Posted on 09/17/2011 11:23:07 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The word “troll” no longer conjures up a dumpy little plastic figure with brightly coloured hair: nor a monster from The Lord of the Rings. If you live even a part of your life online, you’ll know that trolls today are better known as the angry and usually anonymous commenters on web forums, whose aim is to shock, offend, annoy or upset fellow users.
Trolling made headlines this week when Sean Duffy, a young man from Reading, was given 18 weeks’ imprisonment for defacing Facebook tributes to four dead teenagers whom he had never met. The abuse was vile: on a tribute page to Natasha MacBryde, who had committed suicide, he added: “Natasha wasn’t bullied, she was just a whore.” About Lauren Drew, who died after an epileptic fit, he wrote: “I can’t get out of my coffin, I have scratched my nails to the bone.” And “Help me Mummy, it’s hot in Hell.” Duffy led a “miserable existence” and, according to his lawyer, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism that can make it hard to empathise with others. But his behaviour – while extreme – is similar to that of certain commenters on sites across the internet. Another notorious case, in 2008, saw a young American girl, Megan Meier, driven to suicide, it was claimed, by bullying on the social site MySpace.
India Knight, the novelist and columnist, wrote some years ago of the abuse meted out to Gerry and Kate McCann, the parents of Madeleine, who, as a three-year-old, went missing in Portugal in 2007.
“If you haven’t read what is on the internet about the McCanns, you wouldn’t believe it,” she writes. “Trawling through the sites to find these quotes is like a trip through the darkest recesses of people’s most ungenerous minds.”
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
It’s also huge in online gaming.
But be aware: trolling takes skill. You need to rope them in, enrage them, and make them waste a lot of time chasing their tail before another troll comes along to steal the focus.
It is hardly safe to post anymore.
Last week I was defending Sarah Palin when I called Jane Pauley “crazy” and I got a a threatening FReepmail against my baby (her picture is on my About Me Page) from an angry guy: “And I am posting the pic of that baby all over the internet.”
I hope this guy was in England and no American was given 18 weeks in jail for exercising free speech. Rotten speech, yes, but well within his rights to say it, at least in this country. If he is in England it seems strange that he got the same sentence they giver out for murder.
The Sun finds the troll behind sick Madeleine McCann Facebook page
People have a right to free speech ok, but you can't use that to trump everything all the time. Don't other people have a right to privacy? A right to grieve? A right to live peaceably? A right to defend themselves?
This is out of the scope of "free speech". Can someone stand up in a court of law and scream at the judge to shut up and call them names and be protected by "freedom of speech"? No he is not at all within his rights, he was maliciously taunting and slandering individuals.
"Freedom of speech" is for protecting the expressing of unpopular views. It does not protect all kinds of behavior where some kind of expression is involved.
Perhaps I can divert the sicko - Jane Pauley is a crazy ditz...
My wife and I are positioned to defend ourselves and remain situationally aware...not to mention that between retired and active cops for neighbors, my community also hosts a variety of avid hunters, just plain gun "nuts", and even a few with survivalist tendencies - the neighborhood is a mine field for anyone skulking around with evil intents.
“was given 18 weeks’ imprisonment for defacing Facebook tributes”
This is actually a law on the books??????
What nonsense.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress. Or whatever specific phrasing they use for laws against real-life stalking.
Duffy pleaded guilty to two counts of sending a communication of an indecent or offensive nature.In this case, UK criminal law was applied. See Communications Offences: Legal Guidance: The Crown Prosecution Service.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress is a civil law claim (money damages). This was not a civil case. Civil cases can't (directly) result in jail or prison time.
LoL! Thanks for that. :)
My daughter has grown quite a bit since those pictures. I told him I have already posted her pictures many times because she is a real cutie pie.
Those were just suggestions.
Not if you are publicly allowing anyone in the world to write things on your “grieving” wall. The type of grieving that most of us do is within a family or community. We have memorial services and graves in cemeteries.
Nowadays people post their innermost feelings on thecaltar ogvthe Internet and build roadside shrines to “victims” because they have no church, religion, or true community.
I personally think invading their space is no the proper ethical thing to do. However, if you open the front door to your home for the entire world to enter, you will get flies in your kitchen.
Understood. No offense meant. I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that you would be interested in reading which laws were involved in the case.
No, I was interested. I wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t claiming to know, merely proposing possibilities.
I could have read the article, of course.
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