"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."
I think quite a few of his blog posts fall into this category.
Controversial: he's just opposing conventional wisdom
Irrelevant or off-topic: Vista and Facebook are very relevant to this community
Baiting others: maybe he's guilty of this, but I think it's more the jarring cognitive dissonance of him opposing the accepted wisdom. A minority opinion isn't necessarily baiting.
Disrupt normal discussion: other people post his stuff.
Let's face it, he writes well, he argues his points well, and he calls out people he thinks are wrong. pg does the exact same thing, but no one disagrees with him since we're all in his world here.
Besides, how much of a troll is it to say something is good?
To paraphrase mixmax, I would fight anyone, verbally, fists, or pistols at dawn claiming that neither Apple fanboyism nor Vista-bashing have spread throughout the tech publications.
You say how the article is flamebaiting, yet the last line of your comment was extremely flammable. To answer your question, if it was honest: I am a hacker and I use Vista daily. I am sure I'm not alone.
Sorry if it came across as flammable, it's just not something that you hear about - startups working on vista. And all the startup photos you see are full of macs.
He makes good points, it is true, but what everyone on this thread is reacting to is how he makes them. When he uses words like 'bullshit' and 'fanboy' it feels like he's going out of his way to insult me the reader. Even when I read something I agree with him on.
After the instinctive reaction subsides I'm still left with the sense that some of his wording is calculated to arouse knee-jerk comment/traffic. That intention is at the heart of the troll mentality. Which is a pity, because he really doesn't need to do this.
I think that it is impossible for someone to troll his own blog.
I think that is is especially impossible to be a "troll" when someone else is posting entries from your own blog to a social news service. No, I don't think that qualifies.
The notion that posting content of whatever sort onto your own web property is somehow illegitimate, to me, seems like an unhealthy notion. Further, I think "troll" is name-calling, pure and simple. Just emotion. The highest rated comment here right now consists of this:
"Vista is not good."
...to me, that's a pretty worthless comment--a grammatically, orthographically, socially correct version of "Vista Blow turdz". But it's no better in terms of elucidation.
"The notion that posting content of whatever sort onto your own web property is somehow illegitimate, to me, seems like an unhealthy notion."
Let's put that theory to the test:
"The notion that posting [spam/outright lies/defamation/deliberately inacurrate and misleading information/gratuitous hate speech] onto your own web property is somehow illegitimate, to me, seems like an unhealthy notion."
What country are you from? Just curious--most Americans, even liberals, are not quite so willing to pose the bogeyman up against free speech and property rights.
If most Americans defend spam/outright lies/defamation/deliberately inacurrate and misleading information/gratuitous hate speech in a misguided attempt to protect free speech while simultaneously waiving all their rights whenever Bush utters the word "terrorists" then I pity them.
Not defending it so much as pointing out that it is a bogeyman. Bringing up George Bush is a pretty sad straw man, so please skip it. I'm just glad to've had my hunch confirmed. I know Canada is all-too-willing to imprison people for speech violations, and I'm quite happy it hasn't come to that here yet. Of course, it will eventually.
Contrast: "Bringing up George Bush is a pretty sad straw man, so please skip it." VS "I know Canada is all-too-willing to imprison people for speech violations, and I'm quite happy it hasn't come to that here yet."
Doing exactly what you just scorned me for is definitely bad style.
And you'll have to prove Canada imprisons people for "speech violations" a lot while the US doesn't.
"Vista is not good" gets the point across. Nobody that reads this site likes Vista, so there's no point in writing a long post that preaches to the choir. The short, one sentence comment allows the reader's mind to fill in the details that he's undoubtedly heard again and again in other places.
Yes, it is me who is trolling by posting my opinions to my blog. It's not you, who out of kneejerk reflex caused by your sensitivity about being an Apple fanboy (a label you applied to yourself, then took offense to) leaves 10 negative comments every time someone posts me here.
Anything on my blog is, by definition, neither irrelevant nor off-topic, since the theme is "things that are interesting to me".
The main point I was making was that your articles seem to be written with the aim of irritating and provoking a response.
I guess perhaps that's why they get posted - people can see that they are controversial and baiting in their nature.
Well, you assume they are meant to be irritating because they irritate you, probably largely due to my use of the word "fanboy". If I had posted that article on an Apple Developer forum rather than my personal blog, that might be a reasonable assumption. Hell, if I even wrote it here, that might still have some validity (though I think not much) given that most people here probably use OSX.
But they're on a website whose URL is my real name. It should be pretty clear that I write for myself and people like me. I am of the opinion that much of the tech media is held in thrall by Steve Jobs and is abandoning their job of fair and balanced reporting because they want to have early access to new iPhones and iPods. (In fairness, I blame Jobs as much for having that policy as I do for them abiding by it.) So I write about it.
If that's irritating to you, don't read. But don't accuse me of trolling for simply expressing Matt Maroon's opinions on mattmaroon.com. That's very small-minded, and egocentric. No offense, but I don't care enough to spend my time irritating you.
I'm pretty sure I did stick to the facts and opinions derived from them. Vista was purchased at a rate eclipsing any other OS in history. It's being called a disaster due to corporate and consumer inertia, which would be factors even if it were the greatest OS ever built.
It's stable, and a lot of people like it. It's not Microsoft's finest moment by any means.
Do you really think that the press is not overly favorable toward Apple due to Steve Jobs's long history of giving priority access to people who consistently write good reviews for their products? Even a lot of Apple fans agree with me that fanboys are numerous and annoying, and that their ethic is sneaking into the media.
And quite a few people take me seriously it seems. I get a pretty large number of pageviews for a private blog, and tens of upvotes when most are posted here.
Purchased ;) heh.. it was forced on a public who didn't want it. Do you really think that if Vista was not preloaded onto computers, just XP, that people would have actually gone out and bought Vista still?
Anyway... I think I'll sit the next round of this out. O/S wars are so over.
"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."
I think quite a few of his blog posts fall into this category.