Trollish nit-picking in the Comments seems only a minor irritant in the grand scheme of things on the Interwebz.
On more local issues, I have my own trolls who sometimes comment “assertively” only as a matter of attention-seeking. They are only more marginally interesting than the usual idiots who abuse Snopes as a cudgel for “facts” in arguments not requiring them.
For example, these bridge-dwellers are occasionally triggered by large paragraph quoted text blocks and think that “large paragraphs” violate fair-use, even as they don’t consult the original text which are often quite long, nor consider that inserted images, some not from the original source, make it look “bigger”, and then the ignorant pile on, and threadjacking ensues. These dimwits wouldn’t know a four-factor test if it bit them on the ass
There’s not much push-back because there’s not really that much capital in arguing something that has vague criteria, so in come cases “arbitrary and capricious” takes over, so it’s an easy tool to chill discourse with little accountability. And the same folks using it get their lulz, every time.
More amusing was a recent FP story using the same amount of quoted text from the same article, broken into smaller quotes and nary a peep from those same vigilantes.
If you’re one of these “concerned”, just tell me your personal Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises,[17] content threshold: 33%, 25%, 12.5% (DK’s FAQ does “not specify) and I will actually follow your censorship guidelines that masquerade as community moderation, which are masquerading as covert disagreement about something else.
Thankfully they’ve let me know who they are, so they simply get no rec reciprocity, because repeated stupidity cannot be rewarded. And replying to them only gives them a pie-fighting opportunity which is a fool’s errand.
That’s my flipping problem … what’s yours?
Not MFP, but a FP…