I Did It for the Lulz
Mike Riggs | August 2, 2008, 2:02pm
"I can't push you into the fire...but I can look at you while you're burning in the fire and not be required to help."
Reading Mattathias Schwartz's New York Times Magazine story about Internet trolls is like eating blowfish: Fun during the doing, and a little nauseating afterward, when you realize that the stuff could mess up your day.
Trolls are people who lurk Internet comment boards under pseudonymous handles, posting stupid questions and antagonistic comments in hopes of baiting the devout into flame wars. Schwartz managed to meet and interview one of the worst of the breed: Jason Fortuny, who lured responses from over 100 Craigslist users with a sub-seeking-dom ad, and then posted their pictures and personal information on his blog. More recently, Fortuny created the Megan Had It Coming blog, where he drew over 3,000 comments with a few posts mocking the Myspace-related suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier.
Fortuny, along with most of Schwartz's anonymous trolling subjects, is remorseless and—this is purely my amateur psychological opinion—bat-shit insane. But he and his kind are also the Janus-headed future of the Internet, because a number of them aren't just trolls; they're hackers, identity thieves, and genuine misanthropes, and they wreak with ease a kind of petty yet terrifying havoc that's difficult to stop.
Schwartz shares one story about Sherrod DeGrippo, the web administrator for a site about trolls called Encyclopedia Dramatica. According to DeGrippo, a band of trolls bombarded his apartment with pizza deliveries, escorts, and taxis when he refused to edit the group's entry. Other trolls that Schwartz interviewed link fabricated records with real Social Security numbers. Some are able to block or cancel cell phone access.
Not every troll is a hacker—many trolls are just run-of-the-mill assholes; the guys and gals who stick out a leg when you're trying to make your way from the bar to a table with an armful of drinks, or shout "Fight!" in a high school hallway as a couple of twerps roll around on the linoleum. Nevertheless, Schwartz brings up the question, Should we do anything about this? If yes, what exactly? The answer is, well, complicated:
Several state legislators have recently proposed cyberbullying measures. At the federal level, Representative Linda Sánchez, a Democrat from California, has introduced the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, which would make it a federal crime to send any communications with intent to cause "substantial emotional distress." In June, Lori Drew pleaded not guilty to charges that she violated federal fraud laws by creating a false identity "to torment, harass, humiliate and embarrass" another user, and by violating MySpace's terms of service. But hardly anyone bothers to read terms of service, and millions create false identities. "While Drew's conduct is immoral, it is a very big stretch to call it illegal," wrote the online-privacy expert Prof. Daniel J. Solove on the blog Concurring Opinions.
Many trolling practices, like prank-calling the Hendersons and intimidating Kathy Sierra, violate existing laws against harassment and threats. The difficulty is tracking down the perpetrators. In order to prosecute, investigators must subpoena sites and Internet service providers to learn the original author's IP address, and from there, his legal identity. Local police departments generally don't have the means to follow this digital trail, and federal investigators have their hands full with spam, terrorism, fraud and child pornography. But even if we had the resources to aggressively prosecute trolls, would we want to? Are we ready for an Internet where law enforcement keeps watch over every vituperative blog and backbiting comments section, ready to spring at the first hint of violence? Probably not. All vigorous debates shade into trolling at the perimeter; it is next to impossible to excise the trolling without snuffing out the debate.
If we can't prosecute the trolling out of online anonymity, might there be some way to mitigate it with technology? One solution that has proved effective is "disemvoweling" - having message-board administrators remove the vowels from trollish comments, which gives trolls the visibility they crave while muddying their message. A broader answer is persistent pseudonymity, a system of nicknames that stay the same across multiple sites. This could reduce anonymity's excesses while preserving its benefits for whistle-blowers and overseas dissenters. Ultimately, as Fortuny suggests, trolling will stop only when its audience stops taking trolls seriously.
In a strange way, trolls represent the best and worst of the Internet. In applying their anarchic philosophies, trolls like Fortuny end up on the front line of the fight against censorship and regulation. Yet their small-scale terrorizing expands the list of potential victims to include anyone who happens to earn the ire of these tech-savvy psychopaths.
Mad Max | August 3, 2008, 9:00am | #
The guys in that article give trolls a bad name.
Here is the key part of the Congressional bill filed by Rep. Sanchez:
"Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. . . . [T]he term `electronic means' means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.'."
The preamble to the bill is full of claims about the harmful effects of cyberbullying on children, but note that the substantive part of the bill is not limited to children, but can apply to acts solely involving adults.
As a citizen, I think this bill sucks. As a potential future lawyer, I salivate at the potential income I could gain if the bill passes - assuming (which is likely) that the bill makes it easier to sue alleged "cyberbullies." Both plaintiffs and defendants would need lawyers.
Please, won't someone think of the lawyers?
Tom | August 3, 2008, 4:21pm | #
These nimwits, such as Fortuny, construe their actions as some sort of brave, subversive campaign against parts of humanity. They feel empowered by it; they believe they feel a strengthening of Self.
