Cyber Lynching: R.I.P. Trolls

[Dhara]

"It all started, I was just on Facebook when I was drunk" said Damon Richards, a notorious cyber troll [referring to someone who harasses others online] who cut his teeth in the world of online bullying by photoshopping a picture of singer Susan Boyle replacing the microphone with a penis. Having a laugh online "can be slightly addictive," he admits to presenter Richard Bacon in the BBC documentary The Anti-Social Network, and it can degenerate into a terrifying new breed of twenty-first-century psychos called "RIP trolls."

Tom Mullaney was a lively 15-year-old boy with no history of being bullied, but all it took to shred his world apart was one night with 12 threatening Facebook messages from 6 of his classmates. His father found him in the shed at the back of the garden, hanged. He was cyber-lynched to suicide. After the devastated Mullaney family set up an online tribute page in Tom's loving memory, the site went viral in the RIP troll community and they swiftly desecrated it with a barrage of nasty comments—"cold and stiff"—and photoshopped images of Tom with a lasso around his neck, or his decapitated head in a sliced sausage with caption "RIP Tom Baloney."
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/Vie...pl_main&jsid=7659fdd776668696ea2bdc92ccacb2e9

Consider the harm that this kind of abuse of on-line activity. Discuss.

 

[Dhara]

Here are more examples:

As they prepared to bury their 15-year-old son, John and Kathleen Kocher received a call from a nephew warning them not to go on the Internet.

A Facebook memorial page dedicated to Matthew Kocher, who drowned July 27 in Lake Michigan, had attracted a group of Internet vandals who mocked the Tinley Park couple's only child, posting photos of people drowning with taunting comments superimposed over the images.

One photo showed a submerged person's hand breaking through the water with text reading "LOL u drowned you fail at being a fish," according to a screen grab of the page shared with the Tribune afterthe post was removed.

"I was very angry right away, and then I said, 'Well, these are some dirtbags,'" John Kocher said. "How could they possibly want to do that? How could somebody want to be so evil, so vile?"

What the Kocher family experienced is known as RIP trolling, in which online users called trolls, post offensive comments and images on social media sites that are intended to memorialize the deceased. It's a variation of trolling, or posting an extreme viewpoint or rude comment simply to get a reaction.

RIP trolling: Hurtful online comments about deceased son add to family's grief

 

[Dhara]

Though Turner did not threaten to kill Judges Frank Easterbrook, William Bauer, and Richard Posner himself, his call for their death was not at all coy:

All the years of peaceful legal challenges; all the years of peaceful appeals; all the years of peacefully and lawfully lobbying federal and state legislators, to achieve the penultimate goal of finally interpreting the meaning of the Second Amendment, only to have it all thrown in the trash by three Appellate Judges in a manner so sleazy and cunning as to deserve the ultimate response.
. . .
The government—and especially these three Judges—are cunning, ruthless, untrustworthy, disloyal, unpatriotic, deceitful scum. Their entire reason for existing is to accrue unto themselves, power over everything. The only thing that has ever stood in the way of their achieving ultimate power is the fact that We The People have guns. Now, that is very much in jeopardy. Government lies, cheats, manipulates, twists and outright disobeys the supreme law and founding documents of this land because they have not, in our lifetime, faced REAL free men willing to walk up to them and kill them for their defiance and disobedience.
What's The Line Between Ill Wishes And Threats?

 

[The Great Goose]

Thats real life bullying. Cyber bullying is what happens on these forums. Its relatively harmless.

 

[my2¢]

Immediately after 9-11 it struck me that it affected America's attitude for the worse in that it injected hate in people. At least that's how I felt at the time and ever since when I read things about police killings, road rage, bullying, etc. I wonder if we really did change as a society? After all, 15 years of war can't be good and must have some effects.

 

[Dhara]

If you spend alot of time wishing people dead,

Immediately after 9-11 it struck me that it affected America's attitude for the worse in that it injected hate in people. At least that's how I felt at the time and ever since when I read things about police killings, road rage, bullying, etc. I wonder if we really did change as a society? After all, 15 years of war can't be good and must have some effects.

I agree. 9-11 affected our country for the worse. It also occurred at the same time internet use exploded world wide. It is VERY difficult to have a decent conversation about politics or any other subject on line because the discourse is so cyncial, anger and negative.

 

[Dhara]

Anthony Elonis claimed he was just kidding when he posted a series of graphically violent rap lyrics on Facebook about killing his estranged wife, shooting up a kindergarten class and attacking an FBI agent.

But his wife didn't see it that way. Neither did a federal jury.
When is an online threat illegal and when is it free speech?

 

[Dhara]

Elonis took to Facebook again: "Little agent lady stood so close, took all the strength I had not to turn the bitch ghost. Pull my knife, flick my wrist and slit her throat."

Elonis was convicted of making threats of violence and sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison.
When is an online threat illegal and when is it free speech?