The New York Times has a very interesting article by Mattathias Schwartz about Internet trolls: what they've done and what made 'em tick:
“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.
Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: “You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had.”
In life, there's always been mean people and the Web is no exception: Link - via Metafilter | Weev's response in LiveJournal
Photo: Jason Fortuny (of the Lori Drew "Megan Had It Coming" hoax fame), by Robbie Cooper for The New York Times
We are just dealing with mentally ill people with no empathy.....
The world has been full of them since the beginning of mankind....
There will always be evil Humans in society. But they do not reflect the normal people. You just try to avoid them if you can and do not give them any attention
http://jameth.livejournal.com/4712887.html
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ (Warning: bad language)
What makes a troll a troll is their total incapacity to justify their opinions with anything else but emotionally-charged generalizations and to engage in grown-up debate about much of anything.
THAT is what trolldom is about. Not some hyped-up faux-anarchist troublemaker.
Trolls are a symptom of what makes discourse difficult in our world. They are all about how they feel. And what they feel precludes any analysis. Bloggers are not always right but honest bloggers accept viable arguments. Trolls are about insults, not ideas.
It is sometimes an easy out to avoid actually debating facts or logic.
I have never heard anything like that before.
You can't win. The only way to not lose is to not play. Ignore them. If they disrupt your comments, and you have administrative control, ban them. Do not - ever - respond to them publicly, or they win.
Being a troll is about stirring up stuff because they're insecure or immature.
>This makes it seem very America-centric, like only dumbass kids from the states are in on it. Is that correct?
No, we're pretty spread out over the world, unless a lot of people are lying about their nations of origin. Actually I'm sure a lot of us are lying about their nations of origin, but in a spread out way where everyone lies equally and you get a good statistical representation anyway.
>I also missed the trolling of the interview; does that mean they were making up facts to make the interviewer (a brave soul) look like an ass? Kinda like reverse Daily Show interviews?
A little bit, though not as much as some cases. Here's the thing: traditional media is retarded when it comes to covering the internet. This is widely known. When someone from traditional media comes to someone from the internet and asks "hurf durf are you terrorists lol" it's really really really hard to not make fun of them by feeding them obvious lies to see what they believe. However, this article is less stupid than most, so I'm guessing they went light on the mockery. The guy they interviewed seems pretty lame though.
>This is a weird take on ”trolls”. As someone who has had a blog and dealt with trolls, it is not about them deliberately trying to gave a blogger a breakdown. It’s about being vulgar, intolerant, threatening even, because the troll cannot abide with the blogger’s pt of view.
Internet internet internet blarg blurf
>Good article and nice way to invite the troll to neatorama, dont be surprised when they pop in here
sup lol
Anything else I can clear up?
I don't remember that from Statistics class.
Trolls are a group of completely null and void parasites. These vehement wastes of air cannot entertain themselves without inflicting, at the least, discomfort, at the worst, serious pain, upon individuals and society. But unlike psychopaths, these "people" are utterly spineless, reveling in anonymity as to enlarge their dillusions of grandeur. Lacking psychological development which empowers the self, they thrive on societal tolerance as a means of empowerment - the lowliest of parasitic beings.
Anarchists? More like fools. They'd survive for about thirty minutes before becoming prey, begging for someone to save them when they realized that delivery pizza was no longer an option. As a last note, if I were out having coffee with one of these guys and he copied down my debit card number, I'd bludgeon him unconcious and leave him in the alleys of deep New York city as to teach him a short-lived lesson about real chaos, anarchy, and pain.
U rawk!!!
Those guys who post angry pathos riddles comments on blogs generally aren't trolls, they are just internet tough guys. There is a big difference. Trolls do it for the lulz, where internet tough guys do it to stroke their own egos.
If you could accept a batman reference, Joker would be a real troll (he just wants to watch the world burn--why so serious?), where Harvey Dent aka Two Face is more analogous to an internet tough guy, where he was a good person, but he is pissed off for whatever reason, and resorts to INTERNET VIOLENCE aka CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL, pathos, etc. Trolls make internet tough guys pretty effectively.
TITS OR GTFO
But have you read the article? Did you go to "Weev's" blog? He espouses a philosophy of extreme malevolence toward his fellow man, believes that suffering and mass death are a critical element of positive societal propulsion, and in many instances talks about making people "fear for their lives". He's a power hungry individual who believes it is a positive thing (even heroic) to take advantage of system flaws to create panic, disorder, and cause pain to individuals he feels are lesser in value than himself.
Perhaps I made my point with a little too much fervor. Please allow me to rephrase it - It is easy to wish pain or death upon others and spout anarchist doctrine while posting photos of the recent Pho meal that some other person worked to make for you. If it is chaos, pain, and anarchy that these childish minds want, I say we put them into a position where they really have to suffer the consequences of their ideologies.
That said... yes. If I were interviewing some punk-ass, frail pasty twerp who casually noted that he had stolen my banking information, deleting it in front of me to show how much "power" he had over tiny little me (as in the NYT article), I would be apt to beat him into oblivion and dump him in an alley for someone to victimize. And that's not tough talking, that's just what he's got coming for being a priggish little candy-ass.
Next up on Neatorama: “Lulz”, a funny new corruption of lol."
- That was me 2 weeks ago. I am a prophet.
For those in the know, /b/ is the internet's cesspool of humor and porn. Everything that makes the internet bad is there. Its a magical place.
If a Mudsucker doesmn't work, a bag of peanuts will.