TDK's Joker, Klaatu, and internet trolls: "trying to prove..."

[V]

I read an interesting article in the New York Times on internet trolls this week: keep this thread in "Scifi and Fantasy" because I'm commenting on how themes from scifi stuff related to this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

It's not about "internet trolling" as in "haha internet messageboard fighting"

it's about like, the guys on the /b/ random page on 4chan and such

now "trolling" in an internet forum is one thing, I mean I don't like it but.......something really got to me about the people that continue it to real life and harassment

specifically this guy they have called "Jason Fortuny"

you see he's defending, really arrogantly, all of these insane things he's done online as entirely justified.

I mean, specifically, they start out by talking about how he put a fake ad on Craigslist saying "i'm a hot young slut looking for action" or something, and like 100 guys responded to it; some of them were married and this ended up leading to divorces.

Okay, that was a social experiment, and honestly I don't have a problem with that; everyone knows internet ads of "teh hot girls" are fake, because there are no girls on the internet. BUt really, this was an ad thing online and basically they could choose whether to do that or not. I'm ignoring that he did that.

******no, the specific things he does that are just so.....apprehensible are....okay, everyone remember last year, a girl named Megan Meier killed herself because a "boy" broke up with her on Myspace, when in reality this "boy" was a fake ID created by Lori Drew, who was one the mother of one of Megan's friends who created the ID to try to find out if Lori was gossiping about Megan; it was an eavedropping/gossip ploy that went horribly wrong and Megan ended up killing herself. I just see that as a tragedy. Maybe the courts would take issue with Lori I don't no what to think.

But what Fortuny did was....he made a Myspace account called...

[/SIZE]the Megan Had It Coming blog. Supposedly written by one of Megan’s classmates, the blog called Megan a “drama queen,” so unstable that Drew could not be blamed for her death. “Killing yourself over a MySpace boy? Come on!!! I mean yeah your fat so you have to take what you can get but still nobody should kill themselves over it.” This post received more than 3,600 comments. Fox and CNN debated its authenticity. But the Drew identity was another mask. In fact, Megan Had It Coming was another Jason Fortuny experiment. He, not Lori Drew, Fortuny told me, was the blog’s author. After watching him log onto the site and add a post, I believed him. The blog was intended, he says, to question the public’s hunger for remorse and to challenge the enforceability of cyberharassment laws like the one passed by Megan’s town after her death. Fortuny concluded that they were unenforceable. The county sheriff’s department announced it was investigating the identity of the fake Lori Drew, but it never found Fortuny, who is not especially worried about coming out now. “What’s he going to sue me for?” he asked. “Leading on confused people? Why don’t people fact-check who this stuff is coming from? Why do they assume it’s true?”

and okay, that was one prank but....the next thing just really took me aback:

Trolls attacked the Epilepsy Foundation's website to add in flashing lights that would give epileptics seizures. Fortuny himself didn't do it but he seemed really proud of whoever did it and was adamantly defending it. He he feels fully justified in doing this and thinks everyone else is weird for judging him:

news of an attack against the Epilepsy Foundation’s Web site. Trolls had flooded the site’s forums with flashing images and links to animated color fields, leading at least one photosensitive user to claim that she had a seizure.

Fortuny disagreed. In his mind, subjecting epileptic users to flashing lights was justified. “Hacks like this tell you to watch out by hitting you with a baseball bat,” he told me. “Demonstrating these kinds of exploits is usually the only way to get them fixed.”
“So the message is ‘buy a helmet,’ and the medium is a bat to the head?” I asked.
“No, it’s like a pitcher telling a batter to put on his helmet by beaning him from the mound. If you have this disease and you’re on the Internet, you need to take precautions.” A few days later, he wrote and posted a guide to safe Web surfing for epileptics.

My thing is, that obviously, not everyone shares Fortuny's warped logic on this: several people did indeed get seizures from this. I myself would describe his mentality as that "that fire-trap of an apartment was going to catch fire anyway, so I warned everyone....by lighting in on fire"

And what about like, children with epilepsy or doterring elderly people? *Not everyone knows as much about the internet and how computers and video displays work as you do, Fortuny*

but its not just that its.....its the mentality this guy has about the world and people:

“I’m not going to sit here and say, ‘Oh, God, please forgive me!’ so someone can feel better,” Fortuny said, his calm voice momentarily rising.

and he goes on to explain sort of WHY his mindset is so bitter:

I’ve been through horrible stuff, too.”

