The Trolls Among Us

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

by Alex3917 • 18 years ago

83 98 18 years ago

theoneill• 18 years ago

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

emmett2• 18 years ago

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.

pg3• 18 years ago

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.

akd2• 18 years ago

But Internet escapism is in large part a rejection of these long-evolved customs. The people who flock to places like /b/ want a place where everything goes. Sure, there will be the equivalent of "private buildings" on the Internet, but there will always be free-for-all places, just as there are places in the real world where typical customs are more relaxed (e.g. Burning Man)

emmett2• 18 years ago

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.

cdr11• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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

iron_ball2• 18 years ago

jj.am.

eznet6• 18 years ago

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

cdr11• 18 years ago

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

SwellJoe• 18 years ago

Because it seems too obvious, or because you disagree?

crocus• 18 years ago

Well, one interesting thing about it is that it points out that such people have always been around, and in turn implies that we could learn how to deal with them online by using techniques we've developed for dealing with them offline.

breck• 18 years ago

I didn't either, until after 5 visits I noticed it was still high, so I read the article. Actually kind of interesting.

stcredzero5• 18 years ago

In the overwhelming majority of cases, the troller thinks of his/her victims as the "douche bag." They think of their "joke" as some kind of blow for truth.

jorgeortiz85• 18 years ago

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.

d0mine2• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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

d0mine2• 18 years ago

He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither </quote>

I don't want a political debate here. My e-mail is in the profile.

noonespecial3• 18 years ago

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".

cdr11• 18 years ago

How is the article exaggerating? It's publicizing (and arguably somewhat glorifying), but I don't see where it's inaccurate.

akd2• 18 years ago

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?

iamelgringo2• 18 years ago

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

cdr11• 18 years ago

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

stcredzero5• 18 years ago

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

cdr11• 18 years ago

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.

vaksel• 18 years ago

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?

BrandonM• 18 years ago

That's not the conclusion I got from the article.

dehowell• 18 years ago

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.

stcredzero5• 18 years ago

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.

rtfa4• 18 years ago

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?

Xichekolas3• 18 years ago

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

rtfa4• 18 years ago

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 :-(

time_management4• 18 years ago

Sounds odd, but potentially interesting. Anti-troll software?

I know a few trolls, but mostly small potatoes; I wouldn't associate with the ones who affect people's lives. Anyway, feel free to contact me at magus.pwnsen at gmail dot com

rtfa4• 18 years ago

It's not as so much anti-troll as it is pro-money :-)

mds• 18 years ago

Golf clap

adrianwaj4• 18 years ago

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...

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.

pg3• 18 years ago

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."

adrianwaj4• 18 years ago

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?

Hexstream• 18 years ago

Those people "with a firewall" hurt people in real life with their "virtual" selves, crossing the real-world/virtual border, but I have a feeling they'd be the first to whine if someone retaliated in real life (in a more or less civil way) for what their "virtual" selves did.

What hypocrisy.

jackchristopher2• 18 years ago

Humans have a tendency to compartmentalize themselves. It's an inherent cognitive bias.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/01/outside_the_lab.html

iamelgringo2• 18 years ago

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.

cdr11• 18 years ago

Actually, it's Randall Munroe's: http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-signal-at...

Xichekolas3• 18 years ago

> said one ex-troll

Once a troll, always a troll.

time_management4• 18 years ago

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".

william423• 18 years ago

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.

greyman• 18 years ago

The leading photo is hilarious.

wallflower• 18 years ago

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.

goodgoblin• 18 years ago

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

biohacker42• 18 years ago

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.

stcredzero5• 18 years ago

The self-righteousness of trollers is every bit as intense as those of the so-called "blowhards" that they target. It's something that I recognize. It's just like the kids who used to haze me when I was a kid, solely because of my Asian ethnicity. There is the same insistence that it's some kind of joke. There is the same delight in cruelty. There is the same self-righteous self assurance that somehow they've struck a blow to make the world a better place.

It is also something that I recognize in myself. The superiority of the Tit-for-Two-Tats strategy seems to be on the level of mathematical truth.

AndyKelley2• 18 years ago

What does 'haze' mean in this context?

eznet6• 18 years ago

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.

Chocobean• 18 years ago

agreed. Mankind has always had cowards, only difference is that today we would laugh at the people who try hard but fail and fawn over those who gained much without courage, risk or merit.

"They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. ... It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so. "

from "Abolition of Man - or Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools" http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.h...

cdr11• 18 years ago

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?

jonknee• 18 years ago

> 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?

byrneseyeview2• 18 years ago

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

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

icey• 18 years ago

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

mynameishere• 18 years ago

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.

time_management4• 18 years ago

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.

AndyKelley2• 18 years ago

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

menloparkbum• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

The Trolls Among Us

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