Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users

jalefkowit writes "Tech pundit John Dvorak has long been known for his inflammatory opinions. Many have suspected that these opinions are just a way to drive up traffic to his column. Now, we have it straight from the horse's mouth: Dave Winer has Dvorak on video describing his methodology for trolling the Mac community to pump up his stats." I have to admit I'm also guilty of posting the occasional inflammatory story, but I find it's usually best to suffix the title with a question mark, and let our ever-knowledgeable readers hash out the issue and decide for themselves.

Trolling the Mac community?

Thats an almost impossible task - mac users are too smart to take the bait ;)

Re:Trolling the Mac community?

Just like they are too smart to operate the elevator at the NYC Store?

Re:Trolling the Mac community?

Hey! That's not fair! That elevator is really super confusing. It has all of these buttons you have to push... It's hard.

Re:Trolling the Mac community?

> Hey! That's not fair! That elevator is really super confusing. It has all of these buttons you have to push... It's hard.

An elevator with the Mac UI would have just one button "THERE". I mean, after all, I'm already HERE.

Re:Trolling the Mac community?

An elevator with a Google interface would be similarly easy to use, if slightly more text heavy, and there'd be some buttons off to the right hand side advertising what's on other floors based on the floors you've already visited, what you were talking about when you came into the elevator and what you're carrying.


Reportedly, Ballmer now prefers to take the stairs

Re:Trolling the Mac community?

> Reportedly, Ballmer now prefers to take the chairs

there, i fixed that for you

Re:Trolling the Mac community?

"An elevator with the Mac UI would have a picture of the building, and you'd drag the elevator over the floor you wanted to go to, at which point the picture would change to be a picture of that floor, and then you'd drop the elevator on the specific room you wanted to go to, and it would take you to that room."

And if you want to exit the elevator, you intuitively drag the picture of the elevator to the trash can!

Re:Trolling the Mac community?

The Mac sites are up in arms, with commentors demanding that PC Magazine pull their columnist because he has no integrity. I don't know why anybody ever takes Dvorak seriously. If you don't, you'll see that he can actually be pretty entertaining.

Too bad Apple does not include a sense of humor with iLife. Even now when Dvorak's let us all in on the joke, they still don't get it.

I've said it before

Dvorak is nothing other than the worlds most successful troll. As much as everyone here complains about him, we eat it up and come back for more. We used to be able to pretend it was the editors foisting him upon us... but lo' and behold, democratic Digg comes along, and he still makes the front page! [digg.com]

Re:I've said it before

Two words: Ann Coulter [wikipedia.org].

Overtonnage Overkillers

Ann Coulter is the rightwing Anchor Troll in their "Overton Window" [dailykos.com] strategy.

It's a simple way to force the public debate "spectrum window" to your end of the spectrum by trolling unthinkable statements in public. Successful trolls create only predictable responses, not any further development of the ideas. So the "unthinkable" is now part of the public conversation, without risking rejection by anyone actually thinking about it. Changing the ideas in the public window of the spectrum moves the window closer to the new idea. Now the window includes more of the thinkable ideas that were excluded or marginalized, while the window excludes or marginalizes the ideas previously more in the "center", but further away from the troll.

The only risk with overtonning the window is that the troll discredits its entire end of the spectrum by association. Which is why it's important that the troll make as extreme, ridiculous comments as possible. And frequently defend their statements with "I was just kidding". The associates who benefit from the troll in their neighborhood must also not even repudiate the troll, as any association (positive or negative) is contagious. The troll must work alone. Though of course they can be paid by the same beneficiaries, or have their "home markets" all subsidized by the same beneficiaries.

Now Ann Coulter actually makes sense, probably for the first time. As do her fellow trolls like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and most of the rightwing talkradioheads.

Re:I've said it before

We used to be able to pretend it was the editors foisting him upon us... but lo' and behold, democratic Digg comes along, and he still makes the front page!

No, this is backwards. The unwashed masses will never be collectively smart enough to distinguish a troll, statistical certainty and all that. This is the purpose of editorial control, to go beyond the bell curve. Dvorak can be kept off /. All that we need is to convince the few editors that he is, in fact, a full-time troll, And that his rantings do not deserve a place on the front page because they are neither news, nor are they 'stuff that matters'. Unfortunately I think a successful troll is just as good for /. as it is for Dvorak's employers, so there's little incentive for them to change. We can always dream though.

Re:I've said it before

Dvorak writes a lot of different stuff, including some real journalism and technology analysis. But his best known work, and that which I am sure earns him his bread-and-butter, is technology gossip. Like every gossip column ever written since the first traveling minstrel appeared on the scene 30,000 years ago, Dvoark's gossip columns consist of a mixture of truth, exaggeration, spin (whether planted by the technology companies or generated by Dvorak himself), trolling, and some totally made-up stuff.

For example, Dvorak has been trying to force the monitor companies to bring new technologies to market for at least the last 20 years. That is why he hypes-Hypes-HYPES any rumour of a new display technoloy (seen that 300 dpi Texas Instruments display he reported "almost ready for production" in 1995 yet?). 40% truth, 40% exaggeration, 20% Dvorak-generated spin.