“Like what?” I asked. Sexual abuse, Fortuny said. When Jason was 5, he said, he was molested by his grandfather and three other relatives. Jason’s mother later told me, too, that he was molested by his grandfather.

but he really did damage that never would have happened, I mean he went to to take personal information about Megan and Lori's families, which he got from hacking, online: Their personal information — e-mail addresses, satellite images of their home, phone numbers -- they got constant taunting phone callshurled a brick through the kitchen window. And he's actually almost sickly proud of what he did:

“Am I the bad guy? Am I the big horrible person who shattered someone’s life with some information? No! This is life. Welcome to life. Everyone goes through it."...The willingness of trolling “victims” to be hurt by words, he argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it.

which speaks volumes....I mean also, how can people "get over" that you publicly harrass them online and mail out their ***Frakking names e-mail phone numbers and addresses knowing that this will lead to them being harassed even more? Specifically WHAT is the way to "get over that"?!


so bad things happened to him, and he turned really bitter, cynical, and manipulative, trying to spread ruin to people he has never met and have absolutely nothing to do with him. To what?


And after reading this article, all I could keep thinking of was the climax of "The Dark Knight" where Batman yells at the Joker "WHAT WERE YOU TRYING TO PROVE?! THAT DEEP DOWN, EVERYONE IS AS UGLY AS YOU ARE?!"


You see.....the internet is an awesomely large place and bad things happen in it; not online, I mean really truly awful things from sexual harassment to cyber-stalking to much much worse....

But I truly believe in a world where if we try to can make a society based on Justice and Order; yeah that sounds corny, but I mean some sociologists and stuff saying that it is really impossible to have a fair and civilized society; well I don't agree with that.

You might think that ironic given that my name is "V", and V is an anarchist......but if you actually read the graphic novel, "V for Vendetta", there's a key point where V stresses that **there is a difference between Chaos and Anarchy: "Anarchy means "without leaders" not "without Order"". Maybe he's a bit ambitious to say that he believes/hopes that we can have a truly "Anarchist" society in which order is voluntarily maintained by individuals....but the point is that even HE doesn't believe in just "Chaos", in the "Land of Take-What-You-Want"

And here.....TrekBBS has moderators, administrators, etc. to keep the peace, maintain order, keep the guys who post porn and the cyber-stalkers that threaten people, off. And I really think that (using the rotational moderator system mixed with permanent admins) TrekBBS has done a good job of keeping the peace and "Public Order" here.

But this guy....he's trying to prove basically what the Joker was trying to prove.

I however, really do believe in Order and Responsibility and such: posting people's personal information and sexually harassing stories about them online is not a sign of "maturity" and doesn't make the trolls from /b/ "adults": it's stuff written on a public toilet wall, nothing more.

So you see some people think the internet should, philosophically, be this totally unmoderated unpoliced place where we can do anything we want.

but part of being a "good" functional person is restraint; the old argument of "if you could get away with something without police to stop you and no repercussions....would you do it anyway?" and the arguement that ANY Order "limits our freedoms" (against, Anarchy vs Chaos)

But....what I really believe in is something that Klaatu says in his speech at the end of "The Day the Earth Stood Still":

"There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly."

So who, based on the themes explored in scifi, is right here? Klaatu? Or this Jason Fortuny guy, who like the Joker, feels a driving need to make the world around him a horrible frightened place to match how ugly he himself is on the inside?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls.1-650.jpg

--the pastey-white rail-thin face behind the blogs, without the letters of the word "Jason Fotuny" to hide behind...

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Please watch the hotlinking.

 

[Kegek]

Don't get emotional on the internet.

Don't get emotionally attached or seek companionship. Don't get outraged. Don't be vulnerable.

That's not all that hard to do, is it? Trolling is entirely dependent on the willingness to take the bait. You don't want to be effected, don't let yourself be. Fortuny definitely has a point there. That's distinct from hacking, though I understand why they're lumped in. What one needs against hacking, I guess, is good security.

And I don't see much connection to either the Joker or Klaatu, besides the fact they're both characters in films released this year.

 

[V]

I'm not talking about the "emotional online" trolling, I'm talking about the "hacking into th national epilepsy foundation's website to make it display flashing lights to give people seisures" trolling

I'm not talking about "trolling" but "real life trolling-hacking" i.e. "I stole your credit card number, for the lulz!"

