How to deal with Internet trolls.

Everyone has them. Trolls (on a blog) are those commenters who consistently post comments with the sole purpose of being annoying and inciting a reaction. I have two regular trolls on my blog. Every comment they post is in some way insulting, irritating, rude, obnoxious or otherwise unwelcome. At first, I puzzled as to why they read my blog since they are always attacking me for what I write. After a while, I realized, however, that they get some kind of personal pleasure out of being hostile. They seem to have fulfilment in attempting to provoke an offended reaction.

At first, I read their comments, sometimes posted them (the less offensive ones) and replied. After awhile, however, I simply stopped posting their comments since they added nothing to the blog, but detracted from its overall friendly tone.

Recently, however, I have come up with a new plan of approach to those posters I know to be trolls. I simply DON’T READ THEM. When I see their name on the headline to a comment post in my email, I just don’t open it.

I think this is funny and most appropriate. Now, when these trolls post their bile, I am sure they imagine that somewhere, far away, I am annoyed by what they have written. However, in truth, I have not even read what they have written. They have now selected themselves out of my consciousness, because of their habitual offensiveness.

So, if you are suffering from an attack of the trolls – do what I do – and refuse to read what they write. Furthermore, don’t post it. In time, they will probably give up posting.

Does anyone else have a solution to the problem of Internet trolls?

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

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Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

Sydney Spies and the Curse of Beauty.

Sydney Spies is, in most eyes, a beautiful girl. She is also, alas, seemingly quite unpopular at her High School. The reason? She wants to be seen in a certain way – and the authorities, and it seems, her fellow students, don’t want her to be seen in that way.

Sydney Spies is suffering from what I call the Curse of Beauty. This is the counterpart to the hostility that very intelligent people often receive from their more ordinary fellows. Truly beautiful people are rather loathed by their same sex colleagues (except the gay ones I expect). An instinctive enmity exists between people of ordinary looks, and people of exceptional looks, of the same sex. This is, in my view, what Sydney Spies is experiencing. Basically, the ugly people around her, can’t stand her. (Let’s be blunt.)

Sydney Spies attempted to have a picture of her in a yellow skirt and black off the shoulder top placed in the Durango High School yearbook as her Senior Year photo. This was refused by Durango High School, whose authorities were of the opinion, in the words of Brian Jaramillo, that it would be unprofessional. He said: “We are an award winning yearbook. We don’t want to diminish the quality with something that can be seen as unprofessional.”

My reaction to this is quite simple: the Durango High School is run by conformist, narrow-minded morons. The rejected photo is not too strong for inclusion, in my view. It just shows something that is not allowed in Durango High School: a personality. Sydney Spies is showing her innate personality in the construction and composition of the photograph. She is showing herself as she would like to be seen. However, at Durango High School, it seems that everyone must conform to an ideal of what is “professional” - that is strait-jacketed within a narrow set of rather dull rules and limitations about what is an acceptable photograph.

A school yearbook should show the people of the school as they really are. It should show them in all their diverse character. It should not be a robotic showpiece in which everyone is presented in the same set of limited ways to create an overall “look” that is deemed “award-winning”. It should be true to the personalities in the school. Quite clearly, the Durango High School yearbook is not true to the personalities of the students. It is actually a constructed lie, that seeks to present the Durango High School students in a certain way that is deemed “acceptable”. It is a photographic fraud, thereby. I would suggest that the only truthful photograph in the Durango High School yearbook may be the very ones they rejected of Sydney Spies. In fact, they rejected three of her submitted photographs – all for pretty much the same reason one intuits – she is just too attractive. (Though they said the last one missed their deadline). Instead, they used her school ID photograph!

There is one positive side to this controversy, from Sydney Spies’ point of view. She wished to be seen in a certain way. She wished to present her personality through a particular kind of image. Well, now she has, to the whole world – for one of those rejected yearbook photos has been run by news agencies around the world. So, the wish for Durango High School to censor their student, Sydney Spies, has had the unintended effect of making her much more famous than a yearbook would have done. That strikes me as suitably funny.

There is a not so funny side to this though. Sydney spies has experienced considerable bullying from her fellow students at Durango High School since all this fuss began. This is characteristic of the Curse of Beauty, as I describe it. I am certain...100% certain that ALL the bullies are ugly in comparison to her. This controversy around her yearbook photograph is just giving an excuse to the ugly ones to take out their resentment for her beauty, on her. A beautiful person would understand her position and viewpoint and would, in my view, be very unlikely to bully her. I am sure that the resentment she has experienced at Durango High School has come from those who are challenged in the looks department. This is parallel to the kind of resentment gifted kids often receive, from their less intelligent colleagues. It is always the dumb ones who hate the smart. Just so, it is always the plain, or even ugly ones, who hate the beautiful.

I wish Sydney Spies well and hope that she becomes the successful model she aspires to be. No-one should ever be in the position of being bullied because of their innate gifts as Sydney Spies is being – not if that gift is beauty, intelligence or any other gift. All who are gifted, in whatever way, should be welcomed for their gifts – for those gifts make the world a better place. Durango High School has forgotten that. It has proven itself, in this “scandal”, to be an ugly place – ugly at heart and, no doubt, ugly by sight, too.

Best of luck Sydney Spies. I hope you get to be seen as you wish to be.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The privileges of the old.

In Asian societies, traditionally, the old are looked up to - even when they are very short, if you know what I mean. However, do they always deserve this automatic respect? Two days ago, I encountered someone that made me think otherwise.

I was in the queue to get on the morning bus, there being three people in front of me and quite a few behind. Suddenly, someone elbowed me to the left, pushing me to one side, as they thrust forward. I turned to see who it was: to my surprise my eyes alighted on a very elderly woman of, I estimate somewhere between 85 and 95 years old. She looked very fit and spry - but there was something fierce and cold in her face. She didn't look to be a "nice old lady" at all.

I wasn't the only person she pushed out of the way. She pushed past all three people ahead of me, to the front of the queue. All who saw what she had done stared at her - but no-one spoke out. Perhaps they were all mentally making "allowances for her age". Well, I really don't think that any allowance should be made. It was a very simple matter of a rude, ill-mannered, uncouth person who just happened to be elderly.

In the whole incident, the old Chinese lady didn't say a word. She just held her fierce, dark expression on her face and kind of dared anyone to challenge her.

The event had rather an effect on me. Why, I wondered, should such behaviour be allowed, by all in the queue, simply because she was old? What she was doing broke all the social rules - and it wasn't as if she was frail, or anything: she was fit, aggressive and had physically pushed everyone out of the way. Here was an elderly person abusing her status as an old person. She was taking advantage of the Asian tendency to revere the old - to actually misbehave. I wasn't impressed. Her action made me reflect that, perhaps the elderly don't deserve the respect they are automatically given. They don't, necessarily, deserve any more respect than anyone else. They are, most definitely, not certain to be any better than anyone else - and therefore not deserving of a different attitude towards them.

Then again, I wondered, sometime later: what kind of life made this old lady so fierce, so aggressive and so unpleasant to her fellow man? Perhaps far from respecting her, we should pity her the kind of life that engenders the kind of attitude she showed. Surely, there was something wrong with her.

However, her age did save her from my rebuke. Had she been younger, I would have remonstrated with her for the elbow and insisted on her return to the back of the queue. The sight of her silver hair shocked me into silence. I was too busy being surprised to actually do anything about her rudeness.

The next time, however, I would probably speak up - and resist - for it wouldn't be a surprise anymore. It would just be one more rude elderly person who should know better.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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