Socrates forced to speak

Eric writes:

“Piggy-backing on your most recent Socrates-is-not a troll, it can also very easily be pointed out that in Book I of the *Republic*, Thrasymachus actually physically coerces Socrates to answer his line of questioning, and Phaedrus in the dialogue of the same name also threatens Socrates as well to give his opinion. There is a real tendency toward violence in Socrates’ sophistical interlocutors. As you say, more often than not, it’s always the Sophists and others who are the bullying trolls, who themselves use real violence or threats of it in their bullying.”

Yes, and Thrasymachus is especially scary. Thrasymachus also employs what is now recognizable as a classic trolling trope: “Who cares about my motivations or attitude? Just answer the content of my speech.” (Though unfortunately, even Socrates uses that one from to time in different contexts.)

In a way, you could even define trolling as pure content— content devoid of all commitment and all nuance. (The troll is the anti-McLuhan, then.) Hence, it is the perfectly logical excrescence of the view that all thinking is nothing but propositional content, and that this must be critically negated if it is to be improved. Contra the interesting post just cited below, trolling is not some timeless impulse found in every human heart, but is the decadent waste product of a style of thinking that no longer even generates many benefits. Let’s start moving on.