Long but an interesting read.
https://www.vox.com/2014/9/29/6840773/confessions-of-a-former-internet-troll
https://www.vox.com/2014/9/29/6840773/confessions-of-a-former-internet-troll
- Thread starter Willy
- Start date
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Too frighteningly familiar in our own industry ...
"Trolling isn't quite so David vs. Goliath anymore. If it was adolescent then, more mean-spirited fun than outright malice, it is now a frighteningly adult enterprise where the joke is lost somewhere amid the sexual harassment and death threats.
...
It isn't that these darker elements haven't always existed in the trolling scene. But I want to tell you about when violent campaigns against harmless bloggers weren't any halfway decent troll's idea of a good time — even the then-malicious would've found it too easy to be fun. When the punches went up, not down. Before the best players quit or went criminal or were changed by too long a time being angry. When there was cruelty, yes, and palpable strains of sexism and racism and every kind of phobia, sure, but when these things had the character of adolescents pushing the boundaries of cheap shock, disagreeable like that but not criminal. Not because that time was defensible — it wasn't, not really — but because it was calmer and the rage wasn't there yet. Because trolling still meant getting a rise for a laugh, not making helpless people fear for their lives because they're threatening some Redditor's self-proclaimed monopoly on reason.
...
Without ever quite deciding to leave, I realized a year later that I hadn't ruined anybody lately and I hadn't checked Encyclopedia Dramatica and I wasn't really a troll anymore. Thank God. I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I am immune to corrosive influence. I'm not sure that if I had hung with it, I wouldn't have woken up one of the monsters one day, browsing for some activist to terrify with simmering, impotent rage."
"Trolling isn't quite so David vs. Goliath anymore. If it was adolescent then, more mean-spirited fun than outright malice, it is now a frighteningly adult enterprise where the joke is lost somewhere amid the sexual harassment and death threats.
...
It isn't that these darker elements haven't always existed in the trolling scene. But I want to tell you about when violent campaigns against harmless bloggers weren't any halfway decent troll's idea of a good time — even the then-malicious would've found it too easy to be fun. When the punches went up, not down. Before the best players quit or went criminal or were changed by too long a time being angry. When there was cruelty, yes, and palpable strains of sexism and racism and every kind of phobia, sure, but when these things had the character of adolescents pushing the boundaries of cheap shock, disagreeable like that but not criminal. Not because that time was defensible — it wasn't, not really — but because it was calmer and the rage wasn't there yet. Because trolling still meant getting a rise for a laugh, not making helpless people fear for their lives because they're threatening some Redditor's self-proclaimed monopoly on reason.
...
Without ever quite deciding to leave, I realized a year later that I hadn't ruined anybody lately and I hadn't checked Encyclopedia Dramatica and I wasn't really a troll anymore. Thank God. I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I am immune to corrosive influence. I'm not sure that if I had hung with it, I wouldn't have woken up one of the monsters one day, browsing for some activist to terrify with simmering, impotent rage."
It's like a drug to these people.
