

My hobby: Troll hugging. - lupin_sansei
http://pugs.blogs.com/audrey/2009/08/my-hobby-troll-hugging.html

======
esonica
I wish I had some idea what you're talking about? Can someone fill me in with
some context?

~~~
dragonquest
Audrey sometime (couple of days) ago joined the #padre channel with a username
user6209 or something like that. The maintainer of Padre was both helpful and
courteous to this user who was asking for some help/pointers without knowing
that this was Audrey Tang, the maker of Pugs and a big name in the Perl
community.

The guy in question here "asdgasd", did almost the same thing after reading
that article presumably which made its rounds on Reddit and HN. However
his/her talk was bordering on trolling unlike Audrey's in the same channel.

~~~
rogerthat
Understood. But because the commentary is so poorly written, it would probably
make more sense if the conversation from the channel had simply been printed
as-is. Hard to believe this was written by someone of note in the programming
community.

~~~
keyist
Lack of context happens when someone isn't targetting the various aggregators
in their post.

I find it refreshing actually. It's nice to read a post once in a while that
eschews the preamble/genericity that typically accompanies posts that are
designed to be voted up somewhere or other.

~~~
SwellJoe
It is part of a larger conversation, and references the other parts of the
conversation; blogs used to do that a lot, and the folks who've been doing it
for a while tend to still do so on a regular basis. It definitely made sense
to me. It can be hard to follow IRC chat logs, since there's so much said
between the lines in such an environment (any insular community will tend to
develop shorthand and a pidgin; IRC is probably an extreme example of
that)...but I thought it was reasonably well explained, if you don't try too
hard to understand all the trollish undertones and in-jokes.

------
devin
To those who are wondering, the reference to mtfnpy means: "mtfnpy totally
fucking now pwns you". Traveling to mtfnpy.com in your browser will send you
back to google. Does anyone have any information on what this is all about?

It almost seems like by redirecting to a search of itself in google, and
referencing itself in its own definition, it created a black hole in the
interweb.

~~~
dragonquest
It used to be a meme in the Perl community sometime ago. Not too many people
used it but it used to come up in a long chatlog.

~~~
mst
That and we configured all the servers to cloak 'buu' as buu@mtfnpy because it
wound him up.

But as Alias notes in the comments asdagd was already using mtfnpy in his
whois, so it was already an in joke known to the target :)

------
DannoHung
This only brings me to ask: Why was asdgasd acting like a weird-boy in the
first place?

------
jongraehl
It's interesting that you can sometimes get a troll to drop the mask and have
a genuine discussion with you.

But, other than the novelty or challenge of it, why would you want to get to
know such people? Is it because they're fundamentally more available? That is,
an attention-seeker may be more willing to spend time with you than a less
needy person.

~~~
audreyt
That is a fair question.

Usually though, like in the case with asdgasd, when they became a genuine
person, they also became far less needy; the neediness is largely just anxiety
at not being understood.

As for my own motives, I guess restoring balance, and prevention of disrupting
folks in #padre's productive dopamine cycles, was my primary goal.

Also I guess there's some reciprocating going on here; people has treated me
gently when I was young (~10 years ago) when I first joined #perl, when my
English was really poor and can't communicate well.

The language barrier made some of my utterances sound close to trolling, but
Elaine Ashton in particular was very kind to me, which steered me into
improving my English and doing creative/constructive work. So I guess I'm just
passing on her tradition. :-)

------
iron_ball
If someone is "really a good person," it should not take special effort to
pierce through a layer of hostility and destructiveness (even such low-level
hostility and destructiveness as trolling an IRC channel).

~~~
thenduks
The (former?) troll was described as a 'rather likable fellow', not 'really a
good person'. If the latter was the case I would agree with you :)

------
jvdh
I can't decide whether this really is about troll hugging (which is what it's
about in the beginning and at the end), or a shameless plug about Pugs and
himself (which fills the middle of the story).

~~~
audreyt
Ah, but one does not need deciding between the two; when you hug someone, you
are also fulfilling your own desire to be held. :-)

IMHO, one needs not feel shame at saying one wants to be noticed, understood
or remembered; that is what makes us human in the first place, and only by
communicating we can "unplug" the inhibitions that prevents useful
communication.

I've been out of the blogosphere for two years, and only recently began re-
familiarizing myself with the various communities formed by aggregator-forums,
so naturally there will be some contextual drifts.

But I do try to form real discussions when I was involved in building the
blogosphere, which involves telling part of my life-story, then listening to
the other person's life-story so I can understand why they made their
comments.

So... jvdh, what is your story that prompted you making that comment? I'd be
glad to listen, if you would like to share.

~~~
jvdh
What prompted me in making the comment is that the title suggests your post is
about troll hugging. But in describing that whole story, you do some large
side-stepping, that in my mind are not related to the subject that you gave
the post.

~~~
audreyt
I see. There was another half of my title, though: "My hobby" (a xkcd meme). I
was trying to self-analyze why troll hugging has become my favorite pastime,
so the sidesteps were mostly about those reflections.

I'll take the Judo/Aikido paragraph as an example, in an attempt to form
relations between that self-plugging paragraph and the concept "troll hugging"
in your mind.

The Judo meme was first introduced to me by mjd in "Conference Presentation
Judo" ( <http://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/> ) -- and because Larry Wall
and Damian Conway both practices Aikido, they sometime use those two memes
interchangeably.

I was reflecting why I've always refrained from using Judo/Aikido to describe
what we've been doing in #perl6.

During writing that blog post, it occurred to me that it's about the
destination; Judo/Aikido tries to contain and then throw out incoming attacks
by making the attacker lose balance, while what we've been doing is quite the
opposite; it aims to restore a conversational, one would even say hermeneutic,
balance.

So by writing out that paragraph I feel I understand the "My Hobby" part a bit
better, whilst also trying to explain that reflection to people who joined in
the aikido/judo meme circle before.

That is how the relation was formed in my mind. Hope it helps!

~~~
jvdh
I see. I apologise for my harsh tone in my first response. I've been reading
too much focused articles, and this stood out.

I missed the reference to the xkcd meme upon first reading (my bad! can't
believe I missed that :( ) and upon rereading this does make it a lot more
focused.

~~~
audreyt
Cool, glad we reached some sort of mutual understanding, then. :-) _hugs_

~~~
PieSquared
By the way, Audrey, welcome to the HN community. :)

Just noted that you were new here, or at least, the account was. Enjoy your
stay!

~~~
audreyt
Will do, thank-you!

Gosh, I felt ancient in internet-time, and it's so nice to be a newbie in
various communities again. :-)

