#If someone's known for throwing vague baiting hostilities out there on occasion it's best to avoid them.

[angstmonsterwrites]

It really, really bothers me when I see someone posting intentionally vague but very provocative statements to try to bait passersby into engaging so that they can shame and drag them as a prime example of whatever the vague post was about.

And it's never an argument that can be won, because there were really no salient points to be refuted to begin with. OP can just move the goalposts as much as they like to make the person they've managed to bait feel especially foolish.

This kind of 'trap-setting' is a form of bullying and psychological abuse sophisticated enough to be both indirect to maintain plausible deniability, and still targeted toward those prone to a defensive mindset and who also tend to crave the approval of a pseudo-authority figure so as to feel 'safe' enjoying things publicly. The point of the provocation is for the OP to set themselves up as that authority figure, and then to tear down any sense of security or confidence their targets might have had. They usually also have a group of dedicated followers or alt accounts to back them up, designed to make their mean-spirited ploy look like a popular opinion everyone was secretly harboring anyway.

And with the kind of time I've dedicated to studying the behavior and tactics of trolls charged with a promoting a specific agenda over the past few years, seeing posts like that really makes me want to ask, "So, whose payroll are you on? Who's making degrading the mental health of western or otherwise English-speaking audiences profitable to you?"

Because those known trolls are the only other place I've observed this exact behavior.

Edit to add/ clarify: Yes, it's entirely possible that some of these are independent actors who are a smarter grade of manipulative asshole by themselves because they get off on it. I don't want to get too deeply into what may be construed as tinfoil hat territory by suggesting that I have some conclusive or exclusive knowledge of who are the paid bad actors, because I don't. I just know what their behavior pattern looks like.

The point remains: It's shitty behavior that I wish was wider-recognized and could be shunned into non-existence.