Letter to a Troll
Dear Rickie or Dickie Doubleday or whatever name you are going under.
I have a very simple question for you.
Why?
What on earth do you hope to achieve by submitting nonsensical inane comments to a web site?
You leave such enlightening comments as "fuck off" and "fuck you grandad". Is this supposed to mean something? Is this supposed to indicate a superior level of intelligence? Am I supposed to be overawed by your superior vocabulary?
I presume your ambition is to drive me to shut this site down? That ain't gonna happen. I have been writing it for nearly ten years and I'm not going to shut it down just to give you the satisfaction.
You try to disguise yourself by using my readers' names. This hurts them, not me. If you can't even be honest enough to use your own name then that shows that you are a coward as well as being annoying.
I have stuck the site on moderation again, but if you will be able to read this and I will be able to read any comment you care to put up. If your answer is honest, I will put it through, but if it's merely more puerile abuse I won't.
This is your chance to state your message, your reasons or whatever.
Go on.
Let's hear it.
Just letting you know that "killing trolls" – your today's post, 14th Feb 2016 gives the message
Sorry about that. I took it down to replace with this one.
The old one is temporarily held in the cupboard under the stairs.
Do you have an IP address for that vile piece of excrement? If you want I can do a bit of tracing for you.
I hate trolls with a level of passion that is usually only exhibited by religious fundamentalists.
I do indeed, but it is of no use. He uses proxy servers so the potential list runs to hundreds or even thousands. There are ways and means though which I won't mention [for the moment as they are under test].
Grandad – Rickie, aka. Dickie Doubleday is a well known rabid anti smoking troll. In 2012 he applied the same tactics as here to attempt to shut down Ranty's blog and was also successful in closing down Pat Nurse's blog, Tea and Cigarettes. He has also been trolling on Orphans of Liberty, The Filthy Engineers's blog and made some unsuccessful attempts with Frank Davis. Apparently he hates Frank, Dick Puddlecote and Simon Clark with a passion, also anyone who challenges his views on smoking. His worst happened with Longrider. When stood up to Rickie resorted to publicizing Longrider's client data on various other blogs, in an attempt to lose Longrider his job. This is a vile, devious deranged individual. Longrider, Ranty and others tracked him down in 2012 and informed his ISP of his antics. Rickie suddenly went quiet. Full story here: http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/2016/01/03/ghosts-of-the-past/ But a year or two ago up he popped as Rickie on Diocles's blog, where his insane rantings were tolerated. On new years day this year, Rickie's reaction to a joke comment I made on Diocles's blog led to me calling him out and WW3 erupted.. https://dioclese.wordpress.com/2016/01/01/happy-new-fuckin-year/comment-page-1/#comments He seems to have started trolling again since then. I believe Rickie lives in Norfolk, but no one can tell you more about him than Longrider, who I suggest you contact for further information.
I am proud to be in such illustrious company!
I was aware of him all right, as he first appeared here at the beginning of the month. I learned a good deal of his history then. I don't mind obnoxious comments provided they are in context but trolling for the sake of trolling gets on my wick. He then crossed the line altogether by posting here as one or more regulars, not only abusing me but abusing other regulars too. That I will not tolerate.
This ain't the end of the matter!
Thanks for the heads-up, R
I personally don't worry my head of with pathetic little twats like Dickie/Rickie as I have put up with worse than him in my working life. Also the fact that having survived three military conflicts during my career has allowed me to not worry about whether a cigarette or two is going to kill me. I actually find it quite amusing to read his ill thought out, childish rants. They make me smile.
I do apologise that my blog has been a bit sparse of late. The reason being that I've gone down with every known cold this month, most likely caught from my grandkids.
TFE
Use first comment moderation. Also,you can install a plug-in that will strip off the anonymous proxy, exposing his originating IP. Then you simply ban that.
Aha! I have been searching for just such a plugin, but so far I haven't found the right one. Obviously you have?
Yup. That combined with first comment moderation will allow the genuine people through and trap him.
As to your question, Dick Puddlecote described this guy as a special kind of crazy. He is a single-issue obsessive and does not handle dissent at all well. The behavior you describe is precisely what he did before, so his recent denials of being Dickie Doubleday are worthless. Yup, it's the same twat.
