A piercing question

I was asked a question yesterday which can basically be paraphrased as "Is everything you say a troll?" Conversation was moving too fast to actually answer said question but I have been thinking about it a lot since then. The answer is no, but if the question was "Is everything you say a shitpost?" then it might be yes. But it is easily possible that 85-90% of what I say isn't really a true reflection of my beliefs, but my just saying shit. I'd also so that my level of shitposting is directly proportional with the size of my audience. Catch me one-on-one and I'm a lot more likely to be sincere, honest or forthright (though not entirely of course). Which is probably why I shitpost less on my blog, seeing as I have an audience of none.*

Another, more important dimension of this question is why. Why am I like this? Well, I'm contrarian by nature and so like taking the opposite views as everyone else.** It also factors into my love for a healthy (or toxic) debate. Sophistry is fun. So it's just something I enjoy. However, there's a lot more to it. I think that a decent sized part of it is that I use it as a defense mechanism. Defense against what? Good question.

Part of it is that I'm an extremely private person (he says on a public blog) and by always taking absurd positions, it's harder for others to know my true beliefs, my true feelings, my true opinions. So it acts as a smokescreen of doubt on everyone else. Hopefully so they don't pry but at the very least so they don't know without caring enough to ask. And maybe it's to protect my feelings from people who disagree. After all, they don't know if they are disagreeing with me personally or some absurd position I've taken for the lols. 

And maybe part of it is to hide my true feelings from myself. Is constantly joking about leaving a joke or am I treating it like a joke so that I don't quit my program? No one knows, not even me.

So yeah, I'm a proud shitposter. I'm a long time troll. And that's all fine in moderation.

*It's hilarious how hard it is to find this blog (minus looking at my facebook profile of course...though I just fixed a link I didn't realize was broken. oops, we'll see if I regret this). I can google my name + blogspot and it's easier to find a reference to the time I introduced a band at a random concert in Jakarta than it is to find this blog. I really am yelling into the void. For some SEO I might regret Jacob Bills blog blogspot conlangs Kikxo blogging (I've never done SEO before). 

**Some of my greatest hits include basically all of Šyþed Pyklez (especially "The Donkey Wants to Run" and "Eat Shamu"), the time I argued in a political science class at BYU that all laws about clothing are government oppression (including anti-nudity laws), writing to city council as a kid (for cub scouts?) to complain about us being a nuclear free zone, the time I wrote to a congressman (for scouts) to advocate for not banning/legalizing horse meat, and being Vatican City at MUN and giving a speech about how if this resolution was passed God would set the world on fire. There's a lot more of course and I have mellowed out since high school (apparently) though I still argue for sweatshops when around my leftier friends and against marriage as a government institution with rightier ones.