Ladies & gents, girls & boys, it’s time once again to poke fun at the conservative drones who think they have some sort of presence on Twitter.
Couple of years ago now, when I was a Twitter newbie, I discovered that as a social medium, in political terms, it’s anything but sociable. In fact, certain hashtags on twitter are grossly truncated versions of this fetid sinkhole was before it evolved into a 404 page. I will say one thing for old D&R and that was if you were any good at online debating – and I am – there was a lot of fun to be had in disassembling the fraudulent claims of right-wing froot-loopie ideologues. Twitter seems to attract the same level of brainlessness in regard to conservative apologists, but on a much more rabid level, exacerbated even further by the fact that one cannot debate anything in 140 characters or less, but these fools insist on trying. As you might imagine, the hashtag #auspol, as I’ve written before in this tome, is as wretched a hive of scum and logically fallacious villany as one will find anywhere. Even Tatooine.
Now, readers of past postings will know that I have had my run-ins with these fractious fly-by-nighters, had accounts suspended and so on, and all because I didn’t read in depth the many and varied rules of the Twitter game. It is a game, after all and to be successful in any game, one must know how the rules come down and how to manipulate them. My nemesis at the time, ye olde @dotnetnoobie otherwise known as David William Nicholson Thiessen, has recently fallen foul of those very same rules. Irony is sweet, let me tell you. You see, there are strident rules within Twitter’s Acceptable Use Policy which specifically outlaw the use of ‘bots’ or automated pieces of software which run on the Twitter API. Very soon to become something of an anachronism because as I understand it Twitter is denying access to all external users of the API, but I don’t understand techno stuff that well, so I may be wrong. Anyway, it came to pass that idiot Thiessen created a bot he created an account for called @labordirt which would syphon a database of selected anti-Labor news pieces and post them ad infinitum every few minutes into the hashtag #auspol. Everyone knew what it was and who had created it. Thiessen denied any involvement, but squealed like a stuck pig when @labordirt was suddenly banned for spamming. What else did he expect to happen? Break the AUP and you’ll wear the consequences. Trolls are never very intelligent people.
That little episode started a flurry of other like-minded frootbats to start harrassing non-conservative politicians who use Twitter, one in particular being Sarah Hansen-Young of the Greens party. I’ve seen such harassment perpetrated before and it gets very, VERY personal and equally as nasty. I wouldn’t blame anyone, be they adult, child, professional person or navvy for reporting such harassment to the correct authorities, police or what have you. Sarah Hansen-Young did precisely that and the perpetrator who goes under the Twitter handle of @wdallasbrooks – nothing even close to his real name – found himself consigned to troll purgatory quick smart. Of course, there was gross squealing, shrieking, rending of hair & gnashing of teeth from the conservative troll brigade, even escalating to this piece of pap. All standard conservative clap-trap, none of it with any basis in rational fact, but I dare say it achieves it’s desired end among a small but vehemently vile sector of Australian society. It goes without saying that one requires bugger all intelligence to create such sites which only serve to attract those of even lesser intellect. One need only watch the #auspol stream for a moment to recognise the commonality of the denominator that @wdallasbrooks aims to attract.
Of course, I’ve written all about it before today. I just wanted to draw attention for the benefit of those like me who look on in wonderment at the depths to which the Australian conservative cadre will sink, and how they will squeal when they feel underdone because they can’t win all of the time. I’ve said it plenty of times, if you want to get someone to engage with you in a battle of ideas, you have to first have those ideas, and then be able to present them in a manner which makes sense. All I ever see are lies, innuendo, obfuscation and fear-mongering. I guess that’s all conservatives have ever really had.