I"m not talking about "online trolling and being emotional on the internet"

this guy gives out people's address and phone numbers online so people can stalk them *in real life* and he does it because he doesn't believe in an orderly world but really bitterly thinks everything is horrible

as for Joker and Klaatu, those are just scifi characters espousing two ends of the spectrum that this whole thing reminded me of

 

[CaptJimboJones]

God, I slogged through that article, and my only real conclusion was: What a bunch of assholes.

 

[Kegek]

I'm not talking about the "emotional online" trolling, I'm talking about the "hacking into th national epilepsy foundation's website to make it display flashing lights to give people seisures" trolling

I'm not talking about "trolling" but "real life trolling-hacking" i.e. "I stole your credit card number, for the lulz!"

I"m not talking about "online trolling and being emotional on the internet"

this guy gives out people's address and phone numbers online so people can stalk them *in real life* and he does it because he doesn't believe in an orderly world but really bitterly thinks everything is horrible

Yeah, that's hacking. Or troll-hacking, and other criminal behaviour. Like I said, good security seems to be the best defence against that. A rather bland response, I know, but what else is there? I think Fortuny is correct as far as trolling in general goes, but hacking isn't something that'll go away if ignored - nor will it correct itself if ignored.

as for Joker and Klaatu, those are just scifi characters espousing two ends of the spectrum that this whole thing reminded me of

Ah. It's a fair comparison, then.

Well, for my two cents on the braoder issue, anarchy which assumes justice and order is, quite frankly, naive. One can look at our present societies, which have police, law and order and innumerable criminal acts. Take away that which restricts it would hardly make it go away. Governments may not be a guarantor of justice, but they work better than any other model. Especially as justice, to exist as a concept, has to be defined and enforcable.

 

[V]

God, I slogged through that article, and my only real conclusion was: What a bunch of assholes.

yeah that was my conclusion too....especially that crazy one with the "there's a Malthusian catastrophe coming so lets kill two thirds of the world population, plus I really hate Jews and ask "are you a jew" as a conversation opener to NY times reporters...." ugh, craziness

Well, for my two cents on the braoder issue, Anarchy which assumes justice is, quite frankly, naive. One can look at our present societies, which have police, law and order and innumerable criminal acts. Take away that which restricts it would hardly make it go away. Governments may not be a guarantor of justice, but they work better than any other model. Especially as justice, to exist as a concept, has to be defined and enforcable.

....well, I meant Anarchy less in the "Vote Anarchy in '08" sense than in the abstract, scifi, Ursula K. LeGuin future-society social engineering sense.

Oh this is...."life-hacking"; doing crazy "trolling people in real life" things, and really, "trolling people in real life" is literally "stalking". But as for the online stuff; everyone knows the risks when they come online, because "This is the business we have chosen for ourselves!" --Godfather II

 

[Capt_Piett]

Karma will come around and knock this A-Hole in the head with a very large bat at some point. He can't act this way and think there aren't consequences; sooner or later he'll mess with the wrong person and it'll be game over. And there'll be one less bitter, spiteful person in the world.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Well, for my two cents on the braoder issue, anarchy which assumes justice and order is, quite frankly, naive. One can look at our present societies, which have police, law and order and innumerable criminal acts. Take away that which restricts it would hardly make it go away. Governments may not be a guarantor of justice, but they work better than any other model. Especially as justice, to exist as a concept, has to be defined and enforcable.

Furthermore, anarchy is unsustainable. We had a leaderless society once, back in prehistoric times. But those early humans eventually organized themselves into various leader driven social structures. It is human nature to impose order and arbitrary rules onto things. The only way to have ordered anarchy is if everyone agreed all the time. That's obviously not going to happen. And when it doesn't, aberrations occur when some individuals decide that they're not going to respect the rights of others. In an anarchic society, what happens then?

I mean, specifically, they start out by talking about how he put a fake ad on Craigslist saying "i'm a hot young slut looking for action" or something, and like 100 guys responded to it; some of them were married and this ended up leading to divorces.

Okay, that was a social experiment, and honestly I don't have a problem with that; everyone knows internet ads of "teh hot girls" are fake, because there are no girls on the internet.

