The New York Times Magazine has an article on, of all things, trolls. Long, but worth reading for those who are interested in the phenomenon. (Encyclopedia Dramatica is mentioned.) "The Trolls Among Us", by Mattathias Schwartz, published August 3. Here's a direct link, though I'm not sure it'll work for everyone: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html.
Some follow up is found here: http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/guest-post-mattathias-schwartz...
The article also mentions someone giving the ED founder the serious troll treatment - and that he called another troll, featured in the article, for help. Its an interesting pathology that makes these people do what they do, and intriguing to see how they rationalize it to themselves. Another individual featured in the article supposedly posted a long comment to the first blog post by Heffernan - but it'd be ironic if it wasn't actually him.
Nathan
On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 11:43 PM, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
The New York Times Magazine has an article on, of all things, trolls. Long, but worth reading for those who are interested in the phenomenon. (Encyclopedia Dramatica is mentioned.) "The Trolls Among Us", by Mattathias Schwartz, published August 3. Here's a direct link, though I'm not sure it'll work for everyone: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html.
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