Real Life Trolling in The Advertiser

brianthebard · 09-09-2010 12:07pm #1

Has anyone been following this the past month or six weeks? It began with a 'T Leonard' writing a letter to the editor in which he complained that we don't exploit our natural resources and eat enough whale. References were made to how great Japan and Norway are for hunting and eating whale and dolphin, and that we should be using all our natural resources, and that we were missing out on loads of meat, and that the minority were holding the majority to ransom (made it sound like the majority of people wanted to eat whale but were scared of vegan nazi concentration camps). That was funny enough as a one off quirky letter, but he got responses! To which there were counter responses from Mr Leonard and yet another response this week!
Did anyone see these letters? I don't know if they are on the advertiser site but they are pretty funny, it will be interesting to see how long this goes on or what the outcome will be. I'm surprised the editor even ran such a ridiculous letter in the first place, but perhaps they were hoping for a 'debate' to happen.

Robbo · 09-09-2010 12:11pm

It wouldn't be the first time either the Advo's been taken in by a hoax letter or has let one in that was designed to boost circulation.

brianthebard · 09-09-2010 12:18pm

That episode goes through my head every time there's a new letter. Here is the second letter from T Leonard, you actually can find them all on the advertiser site;

http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/30409

The random attacks, name calling, accusations of 'petit bourgeois righteous feelings' are all classic trolling tactics (bonus point for using petit bourgeois in the wrong context). If this were on boards the thread would be locked by now. I'm hoping it goes on a little bit longer it livens up the paper a bit, but I also feel bad for the two or three people (at least the published ones) who have been taken in by this guy and responded.