"Gregory Hall" wrote in message ...

Neither has been heard from in weeks. Bruce probably
got nailed by a tsunami at the dock or succumbed to
an exotic venereal diseae while Skippy finally got
PW'd into an extended lubberly, *family* life.

Sad.

I guess I'm the only real sailor still standing...

--
Sir Gregory



Well, well. Just as I was reading this (below), who should pop up on
rec.boats.cruising but its resident troll, who's making an appearance today
to stir up some trouble, most likely because things have been a bit quiet
around here lately:


"In the past few years, the science of Internet trollology has made some
strides. Last year, for instance, we learned that by hurling insults and
inciting discord in online comment sections, so-called Internet trolls (who
are frequently anonymous) have a polarizing effect on audiences, leading to
politicization, rather than deeper understanding of scientific topics.

"That’s bad, but it’s nothing compared with what a new psychology paper has
to say about the personalities of trolls themselves. The research, conducted
by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to
directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized
by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad:
Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism
(egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy),
and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others)."


Read all about it he
http://www.slate.com/articles/health...ychopathy.html,
under the title "Internet trolls really are horrible people"

Here's the abstract from the paper itself:

In two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality
inventories and a survey of their Internet commenting styles. Overall,
strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency,
trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct
underlying the measures. Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations
between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: trolling correlated
positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both
enjoyment ratings and identity scores. Of all personality measures, sadism
showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the
relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online
activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated to sadism. Thus
cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism.