Internet Trolls and Outrage (1 Viewer)

Optimus Prime

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Discourse on the internet is declining precipitously. And modern social media has made the hatred and ignorance much more difficult to tune out. The worst thing the internet ever did was give everyone a voice. It's readily apparent that there are those among us too full of hate and stupidity to deserve to be heard or acknowledged. And yet somehow, they have become the loudest voices of all.

I think it was James Cameron who once said the most wrong he'd ever been about something was about the internet. He believed it would connect the world and create a way to bridge gaps in culture, race, gender, etc. And, to his dismay, what actually happened was the opposite: it created countless echo chambers, where people could seek out like minded individuals and shut out everything they didn't agree with. And the result of that was increased hostility and extremism towards anyone that wasn't like-minded. This is one manifestation of that, but you see it in other ways, too. And the thing is, the logical, well thought out side is going to lose these kinds of interactions. You can't convince the loud, angry side to believe anything other than what they believe, and they're going to be able to make your day worse than you can make theirs, at least as far as the internet and social media go. It's really just a toxic, pathetic situation.

Very good article from Time magazine
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This story is not a good idea. Not for society and certainly not for me. Because what trolls feed on is attention. And this little bit–these several thousand words–is like leaving bears a pan of baklava.

It would be smarter to be cautious, because the Internet’s personality has changed. Once it was a geek with lofty ideals about the free flow of information. Now, if you need help improving your upload speeds the web is eager to help with technical details, but if you tell it you’re struggling with depression it will try to goad you into killing yourself. Psychologists call this the online disinhibition effect, in which factors like anonymity, invisibility, a lack of authority and not communicating in real time strip away the mores society spent millennia building. And it’s seeping from our smartphones into every aspect of our lives.

The people who relish this online freedom are called trolls, a term that originally came from a fishing method online thieves use to find victims. It quickly morphed to refer to the monsters who hide in darkness and threaten people. Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the “lulz,” or laughs. What trolls do for the lulz ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats. There’s also doxxing–publishing personal data, such as Social Security numbers and bank accounts–and swatting, calling in an emergency to a victim’s house so the SWAT team busts in. When victims do not experience lulz, trolls tell them they have no sense of humor. Trolls are turning social media and comment boards into a giant locker room in a teen movie, with towel-snapping racial epithets and misogyny.

They’ve been steadily upping their game. In 2011, trolls descended on Facebook memorial pages of recently deceased users to mock their deaths. In 2012, after feminist Anita Sarkeesian started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a series of YouTube videos chronicling misogyny in video games, she received bomb threats at speaking engagements, doxxing threats, rape threats and an unwanted starring role in a video game called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian. In June of this year, Jonathan Weisman, the deputy Washington editor of the New York Times, quit Twitter, on which he had nearly 35,000 followers, after a barrage of anti-Semitic messages. At the end of July, feminist writer Jessica Valenti said she was leaving social media after receiving a rape threat against her daughter, who is 5 years old...............

How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet | TIME
 
There is some hyperbole in there, as well as the other shaping definitions to fit his premise.

Once "trolling" becomes criminal behavior, they are no longer a troll, they are a criminal. Someone making bomb threats is not a troll.

A lot of what he is saying about the internet has truth to it, but the author is not viewing it with nuance or considering ways in which a user can control his or her own internet experience.
 
I like what Sun Wukong said, "The worst thing the internet ever did was give everyone a voice.". When most of us were growing up, people still said outrageous, hateful, racist, ignorant stuff; except it was mostly in the isolated confines of their own living rooms. Now, the internet is the living room.
 
Syfy Channel had a show called The Internet Ruined My Life. after watching the first season, I was starting to lose my faith in humanity.
I made my daughter watch a few episodes with me so she would understand how one little thing you do in the Internet or even Text messages could ruin your life. People threatening to kill people over a meme that someone else made of them. like real death threats that had had to involve police. People suck. what is wrong with people.
I suggest watching a few episodes.
 
Syfy Channel had a show called The Internet Ruined My Life. after watching the first season, I was starting to lose my faith in humanity.
I made my daughter watch a few episodes with me so she would understand how one little thing you do in the Internet or even Text messages could ruin your life. People threatening to kill people over a meme that someone else made of them. like real death threats that had had to involve police. People suck. what is wrong with people.
I suggest watching a few episodes.

I watched the show too and was completely disgusted.

It was amazing how some people react.

The real danger is it's bleeding from online to the real world

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kk9cMWj2rMA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Last week, I shared a facebook article about how media outlets are shutting their comment boards down.

Several people innocuously like the article.

One, however, felt this was a typical liberal ploy to censor him and deny him his right to free speech. His ability to "dissent" was being stifled and that violated his First Amendment right.

Eventually, just tried to leave it at "well, we'll just have to disagree what "censorship is'", but even that wasn't acceptable.

Being a pretty liberal guy in the deep south, I've basically tried to avoid anything political whatsoever, but Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid you like a positive post about Hillary Clinton or say John Bel Edwards is doing a good job.

Them's fightin' words.
 
from an earlier thread
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Article from the Washington Post. Very scary stuff. I just don't understand evil people, I wouldn't have thought of this in a million years. And the ones with the kids make me sick to my stomach

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The first man who knocked on the Fauquier County woman’s door told her they had been e-mailing and he was there for sex. Shocked and perplexed because they hadn’t corresponded, the woman sent him away.

But the men kept coming. They arrived on her doorstep as many as six times a day, sometimes traveling from other states. One had a crowbar. Others refused to leave. Another rammed his car through a security gate that she installed.


In all, there were about 100. Each said he had communicated with her. All expected sex.

The unrelenting onslaught was organized by an angry ex-boyfriend, who had assumed the woman’s identity online and crowdsourced his harassment to dozens of unwitting accomplices he lured to her home, prosecutors say in court papers.

The case, which goes to trial next month in federal court in Virginia, is among a number around the country in which stalkers are accused of stealing their victim’s online persona and using the power of social media as a weapon.

The Fauquier County woman thought it was only a matter of time before she was assaulted, raped — or worse. She turned her home into a fortress with security cameras, floodlights and a gate........

Now, she believed Johnson had her in his sights again. When she logged onto Craigslist in the days after the man showed up at her home, she found ad after ad. They had increasingly vile titles including one that read: “Rape Me and My Daughters.”...........

The day after she discovered the “Rape me” listing, another *stomach-churning ad was posted. It offered her then-12- and 13-year-old daughters and 12-year-old son up for sex in exchange for cash. The children’s photos appeared in the ad.

But the digital assault was just beginning. The woman found fake profiles for herself on a host of sites including Facebook and the pornography aggregator XTube, soliciting men for sex and listing her address.

The men showed up at her door at all hours. Some prompted by the bogus “Rape me” posting tried to break into her home, according to court records. There were professional men in suits and some in uniform — at least 50 during a two-week stretch during June and July 2012...............



Stalkers use online ads as weapon against victims - The Washington Post
 

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