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Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

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mixmax·

ignore.

Mock and you feed the troll, reason with and you fall into his trap.

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too late: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=162680

Yes, it is a blatant troll, but it's also an interesting question. As long as a troll brings interesting discussion and not flame wars, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Asking why someone is special is not a thoughtful question. This is a rare case where a troll has managed to spawn coherent anecdotes. If you read over the comments, there is no real discussion, there isn't even a topic. It's just a bunch of biographies from people professing pg to be their personal jesus. It reads like an infomercial.

Ignore the trolls. Start a proper discussion because topics like this get killed, like this one just did.

Meh. Good points. I and probably a lot of other people are probably feeling pretty stupid right now for falling for this. I think I have a certain combination of gullibility and skepticism that makes me a perfect target for these things. I'm a skeptic in that I am quick to consider that someone could be just wrong, but I'm gullible in that I'm slow to consider the possibility that someone is lying.

pg hath spoken: "This is such a classic troll. Not even a subtle new variant, but practically a 1980s Usenet troll. I was going to ask if people minded if I killed it, but a forum just can't let itself be pwned by trolls this blatant. So..."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=162876

Damn. I go sleep for a few hours, and look what happens...

Yeah, I bit too. That actually inspired this submittal.

sometimes telling the difference between a troll (usually bad) and a devil's advocate (sometimes good, sometimes annoying) can be difficult

yeah you're right. Didn't notice it until too late...

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