Just bear in mind that when you delete his comments, in his deluded reality, you are censoring him and denying his freedom of speech. Yeah, whatever… The moron has no concept of what freedom of speech actually means. It doesn't not mean going onto someone's website and polluting the comments section.
Still, no one can hear him scream in the spam queue.
Seeing as I get around 100 spam a day he'll have plenty company. Unfortunately for him, they either have lousy English or Chinese only. He'll have thousands of links to play with though.
I once met a cunt called Dickie Doubleday at the Barking Smack (Yarmouth), the fat bastard was pissed up shouting from the bar to smokers stood outside calling them ignorant cunts, I saw him later on the market chip stalls being abusive about the size of the portions.
Could be the same bloke, he is often in the Barking smack, or the Lacon Arms Hemsby
Tom
A remarkable coincidence? You have my full permission to do anything you like to him, up to and including beating him to a pulp. I draw the line at outright murder though. Too quick.
I'm not going anywere near the big cunt, thank you very much. he drives around in a Toyota truck thing with spare wheels piled up in the back with a big " no smoking" sign in the rear window.
I'm certain he is the motor trade, scrapyard perhaps, a right nasty cunt.
Be careful if you holiday in Hemsby because he hates Man utd fans who wear football shirts more than smokers
Hmmm Fits what we know of him. Leg Iron did a bit of digging a few years back and this fits the description he came up with.
Sounds like the fat fuck should take up smoking and lose some weight
Hah! Someone should suggest it to him.
Christ, is that obnoxious twat still at it? He's such a retard. Still, I suppose he merely epitomises everything that's wrong with Tobacco Control and the warped ideology it stands for.
And they wonder why we refer to them as Nazis….
… or Midges? Those little fuckers who hang around in summer making you itch, and spoiling a nice sunny day?
Nazi Midges!
Well done, Grandy, it's the only way to handle the towering intellectuals who seem to be attracted to the light of Blogs like moths to a candle.
Hi Grandad.
Just saying hello. Rickie seems to have given up on ISAC and Dioclese at the moment although he did pop in briefly this morning at ISAC. Didn't do him any good.
First comment moderation seems to work but we're also looking into the plug in that was suggested for tracing back ip addresses through proxies so you can ban him at source. See https://wordpress.org/plugins/real-ip-detector/installation/
Welcome to my little corner of the Interwebs, Dioclese. I had a bit of trouble identifying ISAC but I got there in the end and saw your love letter.
I installed a couple of plugins but the one that seems to work is https://wordpress.org/plugins/tornevall-networks-dnsbl-implementation/. It certainly dumped our friend into Spam, and had a similar effect with Longrider's Pingback above, so maybe it's too strong. I think it also may have screwed up one of my site monitoring tools, but [to paraphrase that horrible ad] It's worth it.
It's a bummer when you run into people with these types of psychological disorders. On one hand you'd like to see them get some professional help, and on the other you wouldn't mind if a big wave swept them off the Yarmouth Pier!
This one is a real Bad Lad. He is a fanatical anti-smoker and when anyone blocks him he rants about free speech. His idea of free speech is to post endless comments which are nothing but abuse and insults. When he runs out of them he just resorts to mindless dribble. Some examples –
bollocks to you all……………………..xxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
you cunt Grandad…get a grip
full of shit again grandad
fuck off grandad
Just a tiny sample of the many he has sent, and which I keep for my amusement. As you can see – a tower of intellectual abilities, making salient points and powerful arguments?
Yes, well, intellect was never Rickie/DD's strong point. Nor has he ever grasped the simple point that free speech does not mean entitlement to a free platform, nor that anyone is obliged to listen.
dear granddad, i salute your most wise counsel.although you might be interested to know,rickie,or dickie, or as i suspect him of having at least 3 aliases. i ran into a singulary unpleasant person calling himself patroller at the exit door leads in. i posted a few replys to his ranting hatefulness.it is a good blog as good as yours or frank davis or dare i say it velvet love iron fist. still all he could post was stuff that was vile hate filled bile towards vapers, and smokers.i smoke but i habitually let my vape freinds do as they will.to me smoke or vape it is all the same to me.and i like how you often make the antis angry as hell. good on you sir.and i read all the prosmoking blogs as i am first and last and always a smoker. again i salute you sir as a gentlman of the old school. may you blog for as long as anyone can. i respect you. yours sincrely, raymond t. barfoot