The Trolls Among Us

In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a “pseudo-naïve” tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, “If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.”

Today the Internet is much more than esoteric discussion forums. It is a mass medium for defining who we are to ourselves and to others. Teenagers groom their MySpace profiles as intensely as their hair; escapists clock 50-hour weeks in virtual worlds, accumulating gold for their online avatars. Anyone seeking work or love can expect to be Googled. As our emotional investment in the Internet has grown, the stakes for trolling — for provoking strangers online — have risen. Trolling has evolved from ironic solo skit to vicious group hunt.

“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.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

How would you know if I’ve been under assault by the government and won or lost? Unless it were in the news.

We’re ALL under assault by them ever day of our lives. New laws, anti-gun people, this idiotic crap about “global warming” that is permeating daily life and is even in the damned commercials we watch.

The fact is, I’m an easy person to find. I have a SSN number, pay my taxes and deal with the government on a daily basis. Why would I “hide”?

People who continually “hide” themselves are paranoid people... I’m not saying that this is a BAD thing, but it certainly is a little weird.

MOSTLY the people here and most sites use aliases just “because”. Some do it because they honestly think they are hiding from someone, or hiding from the government.

If you ever deal with some of the conspiracy theorists as I have nearly all of them will claim to have been assaulted in some manner by the government and “I’m hiding for my own safety, because they (the gov) will make me ‘disappear’”.

All of that is a load of nonsense.

"Ignorance is Bliss", as the saying goes.

Of course, you weren't around here for the impeachment wars and the attack on Free Republic by the Clinton White House, using their own appointed federal judge and two major newspapers as catspaws.

It's a matter of public record, Ricky.

From your attitude, I can tell that you haven't really gotten under the skin of anyone official.

Redouble your efforts - maybe that'll work. It worked for me. :-)

I’ve been on FR since it started actually, I was around for a lot more than you give me credit for :)

I have gotten under the skin of many, many of our public officials and a good number of them know me very well. LOL

A certain couple of Senators usually use my name as a cuss word. LOL

My attitude is one that has taken me a long, long time to develop. I don’t BELIEVE in being anonymous, because it takes away from credibility. I stand by the things I’ve said, and continue to say.

My point is this... if you’re going to make a point, you should be sure of your facts (as sure as you can be of course, no one is right all the time, and I’m certainly not correct on EVERYTHING, but I do strive diligently to be so).

You should believe in yourself enough to put your name on your opinions. A lot of people on one of the other sites I administered HATE me - which is fine. I once when several rounds with a “government official” on one of the sites, but publicly and privately who happened to be a Colonel in the USAF who tried to shut down the site and somehow bring some kind of charges against me....

In fact, when it was said and done, that Colonel was proved to have attempted to use his “power of his position” illegally. :) I won, he lost. Long story short, don’t screw with site moderators and administrators when you have NO legal reason to do so.

(He was upset over a story I posted, and claimed that because I was a service member at the time I could be held liable for making false statements... as it turned out, Nothing I said was false, he had taken a lot of my comments out of context and then LIED about some things in the investigation.... )

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