Our Own Little Troll

Based on the recent poll in my post Take My Poll: You're In Control!, readers of this blog want both drug and healthcare topics, as well as some other, off the wall, stuff.

So I will try to mix both things, and you can read whatever pleases you. This post is definitely going to be about “off the wall" stuff.

This most recent poll was different from prior ones, in that readers can go to the poll and vote once a day. And I note that a single person keeps going back and putting in his single vote for “Just go away!” once every day. He has now amassed six votes.

I also note that we suddenly, as of yesterday, have a new visitor who really doesn’t like me. Funny thing is, he sounds just as angry, and keeps calling me “insane,” just like a certain technology manager at the HuffPuff used to do. But it could, of course, be anyone in the whole wide world.

So we appear to have received our very own little troll on this blog. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, I use “troll” simply as it is defined if you search for “define:troll” on Google. According to this Google search a “troll” is someone who posts “controversial or provocative messages in a deliberate attempt to provoke flames” or “a newsgroup post that is deliberately incorrect, intended to provoke readers; or a person who makes such a post.”

In a way I think it is a bit cute that we have this little troll, so I’d like everyone to be nice to him. He is very easy to recognize, not only because of his tail and furry appearance, but because of his consistent venom. You see, as of yesterday he’s been busy running around on my blog posting his little admiring notes on both new and old blogs, almost like a puppy lifting a leg and marking his territory.

Let me give you a sampling:

First, on my post E-Mail From Andy Yaco-Mink, he wrote:

Anonymous said...
You're completely insane. Putting up a parody website is what's called "fair use," not "identity theft." Registering a site meter in Yaco-mink's name is not "sophisticated." All it require is typing "yaco-mink."Have you ever even heard of "fair use?" In fact, because you've made such a jackass out of yourself, it gives whoever wants to parody you much more room under fair use precedent. If you really think it's "identity theft," which is a legal term of art and illegal in every state and under federal law, why don't you try calling the FBI and telling them about your case of "identity theft." Depending on the jackass tolerance of whoever answers the phone, perhaps you'll get a lesson in what "identity theft" really is.Meantime, if you have any friends (it's hard to imagine at this point -- you are, for instance, the classic nightmare person to be stuck with at a party), you should ask them to do an intervention.
7/05/2006

So I responded,

Peter Rost said...
Dear "Anonymous"So good to hear from you. You write, "You're completely insane."Kind of reminds me of when yacomink wrote, "Are you insane?" By: yacomink on June 14, 2006 at 12:10pm No one else ever used those words.:)
7/05/2006

I figured that would hook him, and I wasn’t wrong. Response came instantly. Please also note how careful he is in making a distinction between "yaco-mink" and "yacomink" (kind of unnecessary after Arianna admitted the two were the same):

Anonymous said...
you mean the guy named "yaco-mink" who you claimed wrote under the "pen name" of "yacomink?"Your understanding of the word pen name is as half-witted as is your understanding of fair use, libel, and identity theft.And I promise you, someone thinking you're insane is not proof that they're Andy Yaco-Mink.
7/05/2006

And now this little troll couldn’t contain himself anymore, he went to my post Ken Lay is Dead and wrote this:

Anonymous said...
are you sure it wasn't Arianna who killed him? I'd say you should certainly devote the next six months to exposing Arianna's evil role in killing Ken Lay. After all, anybody who finds you insufferable and wants you to go away must be evil, right?
7/05/2006

And then he jumped to Identity Theft of "Peter Rost" Image and Name where no one had posted for three days and wrote:

Anonymous said...
It's not the parody website of your insufferable, boorish and insane reaction to being tossed of Huffpo that damages your "reputation." It's the insufferable, boorish and insane reaction that damages what's left of your reputation. Do you actually suppose that any institution, upon reading your huffpo saga, would ever want to be involved with you? You're draped in red flags. No business person with any common sense would read all this and say, "you know what? I want to be involved with this guy." This is what has damaged your reputation. Not a parody website.
7/06/2006

So who is this little troll?

We don’t know.

But we have to love him.

After all, not every blog gets to have its very own little provocative and angry troll.

What we do know is that he is really, really, angry, he stays up real late, like until early morning hours, two-three am, and doesn’t show up until around ten am. Or, perhaps more likely, he lives on West Coast time. Then again, maybe he does stay up late, the way very young people without responsibilities do . . . after all, he fears meeting me at a party. No one over 30 would even think in those terms, they're all too busy working, rearing children to worry about getting stuck at a party with anyone . . . so perhaps the troll is a---young party animal?

The tone and the words used are definitely very similar to the ones “yacomink” used on HuffPuff. See Mike’s blog. But the content is suddenly more articulate and the spelling errors are gone. Maybe the fact that Mike pointed out how to spell "hilarious" with just one "l" made this troll pay attention.

And who knows, maybe this little daredevil is the one behind the Rost Post?

He certainly seems to have researched the facts about identity theft, and is very focused on HuffPuff and Arianna and "yacomink." And he seems to have talked to a lawyer recently. After all, no on who hasn’t talked to a lawyer would ever use an expression such as “legal term of art.” Unless he is actually a lawyer. Wow, could the troll be a lawyer?

Anyway, I had to look up what “legal term of art” means in a law dictionary, here’s the definition: “A word or phrase used by legal professionals that has a precise meaning in a particular subject area.”

Could the troll have just talked to a lawyer? I mean he uses legal terminology, and he talks about “fair use, libel, and identity theft.” Not the stuff regular bloggers discuss a lot.

Here’s the next clue. A very large, and famous law firm, called FRIEDMAN KAPLAN & SEILER just spent the entire day yesterday on my blog. And when I say entire day, I mean entire day. They logged in to my blog a total of 23 times during the whole day. I’ve never seen them before.

So I was just kind of wondering if the troll had perhaps spent some time getting legal advice?

By the way, yesterday Google Blogger wrote to me, they said:

Hello,

Thank you for writing in regarding content on
http://rostpost.blogspot.com. Upon review of this blog, it appears that
the content in question has already been removed.

Please let us know if we can further assist you.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

So now we know the person who took my name and picture also deleted the page on his own, possibly scared about the consequences after he read my post, Identity Theft of "Peter Rost" Image and Name.

But then, I figured, maybe he got emboldened when he had talked to these lawyers, and so he started posting like crazy, just getting the rage out of him.

Then again, all of this may be pure fantasy.

The only thing we know for sure is that we now have our very own little troll on the Dr. Peter Rost blog.

Let’s feed him and be kind to him.

Who knows, he might be really warm and cuddly when he cools down.

And just a little reminder to any law firm reading this blog, and to any trolls out there. Don’t miss my legal disclaimer. It even mentions "fair use."

:)