collectionquest

If you have a blog, or any sort of internet presence at all, you’ve probably encountered trolls. The vast majority of people leave friendly comments, while some disagree in a dinner-table kind of way. But a few will leave stinging grade-school remarks. I know I’ve often cleaned out my comment filter (I have certain expletives blocked) wondering what makes these people tick.

The NYTimes has an article interviewing admitting trolls, from the guy behind the Craig’s List scam to really disturbing characters.

Jason Fortuny might be the closest thing this movement of anonymous provocateurs has to a spokesman. Thirty-two years old, he works “typical Clark Kent I.T.” freelance jobs — Web design, programming — but his passion is trolling, “pushing peoples’ buttons.” Fortuny frames his acts of trolling as “experiments,” sociological inquiries into human behavior. In the fall of 2006, he posted a hoax ad on Craigslist, posing as a woman seeking a “str8 brutal dom muscular male.” More than 100 men responded. Fortuny posted their names, pictures, e-mail and phone numbers to his blog, dubbing the exposé “the Craigslist Experiment.” This made Fortuny the most prominent Internet villain in America until November 2007, when his fame was eclipsed by the Megan Meier MySpace suicide. Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl, hanged herself with a belt after receiving cruel messages from a boy she’d been flirting with on MySpace. The boy was not a real boy, investigators say, but the fictional creation of Lori Drew, the mother of one of Megan’s former friends. Drew later said she hoped to find out whether Megan was gossiping about her daughter. The story — respectable suburban wife uses Internet to torment teenage girl — was a media sensation.

What do you think?

Via Magazine Preview - Malwebolence - The World of Web Trolling - NYTimes.com