A bit of randomness, by way of e-Clippings, the US Air Force is making a full scale move into social media and offers this handy algorithm to guide its bloggers on how to respond to comments, including those of ‘ragers’, ‘trolls’, the misguided, and the unhappy.
The post mentions the USAF’s use of Twitter – I just hope they don’t tweet while flying.
As a former USAF member and son of Air Corps. (WWII) veteran and with two sons in the Air Force, this story caught my attention. Although the military has been known to engineer things, this guide concept for how to respond to blog posts is a really good concept. Any company that uses blogs as part of their social marketing strategy should have this type of tool as a guideline, to help their bloggers handle blog responses in a consistent and positive way.
Valiant – I agree. I actually thought this was extremely well constructed.
Awful stuff.
Now maybe you tekkie kiddies can see just what you’re wrought with your MMORPG/Well/Gamerz/Slashdot forums type of culture.
Trolling? THAT is what criticizing the government is going to be called now? If I don’t like how they’re doing the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, I’m going to be a *troll*? Huh?
See, this is why I have fought this shit for the last eight years in online communities — because it was clear to me as long ago as 1999 when I first saw Will Wright’s invention, the Sims offline, that we were seeing a massive cultural shift that ultimately would affect the government, the entire national structures and all our lives.
And so it has. A national institution — the Air Force — is now throwing aside the First Amendment, and simultaneously, while pretending to be open and transparent and accountable and timely and new media thisnthat blah blah blah, is now throwing out freedom of speech to criticize, calling that “trolling” or “misguided” and railroading people into “no response” or “concurrency” at best.
Thanks a lot, male tekkie nerds who created this insolent online culture — and the control mechanisms to deal with it through concepts like “trolling” — and brought it to us now in our national affairs. Not surprising that the virus and mind memes leapt from MMORPG/online Digg type culture right into the armed forces, where the same kind of controlling and cynical mentality prevails from the same kinds of people.
It will all be much bigger and harder to fight now — it won’t be long before we begin to see the First Amendment truly eroded in the name of “fighting trolls” — but at least it’s out in the open, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Prokofy said:
Trolling? THAT is what criticizing the government is going to be called now? If I don’t like how they’re doing the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, I’m going to be a *troll*? Huh?
Ummm, no Prokofy, that statement is actually a “troll.” It is a statement tossed out to provoke a response with anger or incivility, often with only peripheral bearing on the topic at hand. It often also includes personal attacks, rather than wrestling with the actual points presented.
so…
“Thanks a lot, male tekkie nerds who created this insolent online culture….”
is also a “troll.”
If you would examine the flow-chart, you would see that this pertains to an Air Force individual responding to a post on an independent blog. The individual Air Force member is asked, basically, to not get into a flame war with anyone, or to respond intemperately to stupidity. Why? It has nothing to do with First Amendment rights, and everything to do with helping folks make a good decision that reflects well on their employer and their profession.
I agree with Valiant – very well executed. Better than I would expect, actually. Bravo Zulu.
The flowchart doesn’t provide a very substantive definition of “Troll”. It associates “Troll” with “bashing and degrading others” which is the accepted internet definition for “Trolling”. The problem is that there is no objective way to determine what “bashing and degrading others” actually entails. This is the point. If I make a post criticizing the Air Force (or any other government agency), am I bashing and degrading it? Some people might say yes and some people might say no. That is a fact of human subjectivity and it is pointless to protest it; however, should we not expect our governments to operate somewhat more objectively than, say, me when I have just woken up and haven’t had my morning cup of tea and the kids are banging off the walls and driving me crazy?
I understand what the flowchart is trying to do and superficially I agree with the intent; however, that the concept of “Troll” has been officially incorporated into government policy is disturbing to me because, at bottom, “Troll” is really just the voice of the Other.
This reaction reminds me of a photoshop I saw on FARK.com yesterday that said something that I will adapt a bit, “blog comments are a lot like being in the Special Olympics, even if you win, you are still retarded.”
I am sure the USAF flow chart could make more scholarly definitions of the types of faulty arguments and statements, but I think they did a decent enough job of getting across the idea that while some blogs and their comments make very good points and bring value, others are driven more by attention whore motivations, and we need to sift the dross from the gold.
The problem with your analogy, pais, is that commenting on blogs isn’t zero sum. Well, it isn’t always zero sum. Agree or disagree, it’s all grist for the mill I like to call civil society. Anyway, I have an affinity for Trolls. Ever since Ibsen.
There are more problems with my analogy, including letting decorum slip to use the word “retarded”.
Haha, pais. Ya, I caught that one too but, since I knew you weren’t being a troll, I let it pass.
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This chart is an adaptation of a product crafted by the CEC. Where on this product do they state this? I think that is called plagarism. Is this what the Air Force considers “transparency?” Come on folks, cite your source.
The zero sum game is the tool that gave us our powerfull world economy today;)