Not true. There are girls. It's just that hot girls who are also smart enough to operate a computer aren't on the open market. Someone's already snatched them all up, I guarantee. (Most of them seem to be married to these big, burly guys that carry a lot of knives.)

Megan Meier killed herself because a "boy" broke up with her on Myspace, when in reality this "boy" was a fake ID created by Lori Drew, who was one the mother of one of Megan's friends who created the ID to try to find out if Lori was gossiping about Megan; it was an eavedropping/gossip ploy that went horribly wrong and Megan ended up killing herself. I just see that as a tragedy. Maybe the courts would take issue with Lori I don't no what to think.

No one is responsible for anyone else's mental state. Certainly no one could be held legally responsible. Would it be any different if Megan had killed herself over a real boy that she met on MySpace? Or a real boy that she knew in real life? No. The fact that she took it so severely demonstrates that she was not in her right mind to begin with. A breakdown like this was probably inevitable.

Trolls attacked the Epilepsy Foundation's website to add in flashing lights that would give epileptics seizures. Fortuny himself didn't do it but he seemed really proud of whoever did it and was adamantly defending it. He he feels fully justified in doing this and thinks everyone else is weird for judging him:
[...]
My thing is, that obviously, not everyone shares Fortuny's warped logic on this: several people did indeed get seizures from this. I myself would describe his mentality as that "that fire-trap of an apartment was going to catch fire anyway, so I warned everyone....by lighting in on fire"

And what about like, children with epilepsy or doterring elderly people? *Not everyone knows as much about the internet and how computers and video displays work as you do, Fortuny*

This is a little different. Hacking into someone else's website for any reason isn't just a harmless prank. It is a blatant disregard for other people's property rights.

 

[Kegek]

The Borgified Corpse essentially said what I tried to, only he did it a lot better than I did.

 

[Nedersong]

The conundrum is two fold:

Too much security means no liberty.

Too much liberty means no security.

 

[suarezguy]

I somewhat share the opinion that the world and a lot of people are very flawed and people ought to be made aware of those flaws even if (because) they hurt, truth is worth some unhappiness. But causing physical pain or emotional problems just to be mean isn't justifiable or beneficial, there are better and less harmful ways to increase people's skepticism and caution.

 

[blaXXer]

Whoa, that dude is awesome. He's just playing the uninformed masses too stupid to check anything and instead take everything at face value. He's just trying to prove, that the internet is not, and never has been, serious business.

His methods may be crude at first glance, but if this is what it takes to show the plebes of the information age that they should not ever take the internet and themselves so goddamn seriously I say let him do it.

Fuck that outrage over internet-related matter...it's pathetic and unfunny. Ric Romero unfunny.

 

[Kemaiku]

^Wait until some pyscho hacks your details off the net and kills you or drains your bank accounts.

Will you just hold up your hands, laugh, say fair enough and let them?

 

[blaXXer]

^Wait until some pyscho hacks your details off the net and kills you or drains your bank accounts.

Will you just hold up your hands, laugh, say fair enough and let them?

Since I don't do online-banking and only pay cash there seems to be little problem with that

As for killing me..oh well you can dramatize things, I'll give you that.

 

[V]

I agree with Chemahkuu, blaXXer: you have no idea what you are talking about. This isn't the fake world of "haha messageboard games"; this is the life-hacking stuff of hacking online bank records, identity theft, cyberstalking, and e-commerce.

The internet isn't some tokers arguing Kirk vs. Picard anymore: the days of usenet are over.

 

[blaXXer]

Which is my whole point. people are taking stuff on the interwebs way too serious. not only plebes being offended by every off-color website but people, who, according to your [D]rama would 'kill me' over it.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

Whoa, that dude is awesome. He's just playing the uninformed masses too stupid to check anything and instead take everything at face value. He's just trying to prove, that the internet is not, and never has been, serious business.

No, he's just an asshole. And a pretty pathetic one, at that. If he didn't have "the Internet," he'd be one of those asswipes working at a Wendy's spitting in people's food and coming up with a pseudo-intellectual justification for it ("people who eat fast food deserve it because it's so bad for their health" or some other such nonsense) when really he just gets a giddy thrill from being a jerk without having to face any real consequences.

You never see these people walk up to a big guy on the street and slug them, for example, they just like to fuck things up for other people in a way that they don't have to face any consequences at all.

 

[blaXXer]

Pff you're just suck up and not cynical enough