Is a warrior mentality in today’s society worth anything?

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Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the Shrine of the Mall Ninja.

After you’ve gotten back from the hospital for treatment for gut-induced injury caused by laughing too hard, let me tell you that if you didn’t participate in 90s social media, isolated discussion forums rather than the civilized mass-market Reddits and Quoras of today, you were really missing out. Spectacular flame wars like this happened all the freaking time. It was great.

Based on my own experiences, I’m 95% sure that Gecko45 and SPECOPS are trolls, some of the best I’ve ever come across. I don’t think they’re the same person, but they’re clearly both adults with wicked senses of humor. Gecko saying he’s not a Ninja, but “merely a student of Ninjitsu” was brilliant, the mispelling of ‘Ninjutsu’ would have been calculated to get under the skin of anyone who was familiar enough about the subject to notice it.

The two trolls are clearly playing the crowd, dancing from direct insults whenever they’re getting attention to pumping themselves up with totally illogical tall tales whenever the furor starts to lag.

The trolls know something that most people on internet forums don’t, that pacing and a sense of ego-driven drama in your posts beat out realness and honesty every single time. You might hate their guts, but you can’t not respect their ability to get people participating.

A good troll can totally revitalize a staid forum, and it’s a role I found myself playing more than a few times. People who are aware of trolling dynamics can massage the discourse and direct it towards something more constructive than overgrown man-children yelling at each other to hilarious effect. Oh that still goes on a lot, even moderators wind up recognizing that this sort of thing adds to the experience rather than takes it away and does their best to step in only when it get egregious.

So, to answer your question, yes, the warrior mentality in today’s society is worth something. A hell of a lot of hilarity. If you want more of this, check out Bullshido.