The Language Hat caper solved -- Fraud

I'm sorry to dwell on this one more time so I'll be brief. This is important to fellow bloggers, particularly linguistics bloggers, who may have seen a rise in trolls lately in their stats. It may even shed yet more enlightenment on the ailing psychology of modern society.

Upon consulting my blog stats, I have confirmed that the IP address of my recent attackers (namely 209.6.245.13) has been emanating entirely out of Massachusetts, home of Language Hat (aka Stephen Dodson). Considering Stephen's strained credibility in his comments pictured above (link to his site here), I'll just go out on a crazy limb and suggest that Stephen Dodson is masquerading as "Vanya" and other names. It's now looking like he's trying to sabotage other blogs, whether for fun or for something more calculating, through the guise of numerous trolls both on and off his site. Perhaps this helps his ratings, or he's bored this month or he needs a hundred more Google Ad clicks to pay his rent. Whatever the motives, proof is in the pudding.

These spiteful people always like to use the threats of social disgrace or feign offense to try to coerce people into not speaking up when people are being hurtful. (Echoing the tactics of the Bush administration to silence opposition and free speech covertly and... rather successfully.) Of course, having grown up in a pacifist religious minority and then becoming open about my sexuality, somehow my toughened sense of individuality is not threatened by popularity vote. People who aren't trying to be cool have more interesting things to say on life than fashion-conscious (or is that fascism-conscious?) drips anyway. You know I'm right. ;)

Thankfully Language Hat has released Paleoglot from his blog links. Amen. I should expect to see a sharp drop in troll comments on my own site now. Any readership of mine worth keeping will only be intelligent adults who have the sense to see through Language Hat's poorly played game. It's unfortunate that Stephen is so gifted in one kind of intelligence (i.e. literary and scholastic) and yet lacks the social intelligence to understand when the game is over, if not ended before it even began. It's time to put away the toys and find purpose in life without putting down others for it.

On that note, despite trolls, my next draft for my Etruscan Dictionary project will be posted later on today unabated (or is it 'unbaited'?) . Quite frankly, I'm all so ashamed for being so damned productive. Must be my alleged Asperger's flaring up again.

Language Hat goes from 'hot' to 'not' in 7 days

Not only five days ago, Language Hat's positive mention of my blog was an honour because I respected him as a skillful writer. While his review mentioned skepticism towards my views on a 'Proto-Aegean' language family from which Etruscan would derive, there is obviously ample room to disagree on that. I use my blog to both inform and explore new ideas. So I expect my readers to distinguish an established theory from a conjecture or to disagree when I've gone overboard with specific points rather than childish name-calling. At any rate, things were going kosherly for a while but it hasn't taken long for things to sour on his site.

John Emerson, one of his regular commenters, set the tone for the incoherence that would follow:

"His anti-Dravidian bias vitiates Gordon's entire research projects. Hard words, but the truth."

Strike one. After this fallacious statement that Emerson fabricated out of random fragments of pseudo-intellectual jibberish, I decided to investigate this odd character further only to find that he maintains a rather 'erratic' website filled with this same childishness which is devoted to simply shaking a fist at the establishment without goal. What value among adults is a person who disguises his disdain for structure as a form of 'comedy'?

After three whole days, Language Hat finally found the time to redress things (and only after some of my readers questioned Emerson):

"That's John's little joke. He pretends to believe that everything is descended from Dravidian. Don't mind him."

Strike two. It's mentally perverse to expect readers to waste their time weeding through trollish drivel to get to the good stuff. I would definitely call that a lack of appreciation for one's audience. Intelligent adults don't come to academic-oriented blogs to read flame wars caused by a resident troll. They want blogs to inform them and inspire them with new insights on a subject. Anything less can be easily replaced by a computer program. Unfortunately, this lack of comment moderation goes on and the blogauthor doesn't know when to stop:

"Hey now, I didn't say you were wrong about Proto-Aegean, just that talk of such things makes me nervous. As I'm sure you're aware, in the wrong hands such talk can be a sign of all sorts of weirdness."

At this point, something is obviously lost in translation since I never object to disagreement if it's grounded on facts, but this persistent insinuation of 'weirdness' is condascending rhetoric which attempts to both imply something negative about the addressee while dodging logical debate about what was actually claimed by the person. At this point, I look at Language Hat as merely a puppet, whether consciously or unconsciously, for John Emerson's scholastic Dadaism.

Some of my own readers piped up and presented themselves well but coherency was short-lived when another troll under the rather expected nickname "Anonymous" decided to chime in with more rhetoric:

"Gordon talks the talk but doesn't quite walk the walk."

And then today, this gem that obviously sinks to a new low of lunacy in order to desperately discredit my Etruscan language database project that never hurt anyone:

"The guy seems unbalanced and possibly mentally unstable."

Strike three, you're out. How can one ever respond intelligently to such a desperate attack? It speaks for itself. Whether we can say that Language Hat is a direct contributor to this commentbox madness or merely a passive middleman, it conveys a total lack of respect for not only me but also his readers who are forced to weed through mindless trash in order to find anything informative if at all. Without comment moderation, a blogger diminishes the value of his or her blog. This latest fiasco demonstrates why it's important for bloggers to be clear-headed and assertive on policies from the beginning concerning what comments are beneficial and what comments are without value to even publish. On my blog, people like Emerson are always deleted. There is no space here for chitchats about alien conspiracies, bigfoot or the latest discovery of Noah's Ark because those kinds of unmoderated blogs and websites are a dime a dozen. And we obviously don't need to go around mudslinging others to feel alive, do we? We're all looking for something better than that and this blog is about linguistics first and foremost. Not comedy or stupidity. Free speech isn't free.

Therefore, I've eradicated Language Hat from my blog. In the end, you have to laugh though. Why compliment someone and then immediately afterwards try so hard to rip out their heart and eat it? It's really over-the-top.