Trolls again.....

One of the disadvantages of a blog becoming more widely read is that it starts attracting the attention of various kinds of nutcases and obsessives.  These include ideological purists who feel obligated and entitled to post tendentious screeds in the comments to "correct" me whenever I deviate from the mandatory orthodox position on something or other (Brexit and Israel come to mind).  They practically never address the specifics I raise, but just regurgitate their own canned talking points.  Such incursions remain rare, however, probably because I don't post about those topics very often.

Recently, though, I've been targeted by much more intensive trolling focused on one particular issue -- transgender ideology.  This is odd because I've only ever written one post on that topic, which says pretty much everything I have to say about it.  However, almost every time one of the link round-ups includes a link related to transgender ideology, one of these trolls (I'm not sure whether it's multiple people or one person using multiple names) shows up and tries to hijack the comment thread into a squabble about that issue.  The degree of obsessiveness displayed is disturbing.  Most trolls just post short, incoherent challenges with the intent of getting the blogger to waste time and energy responding.  These people write multi-paragraph tirades laced with what feels like religious fanaticism, which is all the more weird since I've repeatedly made it clear that that kind of thing probably won't make it through comment moderation.  And remember, they're reacting to just one link, to another site, among dozens in the round-up.

I generally don't engage with trolls because, as that linked post explains, experience has shown that refusing to engage is the only way to make them go away.  These people (or this person?), however, aren't going away.  If anything, they're getting worse.  I don't know why they're targeting my blog, which only occasionally references transgender ideology by including a link or two about it in the link round-ups, rather than the many other sites (including right-wing ones) which address it regularly, but it's obvious from some of their screeds that these particular trolls aren't quite what most people would consider mentally stable.  This is disquieting given that the ideology they're pushing has an extensive history of advocating violence against people who disagree with it.  I'm not too worried about that since I've been careful about protecting my anonymity, but it's still unsettling to be in their crosshairs.

Avoiding the topic to appease them isn't an option.  I never go looking for items to put in the link round-ups, but when I happen to see something I think is important or interesting, I do include it.  If I start censoring myself to avoid harassment, that will just lead to more and more of the same, and I might as well just shut down the blog entirely.  Nor am I going to submit to the endless arguing they seem to want.  This is a blog, not a debating forum, and I'm under no obligation to provide a platform for views I find repugnant.  Anybody who dislikes anything I say is perfectly free to start their own blog and bash me there as much as they like.  Not here.

It's also obvious that any such "debate" would be a waste of time in this case, for reasons clear to anyone who's ever tried to "debate" a street preacher or a door-to-door Bible-thumper.

I do want readers to be aware of the issue, however, just in case it escalates.  For example, I've never worried much about anyone trying to hack my blog because I couldn't imagine anyone feeling strongly enough about it to go to the effort of doing so, but in this case, I'm not so sure.  If one day the blog suddenly disappears or shows signs of tampering, well, I want you to know what happened.

Now (hopefully) back to fun things.