[Leica] Leica trolls (was "State of the Art")

[Joe Berenbaum <joe-b@dircon.co.uk>]

At 16:03 10/05/98 -0400, you wrote:
<snip>
>>>I'm through with this, I don't have time to defend against such petty
>>>sniping.
>>
>>Yes you do. You live for it. hehehehehehe
>
>This is called trolling.  This guy will say anything to get a reaction from
>this mailing list.  The best thing would be for everyone to ignore him.
>Behavior like this usually gets people banned from  IRC chat channels, and
>I think that the same policy should apply to mailing lists.
>Dan C.

Without commenting on recent discussions on the LUG, I think it is a fact
of life that some net users do try to involve Leica users in pointless
arguments. It happens a lot on newsgroups, but it can happen here too. Not
everbody who subscribes to the Leica users list is interested in using
Leicas! Whether the "bait" is Leica being "too expensive to justify owning
one" , or whether it is "Nikon do it better" (?) (or Canon, or whatever),
it is as well to be aware that an angry or argumentative response is just
what is wanted in such situations. The idea of trolling is to start, and
perpetuate, ongoing pointless arguments, for the amusement of the person
who starts it, and possibly others who may be spectators. Leica users seem
to get a bit more than their share of this because there is a certain
amount of jealousy to contend with on the part of people who think that
no-one should own equipment that is <better than/more expensive than/has
lenses better than> theirs. Whether that belief is based in political
correctness or simple prejudice and envy, it is all the same thing in
practice- silly arguments for the purpose of "getting at" people who own
Leicas. It is not unlikely that this list will get such people subscribing
for exactly that purpose, from time to time. Since a response (and another,
and another...) is what is desired, no response is a good way to deal with
it.

Joe Berenbaum