But here's the thing, you losers: You're not truly empowered, you're not truly strong, you're not truly cool ... because
you're still in thrall to other human beings. You're weak, because you remain submissive to the notion of "society" and the people who make it up -- whether it's Megan Meier/Lori Drew, Mitchell Henderson, the "noobs" you bash online, whoever. You still
give a shit about the fact that
they're there, and thus in your own way are just as lame as the 40-year-old office chick clicking over to Perez Hilton a dozen times a day to breathlessly soak up the latest celeb gossip.
If you were truly self-empowered -- hell, if you were even just truly misanthropic -- you wouldn't have contempt for these people or engage with them. You simply wouldn't
think about them. If you were truly smart, truly strong, you'd burrow away and become all existential about yourself rather than remain captive to the fact that other human beings are in your midst, breathing and existing too.
But you don't, because you're weak, and you suck.
Micha Ghertner | August 4, 2008, 12:14am | #
Why do you find trolling more enjoyable than honest debate?
Jennifer,
Because "honest debate" is inappropriate in certain situations. Sometimes humor is called for. Sometimes "honesty" is not the best policy.
This NYT article is unfortunate because it focuses on personalities at the expense of community. The beauty and genius of 4chan is what it produces, as a community of anonymous pranksters and misanthropes, and not the particular characteristics of the individuals who constitute it.
Yes, /b/ is a moral cesspool. But it is an equal opportunity cesspool. It's the difference between a stand up comic like Sarah Silverman who distributes her offensiveness widely, and one like Michael Richards, whose focus became personal and earnest, and ended up getting himself trolled by a heckler.
Sometimes pranks go too far. I certainly won't defend everything this community has done. But part of being a community made up of the anonymous is that you have to accept both the good and the bad produced by many disparate anonymous individuals. It's like the difference between being an apologist for
capitalism and being an apologist for individual
capitalists. One can recognize the value in the system itself while not necessarily approving of its most vocal representatives.
Like alcohol in meatspace, anonymity on the Internet lowers inhibitions for both good and ill. It leads to vicious, unconscionable pranks, but also very funny, very necessary ones.
I think there is much value to putting a name (and reputation) behind an argument, but there is also a place for anonymity. Explore 4chan and /b/ and see for yourself.
Posting in an epic thread | August 4, 2008, 4:41am | #
Making the "I won't vote for a muslim" comment in a Barak forum is not, in and of itself humorous, the humor comes in the responses. The best way to get rid of a troll really is to ignore them, and there is inherent humor in the fact that people just don't seem to get this, or realize that the commenter in question is a troll.
A common motto of such internet pranksters is "The internet is serious business" the fact is that a person posting "I won't vote for Obama he's a muslim" isn't inherently funny, but nor is it harmful. The humor comes when people start launching vitriolic counter-attacks betraying their fanaticism, or writing long articulate responses trying to make this wayward soul see the light, or pretty much anything in between.
In each case respondants fall into the troll's trap and treat a random internet comment like it decide the election, or sway votes, or MATTER in any way whatsoever.
Griefing/Trolling is funny engaging vigorously in a futile activity over something that *does not matter* Another common internet aphorism is that arguing on the internet is like competing in the special olympics, even if you win, you're still retarded. Politically incorrect no doubt, but prescient. It is IMPOSSIBLE to win an argument with a troll, because they aren't arguing, they are trolling. Their goal is not to win you over or change anyone's mind, it's to push your buttons, get a rise out of you, the more you fight the better the troll, he doesn't WANT you to give up and submit, he doesn't want to convert you, he wants to see you get pissed off because you take something (the internet, yourself, etc) WAY too seriously.
In general that's all trolls are, people who stir up flame wars in forums or grief people in MMO's, they're pranksters have a little fun at you're expense, but the vast vast majority trollings end with no one hurt, just time wasted and "lulz" had. People like Jason are in an incredibly small minority, and judging everyone who's ever engaged in trolling on the basis of this single individual is unfair to all of those who are just having a little bit of harmless fun.
Butts Wagner | August 4, 2008, 1:54pm | #
I don't care if you benefit from it or not.
To bring it back to the libertarian perspective here, my point is that people seek mutually beneficial transactions. If you choose to ignore the wants and needs of others, they will see no benefit in indulging you. Thus, you will be left to make your cracks and observations to no one.
Sure, the benefit some people get is laughing at those who get frustrated by the troll, but why not become the troll yourself then? You might say, well, I'm not clever enough to be the troll, but who would think that and then go and laugh at others being taken advantage of by the troll. You'd be admitting weakness while laughing at those who are weak. Point being, if you think you are so much better than the weaklings who the trolls pick on, then you should also believe you can be the troll. Eliminating the need for the other troll who brought you laughter.
One could counter with the, well, we have a group who trolls together, and we laugh at each other. That's fine, but then it's not so brilliant to gang up on others, because it's typical ostracism then. And guess what, secure individuals no longer worry about what the roving gangs of cheerleaders thought of us in high school.
He deserves to be trolled. But social circumstances don't always allow that.
What's stopping you? Shouldn't you be honest with him? Isn't it possible to be honest in a way that isn't mean at first?
You seem to think it's good that people can use the implicit threat of physical violence or some other kind of personal retaliation to keep the people around them in line, so they don't have to hear what other people think of them.
Also, I want to clear the record, Butts Wagner is a lover, not a fighter. I'm not sure how you inferred that I would advocate violence of this nature. I actually think people should hear the truth, but not in ways that makes them defensive.
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