Today I am going to cry a little – oh no, change of mind – I rather offer some comfort. These days I started to play around with a security gadget, familiarized myself with the subject matter and today I had the first questions. I found a forum to discuss this new technology. Nice fit, so I quickly placed a question in the forum.
All responses so far were disappointing, exclusively from utterly clueless contemporaries. The most intelligent answers were in the category “What do you want to do this for?”. The most dumbest thread of discussion started with a participant who didn’t even know the basic techniques in modern security (asymmetric cryptography). He wondered about private and public keys, which is state-of-the-art you learn in lesson one of any security training. Subsequently followed by the reply of another clueless little person, who suspected a public key is an invention implemented for the NSA and suggested not to use the technology for this reason. There are no words for this low level of brainpower. He is too stupid to piss a hole in the snow.
Since this forum was new for me, I browsed briefly and found 5% meaningful posts at max. Everything else was in the league of unboxing videos or advice to reset the device to factory defaults if it is blocked.
At this point you easily get the impression that only 5% of the people participating in this forum have a brain at all. Be careful, this is a fallacy! A closer look at the profile of the above commentator reveals simple truth. This particular guy has been active for 12 days and in that time was able to produce 658 comments. These are nearly 55 comments per calendar day. This miserable person has nothing else to do but to spit his stupidity over his keyboard. He has no time for any meaningful job.
Beware this is a characteristic that this commentator shares with similar brain zombies. Stupid commentators usually produce more than 10 comments per day, in this forum only. Lords knows if the flood other internet spots as well.
So we can emphasize that there are far more than 5% educated security contributors, but the stupid have flooded everything and destroyed the forum.
This today event annoyed me, because great technology forums often helped me perfectly and it would be so nice if this particular forum would do well. Would have, could have, should have… The reality is simple, the stupid ones won there. No need to grieve, everything is said.
Unfortunately, this happens time and again. It is particularly sad when well-functioning groups are destroyed by such zombies. Having plenty of time is an underestimated power on the Internet.
A while ago a friend of mine once battled against a troll. My friend was a professional in this topic, but a troll was constantly altering a Wikipedia article incorrectly. My friend invested a lot of time in the discussion with the troll and with the Wikipedia admins, but without succeeding. A year later, the troll was gone, presumably found another target and today the article is correct. Simple conclusion, do not get involved in discussions with those guys they have more more time, means more pull.
If you reflect briefly on which type of persons actually has so much time, it is very likely you would ignore them in real life. This thought is sort of comforting. It is essential not to be misled by the sheer mass of text-frozen foolishness. No matter if we talk about trolls producing stupidity, rejection, criticism or hatred. Always check a possible bias, the multitude of text does not reflect the majority of population.
Some last words for the day: Besides all the crap, the internet is a place where you can find beautiful, clever, helpful spots. You have to search for them, take care of them and pass them on secretly.