Don’t feed the trolls

Jeff Moses

Trolling as a term for making inflammatory, extraneous, or off- topic remarks in an Internet forum.
It was most likely created on alt.folklore.urban, an old Usenet group from the early 90s.
“We would just post tired conversation topics and see who answered,” said Bill Hagen one of AFU’s oldest members. “Trolling for newbie’s, we just wanted to mess with them,” Hagen continued.
The idea was to get new site users to respond to the topics, so they could be identified by veteran users and then properly harassed for their “newbieness” according to Hagen.
Trolling continues to be an Internet pastime for many, evolving on to the social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter and just about every other social media site known to man.
With many trolls running not only personal pages including their real name and info, but also one or more troll pages depicting fake people specifically for the purpose of bothering others.
There are those who have literally been trolled to death. “Cyber bullies,” unrelentingly harassing peoples social media profiles until they commit suicide. News outlets worldwide have reported cases of trolling related suicides.
Hacktivism group Anonymous offshoot “LULsec” is known for having trolled teenagers to death, and the “cyber warriors” in general are known for being trolls.
Trolls have even come off of the Internet with notable human trolls like Stephen Colbert with his relentless attacks on Bill O’Reilly. Colbert purposely acts ignorant to the ridiculous things he says to try and garner visceral emotional responses from his guests and viewers. Colbert is so good, he even has some true believers fooled. “My parents love Stephen Colbert,” said Zack Huber “they think he should be on prime-time Fox news.”
Celebrities aren’t the only ones taking trolling off the internet. At an April 25 Glenn Beck speech at The Phoenix Symphony Hall, 10 Valley area anarchists showed up to “troll the unwashed, right wing, phony libertarian masses,” said Nestor Makhno, one of the trolls.
The anarchists stayed in one place, reading excerpts from Beck’s “favorite” book, “The Coming Insurrection” through a megaphone and passed out flyers that read, “The coming insurrection is coming all over the place.”
In England, trolling is covered by the communications act of 2003, which has seen two trolls go to jail. Sean Duffy was sentenced to 15 weeks for defacing the memorial Facebook page of a young girl, and Jamie Counsel was sentenced to four years in prison for trying to incite riots.
Internet trolling has made such a splash in Arizona that anti-trolling legislation came up in the legislature in the form of HB 2549 as recently as two weeks ago.

  • Mesa Legend Staff

    These are archived stories from Mesa Legend editions before Fall 2018. See article for corresponding author.

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