

The Trolls Among Us - Alex3917
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?ei=5058&partner=IWON&pagewanted=all

======
adrianwaj
The founder of 4Chan said:

"My personal private life is very separate from my Internet life ... There's a
firewall in between."
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/20/internet.go...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/20/internet.google)

and here in this article Jason Fortuny calls himself "a normal person who does
insane things on the Internet."

In both cases, they separate their screen lives with their non-screen lives.
But, the mind is the same that moves between the two, except that there are
two separate levels of morality that habituate according to the mind's sensory
context.

So what lies in the mind at the border between the two moralities: shame,
fear, hate and intolerance.

~~~
pg
I find it clarifies things to filter statements like "My personal private life
is very separate from my Internet life" and "a normal person who does insane
things on the Internet" through the rule: "Judge talent at its best and
character at its worst."

~~~
adrianwaj
In that case would you say Weev has lots of talent and seriously bad
character, in which case his "destroy others around him to build himself up"
philosophy is the result?

------
biohacker42
I remember kids like that from junior high, they push the line until someone
punches them in the face, then they have borders. The internet removes that
whole punch in the face part, it's a shame.

~~~
eznet
Agreed. I is funny that the majority of these 'trolls' would not dare provoke
an individual in the real world as they will online. I knew a guy in high
school who was extremely passive and timid in the real world, but got the
biggest kick out of being an aggressive ass to strangers online - I never
understood him, but feel that he knew in the real world, there were
consequences for his actions, where online he could get away with it with no
recourse. Really cowardice in my opinion.

~~~
cdr
Do you not feel that the ability to do things online without fear of some of
the recriminations you would receive in real life is also one of the great
things about the internet?

~~~
modoc
If you mean blogging about political issues from within China, then yes.

If you mean forgoing any semblance of social decency for the sole purpose of
antagonizing people and destroying positive discourse or social interaction,
then no.

~~~
eznet
Exactly.

I guess it can be argued that you cannot partially support freedom, as it is
only sold as the whole, but I also feel that there are laws that can mediate
this middle ground.

Although I am not always the biggest fan of 'Johny Law', I do feel that at
least the law can step in when harassment or threatening behavior is occurring
to reduce its presence. Most of these participating in trolling behaviors
would not continue their actions after a couple of rounds in the courts and
after paying the associated fines...

~~~
iron_ball
And the troll communities are aware of this. The only problem is that, as the
article points out, no objective standard of "cyberbullying" can be
established. Most of it does not even fall into the ethically debatable
category of hate speech, despite the meaningless spam of ethnic slurs these
groups use.

The troll groups will push the law a lot more softly than they'll push private
citizens -- they crack down on child pornography in their own ranks to avoid
being "v&" ("vanned", or "sent for a ride in the party van" -- the FBI). So if
we extend the van-hammer to mere insults, we might get them to back down...
but do you want to live in a country where calling someone names on the
internet, even horrible hateful names with full intent to hurt feelings and
disrupt mental equanimity, gets you arrested?

------
d0mine
Such articles prepare a ground for laws which will hurt everyone. Exaggerating
trolls influence leads to a cure that is worse then the disease.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Sorry, I don't see anything exaggerated about intentionaly trying to hurt
epileptics to "make them aware of the precautions they need to take."

~~~
noonespecial
I kind of hope the father of an epileptic shoots one of these griefers with a
deer rifle in order to "make them aware that they should be wearing ballistic
vests".

~~~
tdavis
Oh I'm sorry, it would seem you got confused on your way to YouTube and ended
up here. For the record, the solution to every problem or disagreement isn't
"shoot the offender."

It is a quality YouTube-style comment, however; you've even gotten specific as
to the type of rifle, suggesting you've given more than a moment's thought to
this punishment.

Needs more capital letters and cussing, though.

~~~
mechanical_fish
No, in context it's clear that this post isn't a real death threat. It's a
_Guns-and-Ammo_ -flavored riff designed to subtly point out that attempting to
cause seizures in epileptics is, in fact, reckless endangerment with a hint of
manslaughter.

