In a left-handed way, it might well be well-considered.
by
Inkberrow
07/28/2009, 7:52 PM #
First off, there must be a mosh pit or two on the Fray which are not connected to Slate articles and the sometimes-delicate sensibilities of article-driven traffic. Second, the best of everything should be part of the Best of the Fray, I suppose, including the best troll(s). Of all the Fray power narcissists, Denny is the greatest of them all in sheer inventiveness, prolixity, and unreflective sticktuitiveness. Where else should he go when he inevitably soils a serious board? Maybe KFS, but most of the folks there are already weaker simulacra of the Great One.
How great? Denny just got banned from Poems Fray, where he'd been averaging thirty or forty posts a day in a massive effort to rebrand himself with the new editor, AND to re-engage in his age-old quest to somehow efface the shame of his past and continued plagiarisms, by persuading folks on alternate days that it doesn't happen or it doesn't matter anyway. In the past on PFray and here on BOTF he's added alternics with Real Bios to assist his "denny" persona---often in the same threads and subthreads---in pursuing the trophies of his agenda---checkmarks, other editorial encomia or respect, and especially showing up the elitist judgemental Pomes Fray snob-regulars, who unforgiveably debate his tendentious commentaries, and insist plagiarism exists and is wrong.
So here a couple months ago comes "GretchenRyan", a self-reported Lady Britisher, to PFray, her polite eyes blinking at the brightness and freshness of an internet experience which was Utterly New to Her, as she was wont to point out. "Gretchen" even managed to exchange upscale cordialities with former Poet Laureate and Poems Editor Robert Pinsky himself. How could the genial Laureate know he and Slate were being played for fools by a master Troll? I myself quickly smelled a rat, or a Worm rather, when "she" fatally insisted on non sequitur banalities and would-be verisimilitude injections in almost every post. "What is an MBTU?" and "What do certain people get checkmarks" goes pretty far in the role of Ingenue In A Strange Land, but then it would be "We call trucks 'lorries' on this side of the pond, and I love my corner fish shop!" and "Hello it's XX o'clock here right now once you account for the Time Difference" and "Liverpool is a Football Team", etc.
For a time, I thought the new and newly active Fray Moderator had been compromised by that squeaky-wheel method of data collection and collation favored at the end by Geoff. We can all imagine which regulars fill his Reports of Abuse box, and with what ends in view. JTM announced over in PFray that he had an interest, in the abstract anyway, in plagiarism, lying, and posing, but many of the posts which unequivocably established such were deleted right alongside the "Leave Britney and Denny Alone" bleats and squeals from Denny's long-familiar, mendacious enablers, as if it were all of a piece. Even my first posts hinting that "Gretchen" was not what she seemed, were deleted, along with link-filled posts on Denny's freshest plagiarisms and lies, by Zeus-Boy and others, presumably because they were considered "Attacks" of the kind Warned About by squeaky-credible wheels like LaurieAnn and White Babbit.
Finally, it ended this week much the way it has a couple dozen times before---with overreaching and impatience from Denny the Worm himself. Like the worst frauds, Denny never knows when to leave well enough alone. Unsatisfied as usual by the praise, encouragement, and collegiality generated in the normal course frrom the newly-chastened "Hear No Evil, See No Evil" PFray set, he apparently resorted again and again, after being outed and warned by JTM, again and again, like a drug abuser, or a compulsive thief, to posting in his false personas on PFray and elsewhere, to bolster himself and attack others, to engender more praise, more bonhomie, and especially more of a buzz from Fooling the Stuffy, Jealous, Personal Detractors of Denny. See, if the powers that be, posters and Slate staff, like and praise "Gretchen", goes the Pyrrhic narrative, "so the critiques of Denny's conduct (plagiarism, lying) and his PFray commentaries (derivative, trite) ---even the inexplicable absence of Checkmarks and Replies---all must be personal and unwarranted, a matter of envy and elitist clubbishness, not objectivity or merit-based rejection".
Denny is one of us, the Best Troll of the Fray.
