sufi
lala
Something kind of triggered by Buick6 thread, and by Buick themself - our token/pet irritant on dissensus, as well as observations of other discussion boards. It seems like some of the most stimulating posts are by posters who tread a very fine line between 'trolling' and raising issues that people feel the need to comment on - often i reckon by playing a devil's advocate role, posting views that they may well repudiate in 'real life'.
Sometimes if a thread is not started with a controversial, even confrontational post, then it doesn't elicit much response, but those posters who are most obnoxious can paradoxically be most productive in terms of stimulating discussion. Sometimes not of course, Buick's threads are good examples of both tendency i guess,
i think this concept rolls out across other media too, nowadays i reckon there's a strong trend particularly in advertising to get attention simply by being a wind-up - an easy and fairly innocuous example is the crazy frog, but i'm sure there are other adverts that i don't even want to think about.
looking deeper, we can easily apply the idea to many political/PR events, exploring the boundaries of PC is a common wind-up these days, where politicians play empty but inflammatory gestures to the slavering media....
thoughts?
Sometimes if a thread is not started with a controversial, even confrontational post, then it doesn't elicit much response, but those posters who are most obnoxious can paradoxically be most productive in terms of stimulating discussion. Sometimes not of course, Buick's threads are good examples of both tendency i guess,
i think this concept rolls out across other media too, nowadays i reckon there's a strong trend particularly in advertising to get attention simply by being a wind-up - an easy and fairly innocuous example is the crazy frog, but i'm sure there are other adverts that i don't even want to think about.
looking deeper, we can easily apply the idea to many political/PR events, exploring the boundaries of PC is a common wind-up these days, where politicians play empty but inflammatory gestures to the slavering media....
thoughts?