The fact that it takes careful literary judgement to tell the difference
between this wry comment and a death threat illustrates the central fact of
Internet life: software can't prevent trolls. Human beings - editors and mods
- are needed to prevent trolls.

~~~
tdavis
Well obviously it's not a real death threat; I've been using the Interwebs a
long time and I've never seen a single legit threat of any sort.

Perhaps I misinterpreted the entire comment, but if so it's only because it
seems to be common now to threaten or recommend death upon anyone who does
anything one doesn't approve of. I've seen enough of that in the real world
and I've grown tired of seeing it on the Internet, where most people have no
understanding of what they're saying and nobody seems to get that killing the
opposing viewpoint is not the solution since their viewpoint is what creates
the contrast necessary for you to have one in the first place.

So, to conclude, I apologize to noonespecial for the flame; my patience with
an increasingly intelligence-diluted Web wanes.

~~~
noonespecial
Thanks, dude. For my part, in the future, I will use "bonk them over the head
with a large wooden mallet to make them aware that they should be wearing
helmets."

This will both avoid the use of the firearm image (and its strong, overused,
negative connotations), and more directly imply that its a humorous post.

Sorry to stir the pot folks, but I am a bit tired of the "I was trying to
_help_ them by showing them their weakness" line of BS use to justify
violence, destruction, and other blatantly antisocial behavior. I feel quite
strongly that they wouldn't be such good sports if someone else were to point
out some of their weaknesses in like manner.

------
mynameishere
I wonder...how many wall street journal and (now) new york times readers will,
for the first time in their sheltered lives, head on over to the darkest [1]
corner of the internet and see its inevitable bounty of child pron and
mutilation pron and cartoonishly extreme racism?

[1] Maybe. There's probably worse... Keep your wsj subscription up, I guess.

------
jorgeortiz85
All I can say is: A Clockwork Orange was prescient, it just didn't predict the
roving bands of violent hooligans would be on the Internet.

------
jonknee
> As we walked through Fullerton’s downtown, Weev told me about his day — he’d
> lost $10,000 on the commodities market, he claimed — and summarized his
> philosophy of “global ruin.” “We are headed for a Malthusian crisis,” he
> said, with professorial confidence. “Plankton levels are dropping. Bees are
> dying. There are tortilla riots in Mexico, the highest wheat prices in
> 30-odd years.” He paused. “The question we have to answer is: How do we kill
> four of the world’s six billion people in the most just way possible?” He
> seemed excited to have said this aloud.

Wait, is this article about reddit users?

~~~
byrneseyeview
Weev is mad that they didn't include his entire philosophy:

<http://weev.livejournal.com/305600.html>

~~~
icey
Fortunately most of us have already seen The Matrix, so we didn't need the
refresher.

~~~
byrneseyeview
I had no idea that The One referred to being number one in the MarHedge
rankings.

------
emmett
A symptom of the web being the lawless frontier. Eventually, the law will
begin to close in on this frontier as it has on every other.

~~~
pg
Or customs, at least. The reason trolling doesn't work in the real world is
that there are long evolved customs for neutralizing such people, like the
idea of private buildings. The first generation of online communities had no
protection against them. But these tend to evolve quickly in response to
abuses.

~~~
emmett
My experience with Justin.tv has shown me there is a more dangerous kind of
troll who will call the police on you, prank call at all hours of the night,
make prank deliveries, etc. These more dangerous trolls are mostly enabled by
the weak security in our phone system, rather than the internet.

Actually, as I write this, I realize that the solution will not be laws
(although I would certainly derive pleasure from seeing these people jailed).
The real solution will be VOIP; turning phones into the internet. When you can
turn your phone into accept-whitelist-only with a click, mass prank calling
will be stopped. When identity can be cryptographically determined, fake calls
to pizza places or the police will be stopped.

So we don't actually need laws; we just need a secure phone system.

