Trolls

[Orange_Juice]

Article on trolls

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?scp=1&sq=trolls&st=cse

 

[Ravi]

mmm...what do you think about that, OJ?

 

[Orange_Juice]

gees!

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.

 

[Orange_Juice]

mmm...what do you think about that, OJ?

It's an interesting article, funny and sad at the same time

 

[manifold]

Article on trolls

Damn! That's some f'd up crap.

 

[AllieBaba]

There are some very mean spirited people who take advantage of the internet to behave in ways they would never dare to behave in real life.

 

[Ravi]

I was fascinated with the attitude some of the trolls took, that they were behaving like they were as a lesson to others to not take things on the internet so seriously.

Also, the attitude of "tough shit, if you morons are morons, it's your own damn fault" was pretty cold.

 

[Glori.B]

I was fascinated with the attitude some of the trolls took, that they were behaving like they were as a lesson to others to not take things on the internet so seriously.

Also, the attitude of "tough shit, if you morons are morons, it's your own damn fault" was pretty cold.

yep, it's disgusting what some people can rationalize, isn't it?

i saw that article last week and found it quite disturbing...

incidently, i have been researching this subject for some time.


i found links to some good info on wiki:

Hacker (computer security) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about computer security hackers. For other types of computer hackers, see Hacker (computing). For other uses, see Hacker.

In a security context, a hacker is someone involved in computer security/insecurity, specializing in the discovery of exploits in systems (for exploitation or prevention), or in obtaining or preventing unauthorized access to systems through skills, tactics and detailed knowledge. In the most common general form of this usage, "hacker" refers to a black-hat hacker (a malicious or criminal hacker). There are also ethical hackers (more commonly referred to as white hats), and those more ethically ambiguous (grey hats). To disambiguate the term hacker, often cracker is used instead, referring either to computer security hacker culture as a whole to demarcate it from the academic hacker culture (such as by Eric S. Raymond[1]) or specifically to make a distinction within the computer security context between black-hat hackers and the more ethically positive hackers (commonly known as the white-hat hackers). The context of computer security hacking forms a subculture which is often referred to as the network hacker subculture or simply the computer underground. According to its adherents, cultural values center around the idea of creative and extraordinary computer usage. Proponents claim to be motivated by artistic and political ends, but are often unconcerned about the use of criminal means to achieve them.
Contents

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_cracking#Spoofing_attack

 

[Ninja]

Tits or GTFO.

 

[manifold]

yep, it's disgusting what some people can rationalize, isn't it?

Yup. I definitely have more respect for those willing to acknowledge it's wrong but don't give a shit, than those that Jedi mind trick themselves into believing it's somehow right.

 

[Ravi]

Yup. I definitely have more respect for those willing to acknowledge it's wrong but don't give a shit, than those that Jedi mind trick themselves into believing it's somehow right.

That's an interesting way of looking at it.

 

[manifold]

That doesn't just go for internet trolls either.

 

[editec]

The trolls have always been among us.

The internet simply gives them the opportunity to behave in boarish ways that in the real world would likely get their punk asses kicked.

This board is rife with them. They are as much a part of the human circus as most fundamentally decent people.

Usually they are just immature kids trying to work out their anger on others.

The alternative approach is to write on boards where your true identity is known to all players.

Suddenly the trolls vanish because they are then responsible for their words, and like I say, very few of that type are anything but cowards.

Of course then, general public cannot play, so you miss the vox populi, too.

What writing to the internet has taught me, aside from the real posts that some people have written that have made me question my own values (thanks by the way for that), is that the percentage of creeps I share the planet with is larger than real life lead me to believe.

A sad thing to learn, I'll admit, but really the net was probably the only way I could ever have learned such a valuable lesson.

The probability that someone is going to yank my chain in real life in the vile ways that trolls try to here, is rather remote, to be candid.

 

[Shogun]

Silence Dogood wants you to go fuck yourself. Clearly, Ole Ben was just a coward.