It's the fact we still debate them. It means they must be on to something, for all this attention by shills.
Yes.........and this is why we need and independent investigation to find out why.
surely the psychology driving the inability to resist troll feeding is not all that complicated?
What is astonishing is the number of people who persist in responding to trolling as if the person doing the trolling actually believes the nonsense he posts? Our late departed colleague MirageMemories is currently offering his wares on another forum which is more truther friendly than here - and getting a lot less attention that he invariably received here.
Clearly trolling succeeds in its goals - getting the MOST ego stroking responses for the LEAST expenditure of effort PLUS the added satisfaction of seeing people respond seriously - at the expenditure of some energy - when he spends little or no energy posting the nonsense.
In fact it is inversely correlated - the less effort the troll exerts - the sillier the post the MORE attention it attracts.
I'll have to dig up those threads from a couple of years back where I proposed and members were contributing to a study of "Trolling Efficiency"
IIRC we had the "Raw Trolling Index" - number of debunkers "biting" and responding to each trolling post. I recall a peak achievement - a short burst over 15 and one specific example of a trolling "raw score" of 27:1. 27 serious responses to one simple bit of trolling is admirably high efficiency IMO. (I could be wrong but I think that was ergo at his peak.)
And the last I remember of the threads we were tuning the factors for a weighted TPI (trolling performance index). A sort of "degree of less difficulty" score. Or "getting the mostest bang for the least bucks of trolling effort".
Our current most active contributor has it easy. He is copping all the attention because most of the long term stalwarts have chosen death by mod as the way out with .....
....err..
"Dignity".
(Saw Clayton Moore on Orphia's home forum yesterday. Same nonsense - different forum.)