~~~
shawndrost
Wow, it would be fantastic to have your phone controlled by software. For one
thing, you could apply the same kind of anti-spam techniques, and since there
is a canonical phone number distributor, they would be even more effective.

------
wallflower
After reading this article, I am concluding that there are small percentage of
trolls who are literally terrorists - impacting other people's lives in a
dangerous way. No remorse, too.

------
eznet
In the real world we call them "douche bags"...

~~~
cdr
I honestly don't understand why this is getting modded up as much as it is.

~~~
SwellJoe
Because it seems too obvious, or because you disagree?

~~~
thaumaturgy
Because it's crass.

------
menloparkbum
When I was in college eons ago I used an IRC channel that was taken over by
trolls. Taken over might be an exaggeration... they showed up, took channel
ops, and never left. The original regulars just kept chatting as usual.

Anyway, the thing I find most bizarre is that the trolls who took over my IRC
channel only talked about weird anti-semitic conspiracy theories. The stuff
they discussed was exactly the same as what the "Weev" character from this
article talks about on his livejournal page. I also had never looked at
encyclopedia dramatica before... i guess internet troll culture is heavily
intertwined with the white supremacy movement? Or is all the jewish conspiracy
stuff part of the joke?

~~~
unalone
It's part of the joke. Several friends of mine are active trolls, and in
person they're pretty well-balanced. Their saying things like that is entirely
because they know it'll offend people.

------
goodgoblin
Wow - what a great article- I never thought characters like Weev actually
existed. Definitely makes the sound of cars passing by more interesting.

------
iamelgringo
I actually found moot's new robot9000 banning algorithm to be interesting. I'd
like to hear more about it. Banning people for progressively larger periods of
time seems to be a decent idea.

~~~
cdr
Actually, it's Randall Munroe's:
[http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-signal-
at...](http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-signal-attacking-
noise-in-chat/)

------
greyman
The leading photo is hilarious.

------
AndyKelley
As I was reading this article, a song called "Most Terrible Archer" by Joy
Electric came on. While it was probably not written about trolls, I couldn't
help seeing the connections:

    
    
      Separate your chief anxieties
      Cut the cord, but you won't
      Excommunicate from our society
      Are you bold? You are not
    
      Oh no
      The most terrible, terrible
      Archer
      
      You among the league of militants
      How little you have learned
      Tried and failed to be one of the innocents
      Little left of yourself
      
      Little left of myself
      Little right of yourself

------
cdr
It's kind of funny how mean/trollish a lot of the comments to this article are
here.

~~~
stcredzero
Actually, it makes perfect sense. Agression is the natural reaction to hurt.

~~~
cdr
Oh, it's certainly understandable. Showing hurt is how the trolls win, because
that's what they feed off of. And especially responding with aggression,
you're going down to the level of the troll.

------
cdr
ED was having serious bandwidth/funding issues already. Looks like it's down
again now; getting this kind of publicity was probably the surest way to kill
it dead.

~~~
alaskamiller
Oh no! Where would people find documentation of underage girls and their
webcam pics?!

~~~
iron_ball
jj.am.

------
akd
What's with all the MSM coverage of 4chan lately? Why, of all Internet
communities, does the New York Times write about its filthiest cesspool?

~~~
iamelgringo
It makes for good TV and sells. That's why the press.

------
Xichekolas
> _said one ex-troll_

Once a troll, always a troll.

~~~
time_management
There are many different kinds and levels of trolling. Most trolls are
reasonable people who refuse to post racism or affect others IRL, but get a
kick out of stimulating controversial discussion or "pwning" others (Rickroll,
etc.) in harmless ways online. One of my best trolls, in 2000, was when I hit
a Magic: the Gathering forum and started the rumor that the ink on old Magic
cards has a 10-year lifespan and that valuable cards would soon become
illegible. It's obnoxious and hilarious, but no one is harmed or harassed by
this.

The fringe, though, is clearly getting out of hand. For 95% of trolls, it's an
embarrassing hobby held by a small set of neurotic, but otherwise normal and
upstanding, individuals. It's like a video game, in terms of its addictive
nature, and also the ease with which the practice can absorb an unreasonable
proportion of one's time. Unfortunately, the truly rotten 5% is giving the
rest of the trolls a terrible name by doing things that are unacceptable by
any standard, internet or "IRL".

