The Trolls Among Us -- NYT Magazine piece

Unless I missed other references, the author simply quotes the troll as calling himself normal.

Fortuny calls himself “a normal person who does insane things on the Internet,” and the scene at dinner later on the first day we spent together was exceedingly normal, with Fortuny, his roommate Charles and his longtime friend Zach trading stories at a sushi restaurant nearby over sake and happy-hour gyoza. Fortuny flirted with our waitress, showing her a cellphone picture of his cat. “He commands you to kill!” he cackled. “Do you know how many I’ve killed at his command?” Everyone laughed.

 

I think I interact on here as I would in real life. At work, I have to sometimes stop myself from saying something that I said on here, for non-self-outing sake. Someone who talks on a message board only in character, not as him/herself, that's a bit odd.

 

I don't think I act here as I do in real life... I just come here to goof off and have some fun.

 

Pics or GTFO.

 

I act pretty much the same here as I do anywhere else. Although, there are those few occasions I have here when I let my modesty fly out the window.

 

While reading that story, I had the strong urge to punch those smug bastards in the face -- and they weren't even trolling me!

 

Just what we need, another internet message board tough guy...

 

I think some analog trolling would be appropriate.

Put a bag of burning dog poop on their front doorstep, maybe key their car or put toilet paper in their trees.

 

The trolls we have here are either clueless or just garden variety assholes taking advantage of anonymity. The people in that story are truly malevolent bastards.

DD, what's interesting about your post is that the same phenomenon is the reason people like this exist. They have a little subculture of people who give them positive feedback and tell them how awesome it was when they started that site about the dead girl, and it provides the kind of encouragement they don't get in the real world. In the real world, they're maladjusted, socially inept losers. But online they've found a place they can be cool.

 

It's a shame the trolls on here lack the self-awareness to admit they're trolls and lend a troll's perspective to this thread. Would make it infinitely more interesting.

It plays off what AB is saying - the trolls in the article aren't the sort of posters you run into on an average message board whom most of us would classify as trolls. Maybe the people who ruin threads here are better classified as idiots - at least they're not going out of their way to cause seizures in epileptics.

 

I'm going to go with "Garden Variety Assholes" Arnold.

 

I don't even think the people here are trolls. The NYT piece...now those guys are trolls.