The Opinionated Bastard

As you may have noticed, I've been getting a little bored with Ernie the Troll.

I admit, when he first showed up, I enjoyed reading his half-baked rantings. It was like watching the monkeys at the zoo. And at first, his comments had at least the glimmers of reason.

But he needs new material. Lately its just the same-old same-old.

It's just, well, boring.

Lately he's been getting weirder.

In the last couple of months, Ernie has said:

• That I beat my wife
• That all US Soldiers are ignorant hillbillies
• That I'm a Fundamentalist Christian, part of the “American Taliban”
• That I'm a Satanist
• That I'm a neo-con
• That previously, it wasn't popular to dislike conservatives, but “now it is”
• That he's going to “vote Republican” to “help destroy the nation”
• That he is “bushido” and is going to “kick my ass”

Yeah, whatever. The problem with trolls is that its pointless to reason with them. Anyone who read's the masthead knows that I'm not a big fan of the right or the left, what I am a fan of is intelligent criticism. That's why I linked to Fester today. People who can intelligently disagree with me are much more interesting then people like Ernie. Most trolls are really just looking for attention so responding to them (as this post is doing, unfortunately) just encourages them.

Here's a Wikipedia article on trolls. It's pretty good. For me, the thing that makes Ernie a troll are the following:

• Inability to use the shift key indicates he's probably a teenager.
• Ernie Ervin is a fake name, no Ernie Ervin in Flagstaff that I could find.
• Never refutes points made in counter to his arguments, just jumps to a different topic.

I see a great future ahead for Ernie after he graduates from high school as a media pundit. That is not a compliment...