But as I said, that is how gossip columns of any kind work. Don't like it, don't read it.

sPh

Disgraceful

Next you will be telling me that Ann Coulter only accuses the 9/11 widows of enjoying the death of their spouses to get attention.

Cowboy Neal in Slashdot troll shocker!

Cowboy Neal in Slashdot troll shocker! Read all about it for only $19.99 at all good book stores

Trolling?

The thing is though one has to understand that the Mac community is a tiered structure. At the top there are we Mac users who are experienced computer users, who understand what we are doing and how computers and operating systems work and accept the existence of things such as 'bugs' and 'vulnerabilities' etc.

Unfortunately the thing that gives us all a bad name are the very vocal ignorant users that for example simply flat out refuse to accept any criticism of Apple or it's products whatsoever - in fact I'd go as far to say it becomes a religious issue as no matter how much evidence they are confronted with, they either are not capable of comprehending what is being presented to them or if they are, refuse to even consider it as this could mean Apple *might* be wrong and as they know, this cannot possibly happen as they consider Apple infallible.

Very, very odd behaviour and quite annoying as for example, should I attempt to get someone to consider a Mac, all it takes is someone they know who has 'heard about those Mac zealots' to put them off.

Consider also that any comment on apple.slashdot that however truthful, might mention a bug or vulnerability or other otherwise is perceived as a criticism gets modded as troll or flamebait (like this comment for example), tells a lot about the community.

Re:Trolling?

The thing is though one has to understand that the Mac community is a tiered structure. At the top ...

Interesting post. If you look at the Mac Community 10 years ago, the "Top technical elite" had almost entirely bailed off the platform.

It was the "very vocal ignorant" zealot-type users that pulled Apple through their dark days. They felt that Apple was getting a bad rap in the press (although it was deserved IMO), and formed this "Evangilista" group which involved flooding the airwaves with denials and counter-arguments to any bit of news which might be perceived as a negative to Apple. The fact that Apple rebounded just validated this behavior and mandated that it must continue.

So, when the technical users returned for the nice UI and Unix-underpinnings of OS X, they're probably scratching their heads over why every silly little Apple lawsuit is worthy of essays worth of Brand-Loyalist attention, or even makes the papers at all. But at this point everyone in the computing press (not just Dvorak) understands that riling up Mac users = Page Hits and Attention. That is why ever little bit of minor Mac news becomes a major trade story.

Another issue is that Apple themselves thrives off these super-loyalists. A key element of their product strategy is based on the fact that there's a large group of wealthy Appleites that will buy anything they put out for a maximum premium. I saw these stats [omnigroup.com] recently that showed that over 40% of Omni users are already running on Intel Macs. Omni is a small developer favored by the super-loyalists, but that's an astounding level of uptake even among that crowd. So, tossing the zealots an occasional pile of red meat really only helps Apple.

I suspect, but can't prove, that the "Evangilista" still exists (formally or infomally, sponsord by Apple or not). There's several Slashot users that one can count on only seeing when there's some bad Apple news to spin.

Slashdotted, see it on YouTube

Link to the video [youtube.com]. The sound was out of sync for me, but he basically comes across as a smug arse.

Brace yourselves

Dvorak admits to trolling Mac users and Rosen admits the RIAA is wrong... apparently they know the second coming is happening soon and want to get some things off their chest.

REPENT I SAY!

Breaking News! You won't believe it!

Actually, this does remind me of one of those stories where someone does a scientific study to find out something that "everyone already knows."

Except, of course, we didn't all know it before, we suspected it, and assumed it was true. Every once in a while you find out that something "everyone knows" isn't true after all [snopes.com], so getting confirmation does have value.

Has CowboyNeal stopped beating his wife?

We Slashdot users, of course, will never stoop to such measures just to get modded up :)

Trolling Nothing New

Trolling is nothing new especially when you look right here on Slashdot every day. What gets Slashdot the most pageviews? Stories about Microsoft. The anti MS people comment like crazy while the pro MS people do the same. I swear there could be a story about finding a cure for cancer above a story about Microsoft and the Microsoft story would have more comments.

Re:Trolling Nothing New

in all fairness there is very little to say about a cure for cancer if it turns out to be true other than "good. glad we figured this one out" - it hardly makes for interesting comments. Now a good ol' troll on MS can lead to thousands of opinions and is really the basis of pretty much all tech discussions... which is why we find it so easy to talk about

Dvorak Screws PC Advertisers

I said it before and I'll say it again: Dvorak is deliberately screwing the advertisers that pay for his web hits.

Dvorak publishes on PC-centric websites, but he trolls Mac users for hits. The PC advertisers are getting screwed, they pay for advertising to PC buyers, Mac users aren't the target audience. The trolling articles draw a massive influx of Mac users, the PC advertisers pay for all those hits from people that will never buy their products.

The only way Dvorak is going to stop trolling is if the PC advertisers wake up and realize their money is being wasted by a maniac that values his own ego more than he provides value for advertisers.

And in other news, Dvorak discovers meta-trolling.

I wonder how many hits his site will get as people visit just to complain about the movie?