~~~
william42
There are really two types of trolls and they're completely different things.
One type is the person who does rickrolls, feigns ignorance in technical
forums, and generally is more of a prankster than anything else.

And then there are people who would be best described as terrorists. These are
the people who drive teens to suicide. These are the people who send death
threats to Kathy Sierra. These are the ones who need to be arrested for
harassment.

------
theoneill
I wonder how this story is doing on reddit...

------
time_management
There's a wide spectrum of behavior that is categorized as "trolling", from
the obnoxious but harmless to the outright criminal. Rickrolling people on
message boards and harassing people IRL don't deserve the same word.

Anyone who affects others' real lives has no right to use the "trolling"
excuse. It's just unacceptable.

Also, the people claiming, in that article, to have made large sums of money
from their trolling activities are lying. Trolls always exaggerate their
"accomplishments" to absurd degrees, taking credit for others' "work" and
blowing the external effects/importance of their trolling way out of
proportion.

------
rtfa
I just had an idea for how to turn the trolling phenomenon into potentially
very lucrative profits for a startup. Anybody interested?

On the one hand, I don't want to give away my idea. On the other hand,
implementing it might take several people working on it for a few months. What
should I do?

~~~
Xichekolas
Give away the idea to several people in the hopes that they hear the idea and
want to work on it.

~~~
rtfa
I think there is value in the idea itself. If I just give it away for free,
whoever implements it has no incentive to share the profits with me.

If I share the idea, I make no money from it. If I don't share, I might one
day have enough time to implement it myself, or run into people I can trust
100%. If these are the only options, I HAVE TO choose the latter, and not
share it for now :-(

~~~
Xichekolas
But you have to ask yourself, what are you doing currently that is more
valuable than the idea, and if that is the case, then how valuable is the idea
to you at all?

If what you are doing right now isn't as valuable as the idea, then why not
work on it (right now, with someone you trust) instead?

~~~
rtfa
Good point. I'll try to explore how trolling can be converted into cash flow
more closely. Thanks.

~~~
eru
Troll? At least I thought at first. But the last commment was too reasonable.

------
vaksel
Well its obvious what this article wants, for the government to step in and
regulate people from hurting your feelings.

Seriously when have we become a country of pussies?

~~~
dehowell
Yes, the parents of Mitchell Henderson are indeed pussies. It's unbelievable
that they could be so thin skinned about a few harmless prank calls... come
on, it's only the suicide of their child we're talking about!

Being outraged by a problem is not synonymous with wanting the government to
fix it. Bringing attention to a problem is not synonymous with begging for new
laws.

~~~
stcredzero
I've been on the receiving end of prank calls. When I first reported it to the
police, the officer assigned to my case seemed to have the attitude that I was
just thin skinned. That changed the moment I played him a recording I made of
the callers. After that, he was just as motivated to track them down as I was.

They turned out to be a bunch of teenage boys of low socioeconomic status.
Their only reason for singling me out was my name which they had run across in
the phone book. (The listing was in error -- it was supposed to be unlisted.)
I suspect that their delight in the cruelty was enhanced by their conclusion
that I was a poor immigrant who couldn't afford advanced features on his phone
line. I suspect that they were happy to finally find someone "lower" than
themselves to pick on.

If you've never been the subject of arbitrary cruelty by some kind of mob,
then you don't really know what it's like. And if you don't know what it's
like to grow up in a society that brands you as somehow inferior, such that
cruelty to you constitutes some kind of "joke" then there's something else you
don't really know.

