Trolls // Current

TROLL VOTING ON CURRENT

It has come to my attention and the attention of others that an immediate 10% negative vote hits everything here at Current. I... more

Reverend_Papa_Bear
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How To Behave On An Internet Forum

This film explains some of the common mistakes people make in forums, which makes them the sort of loathsome fool no one wants to... more

Moopak
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Malwebolence - An unsavoury look at the World of Web Trolling

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from... more

toshiba
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Trolls in our midst: the crazy world of online harrassment and how to deal with it

The New York Times today reports on the world on online trolls, and how to deal with the pesky critters whose raison d'etre is to mess with you online. Have they not got owt better to do?

It's a fantastic article, and reveals the shocking extent that trolls go to harrass and upset people - both on and offline.

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minn., took a .22-caliber rifle down from a shelf in his parents’ bedroom closet and shot himself in the head. The next morning, Mitchell’s school assembled in the gym to begin mourning. His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was “an hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back. . . . ” Someone e-mailed a clipping of Mitchell’s newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead. From MyDeathSpace, Mitchell’s page came to the attention of an Internet message board known as /b/ and the “trolls,” as they have come to be called, who dwell there.

The trolls were awakened...

Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand.

Something about Mitchell Henderson struck the denizens of /b/ as funny. They were especially amused by a reference on his MySpace page to a lost iPod. Mitchell Henderson, /b/ decided, had killed himself over a lost iPod. The “an hero” meme was born. Within hours, the anonymous multitudes were wrapping the tragedy of Mitchell’s death in absurdity.

Someone hacked Henderson’s MySpace page and gave him the face of a zombie. Someone placed an iPod on Henderson’s grave, took a picture and posted it to /b/. Henderson’s face was appended to dancing iPods, spinning iPods, hardcore porn scenes. A dramatic re-enactment of Henderson’s demise appeared on YouTube, complete with shattered iPod. The phone began ringing at Mitchell’s parents’ home. “It sounded like kids,” remembers Mitchell’s father, Mark Henderson, a 44-year-old I.T. executive. “They’d say, ‘Hi, this is Mitchell, I’m at the cemetery.’ ‘Hi, I’ve got Mitchell’s iPod.’ ‘Hi, I’m Mitchell’s ghost, the front door is locked. Can you come down and let me in?’ ” He sighed. “It really got to my wife.” The calls continued for a year and a half.

The article goes on to illuminate how trolls operate, and explain how you can combat them with some insider tricks. Have you been trolled online? What do you do to protect / divert yourself from those characters on the interweb who seek to mess with your head?

The New York Times today reports on the world on online trolls, and how to deal with the pesky critters whose raison d'etre... more