How come there are so many kooks on the net?
In a word, attention. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that a turd in an art gallery gets a lot more attention than yet another Picasso. Getting people across the world to tell you that you’re a disgusting twit seems like a strange thing to get turned on by, but obviously enough people out there derive sufficient enjoyment and satisfaction from it to keep the net well-stocked with fertilizer. Most net.kooks quickly find a few stock tactics that are sure to annoy enough people into responding that they can just sit back and repost the same stuff year after year and bask in all the attention it gets them with practically no effort on their part. Arguing with a net kook only provides further encouragement–if you want to keep all the Picassos from being replaced by wall-to-wall turds, the only effective approach is to ignore them until they go off in search of other people still naive enough to play the Pay-Attention-To-Meeee game.
