, so I had the trollhammer out of it’s drawer, waiting to see what the next comment would be. If it was her it would’ve been immediately apparent (she doesn’t have a reverse gear…it would’ve been a nearly vertical line of crazy after that). But our troll stepped back from the line and even got a little pouty. That’s not Frisch’s m.o. at all.

For those who don’t know, Frisch is former Univ. of Arizona Professor and utter psychopath. Back in ’06 she started posting comments at Protein Wisdom that quickly went from obnoxious, to bizarre to finally dangerous as she started cyberstalking Jeff Goldstein and his family, going so far as making physical threads against his wife and kid. She eventually got canned over her comments and was slapped with a restraining order (which she ignored) and the Goldstein family had to somewhat go into hiding. So basically she’s the cyber equivalent of the Glenn Close character in “Fatal Attraction.” You can read a little more about it at the Wikipedia entry for PW which is here.

She pops up now and again and on conservative blogs, and like above, starts out seemingly rational and accelerates to bad crazy once she’s found out. When she does that, she reverts back to this really weird way of spelling words (ex: instead of “fuck” we get “phuque.”) So that’s what I was watching for on the next comment. Incidentally, she’s actually paid us a visit here at the HQ. Just once as far as I know. I spotted her in someone else’s thread and Ace confirmed it was her so I spent a fair amount of time deleting her comments as soon as she put them up (and she can type pretty fast). Finally she gave up and I haven’t seen her any more around here. If she turns up here in the future anything she posts will be deleted with extreme prejudice. Also, I didn’t want to mention her by name because she constantly Googles her name, looking for any mention of herself. I don’t know if putting this below the fold will prevent that, so I guess well see. But now all of you know what to look for, so if you see that pattern, spelling, etc., let Ace or one of the co-bloggers know a.s.a.p. (and even me, assuming I’m not passed out.) Thanks.

One final note on trollish things: A couple of people thought I should delete “Adriana Lima’s” comments and I said I couldn’t and wouldn’t. They really just didn’t meet the criteria for doing so. There aren’t any hard and fast rules on this, but Ace’s general rule is that the best way to combat idiotic speech is with more speech, which I think everyone was handling quite well last night. And seemed to be having fun with. It’s always a balancing act with trolls…sometimes they actually drive up traffic and comments and others just try to shut down the thread. Anyway, pardon the looooong explanation but I hope that helps.

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to xgenghisx@gmail.com. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

posted by xgenghisx at 12:23 AM

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