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posted by janrinok on Saturday August 20 2016, @03:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the troll-on-trolling dept.

Paraphrasing an article by Time Magazine's Joel Stein:

The Internet's personality has changed -- once it was like a geek with lofty ideals about the free flow of information. Now the web is a sociopath with Asperger's. [ Submitter's note: the "Sociopath with Asperger's" comment is not my addition, but a verbatim phrase in the source article ]

The people who relish their online freedom to act under influence of the online disinhibition effect are called "trolls." Trolling is, overtly, a political fight; but it has become the main tool of the alt-right, an Internet-grown reactionary movement that works for men's rights and against immigration. They derisively call their adversaries "social justice warriors" and believe that liberal interest groups purposely exploit their weaknesses to gain pity, which allows them to control the leverage of political power.

When sites are overrun by trolls, they drown out the voices of women, ethic and religious minorities, gays -- anyone who might feel vulnerable. The alt-right argues that if you can't handle opprobrium, you should just turn off your computer. But that's arguing against self-expression, something antithetical to the original values of the Internet.

The article closes with a description of an exchange between Stein and a detractor. In meeting the detractor in real-life, he was surprised by her lack of bravado, to which she responds, "The Internet is the realm of the coward. These are people who are all sound and no fury."

Stein ruminates in response, "Maybe. But maybe, in the information age, sound is as destructive as fury."


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  • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:09AM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:09AM (#390434) Journal

    I suppose I must also await the response. If I know you, my opinion is the other possibility, but I may be proven wrong. Rand may be tangential to the matter. At the very least, you've shown me before that you have some very good positions as concerns men's rights, and I for one haven't helped. Granted that MRAs can be equally wacky as TERFs.

  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:29AM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:29AM (#390449) Journal

    If I know him, he'll conveniently disappear and never respond to that little challenge. After all, terms like "SJW" are snarl words, used for their impact on the R-complex rather than the cerebral cortex, and making the user actually *explain* what they mean makes the people watching have to *think,* at which point they realize what kind of memetic conjob was played on them and leave in disgust.

    I think what pisses me off the most about people like him is that they genuinely think everyone else is as solipsistic and shortsighted and self-absorbed as they are :/

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:57AM

      by edIII (791) on Saturday August 20 2016, @04:57AM (#390465)

      I knew right from the title, and the TFS, that a critical shortage of warm fuzzies would be present here. I was right :)

      This thread need a hug. *HUG*

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:26AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday August 20 2016, @05:26AM (#390477) Journal

        This thread need a hug. *HUG*

        *HUG* back, edIII! Wasn't it that great big SJW Friederich Nietzsche that said: "When you hug a thread, the thread hugs you!" Maybe not. Or only in the Soviet Union. YMMV.