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.
Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: “You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had.”
It strikes me (once again), that human cruelty and evil, or psychopathic behavior, is certainly not only a matter of factors unique to the individual who is committing the cruelty. Certainly, there is a huge situational component, and there is a very definite element of influence by the behavior of one's peers. The article opens with an example of this troll behavior that involves directing ridicule toward a young person who committed suicide...
Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not limited to this Internet hate group targeting 13 year old girls w/mental disabilities on MySpace. There is a HUGE contingent of young people who participate w/ this group who are law students and passing through the charater & fitness to become licensed attorneys. It is my opinion the reason for the recent media news on Judge Kozinski's 2001 Federal Courts Computer Security System WebSENSE disablement to allow porn and MP3 files to come into and out of our Federal Courthouses, was to placate numerous young members of this LULZ-seeking Internet hate group's activities, which thay aim to target anyone they perceive to be mentally disabled, poor, or, as seen on EncyclopediaDramatics's "ASPIE" page, have an autistic spectrum disorder.
ReplyDeleteI think so many of our judges and those who run our bar examiners and state bar associations are of a more elderly generation that does not feel comfortable using computers or the Internet, and therefore are not sufficiently saavy to see what these LULZ-seeking law clerks are doing under the radar.
It goes w/o mention, these degenerates are likewise shamelessly braggin the in the comment sections of several popular legal blogs about how they (as neurotypicals) are doping (substance abusing) w/Adderall and Ritalin to cheat on their bar examination scores w/what they view as performance enhancing drugs.
I sincerely believe our bar admission practices in all 50 states are sorely out of date, and need to immediately:
1.) begin drug testing all bar examinees upon entrance to the bar examination room and upon leaving, and refer ANYONE caught w/a non-disclosed non-doctor disability prescribed drug to the character & fitness committee for possible exlusion from licensure; and
(2.) revamp bar application questions and character & fitness background investigations to include ferreting otu whether any bar applicant has participated in any way in such LULZ Internet hate group activities, and, if, so, begin a formal hearing process to determine whether such applicant is unfit for admission.