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| Stop trolling |
Look
up the word “Troll” and you will find two meanings. The first is the Scandinavian legend
concerning hideous creatures whose life revolves
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Trolling
has transmogrified free speech into an online free for all that threatens to
undermine investigative journalism, whistle blowers and in short anyone who
goes against the grain. It has been used
by big business to muddy the waters, not to mention it can be used by everyone
from peeved ex-spouses and ex-employees to underhanded competitors to make
anyone’s life a living hell. If you want
to protect your right of free speech and keep from being smeared by these vile
creatures, shine a light by learning the tools of the trade of trolls.
The Big Lie about the BIG
Lie
“If
you tell a big enough lie and repeat it over and over, people will eventually
come to believe it.” This statement has
been attributed as being coined by everyone from Adolph Hitler and Joseph
Goebbels to Lenin and Mao Tse-tung s ha ve come to know, like and embrace this tactic to bolster their
lot in life. And why not, since he who
shouts the loudest is listened
A
couple of months ago I watched an episode of the PBS series American Experience
that detailed the riots and fires that resulted from a 1977 blackout in New York
City that resulted from a passing thunderstorm.
During the ensuing darkness that lasted one night, an orgy of violence, looting
and arson gripped parts of the Big Apple that were unexpected in their
scope. An excerpt from the show’s
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But in the poorer neighborhoods of the city's boroughs, the power outage spurred near-immediate mayhem under the cover of darkness. As employees at Con Edison struggled to restore power to the elaborate system, people smashed windows and ripped security gates
Granted,
there were a number of underlying factors that were blamed for the mayhem. In 1977 New York City was experiencing a
financial crisis that caused a shortage of services that caused everything from
a reduction in public services, to rampant unemployment and increased
crime. Add to this the fact that the
city was in the midst of a heat wave and that same summer was deemed the Summer
of Sam, as serial killer David Berkowitz, kept the city that never sleeps on
edge and is it any wonder that the Big Apple was a powder keg looking for a
spark to set it off.
Whether
the unrest, riots, arson and mayhem that ensued could be blamed on this perfect
storm of events, or just the outage is a matter of opinion. What is even
stranger is that when the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003 occurred, history
repeated itself as once again violence descended on New York City. Granted, the terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center on September 11, 2001 were still vivid in the memories of New
Yorkers. But the economy was booming and
the Big Apple was seeing an overall drop in crime. So what could cause something as a few hours
of darkness to turn an otherwise tranquil evening into an urban warzone
“That night there was a
lightning strike on a power line in West Chester County. The line went out and the demand starts to
increase on some of the surrounding lines.
This sets off a kind of chain reaction or domino effect where another
line suddenly has too much power it has to be shut down. And then another line is overextended and it
goes down. “
So
what does this have to do with trolling? Are people wired much like the
electrical grid,
where
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In
a recent post on WashingtonPost.com,
correspondent Fareed Zakaria reports how he wound up being the target of
trolling which soon cascaded out of control.
It started when an obscure
website published a post titled "CNN host Fareed Zakaria calls for jihad
rape of white women." The story claimed that in my "private
blog" I had urged the use of American women as "sex slaves" to depopulate
the white race. The post further claimed that on my Twitter account, I had
written the following line: "Every death of a white person brings tears of
joy to my eyes."
Disgusting. So much so
that the item would collapse from its own weightlessness, right? Wrong. Here is
what happened next: Hundreds of people began linking to it, tweeting and
retweeting it, and adding their comments, which are too vulgar or racist to repeat.
A few ultra-right-wing websites reprinted the story as fact. With each new
cycle, the levels of hysteria rose, and people started demanding that I be
fired, deported or killed. For a few days, the digital intimidation veered out
into the real world. Some people called my house late one night and woke up and
threatened my daughters, who are 7 and 12.
It would have taken a
minute to click on the link and see that the original post was on a fake news
site, one that claims to be satirical (though not very prominently). It would
have taken simple common sense to realize the absurdity of the charge. But none
of this mattered.
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In my own experience,
conversations on Facebook are somewhat more civil, because people generally
have to reveal their identities. But on Twitter and in other places — the
online comments section of The Post, for example — people can be anonymous or
have pseudonyms. And that is where bile
In
several earlier blogs about cyberbullying
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To make matters worse, it was learned more
than a year later that “Josh” wasn’t even a real person. It turns out
that Josh’s Myspace account was created by Megan’s neighbor, Lori Drew. While receiving national attention, not
to mention a federal indictment, Lori Drew was acquitted of all charges by US
District Judge George Wu in 2009. For more details, read: Are social networks becoming antisocial on
Working the Web to Win in blogger.
While
cyberbullying
Catherine
Rampell, an opinion columnist at the Washington Post
went ballistic when her father, took matters into his own hands by emailing a
troll who had called his daughter an idiot online. Her response to her dad was short and to the
point:
Never,
ever, ever engage with trolls again, I told him. At issue was not just a
daughter’s tendency to be reflexively embarrassed by her well-intentioned
father. My concern was that, based on my own experience and that of many of my
colleagues, responding to trolls more often leads to escalation
Ms. me cyberbull ies
The
Internet is rife with stories of other women (often journalists and performers,
but sometimes just random users) being threatened and tormented by
quasi-anonymous hordes, whose vitriol seems only to swell if the target fights
back. Consider “Gamergate” or the feminist writers who have scaled back or eliminated their online
presence rather than endure daily abuse.
Some journalists, such as feminist writer
Jessica Valenti, get so fed up with the 24-hour online abuse that
they simply choose to either post anonymously or retire from the worldwide
online stage altogether.
Of
course, teenagers and journalists aren’t the only people who are routinely
trolled. Everyone from whistleblowers to
scientists have been victims of trolls.
Those in the news such as TV and movie stars have had to endure their
share of trolling. Last week, Fox News
issued a statement about Donald Trump when he threatened to boycott their
televised debate because he felt that Fox’s moderator, Megyn Kelly, wasn’t
going to be fair to him. He even went so far as to ask his Twitter followers,
“Should I go to the GOP debate?”
Fox News responded in a
statement given to MEDIAite, saying:
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In response, the Donald Tweeted the following: “Pathetic attempt by @foxnews to try and build up
ratings for the #GOPDebate. Without me they'd have no ratings!”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2016
On it goes, as trolling becomes more commonplace,
and where the most outrageous half-truths, untruths and innuendos become the
gospel truth to a worldwide audience eager to feed the flames. What this writer wants to know is whether
this practice will eventually be abolished or whether trolls will ultimately
control the Internet?
In
this article I have discussed the growing and disturbing trend of online Trolling,
which is has become a plague for journalist, celebrities, political candidates
and yes, regular everyday citizens. This yellow press trend is an insidious
social media injustice that is hurting our democracy and social freedoms. If
something is not done to reverse this trend, it will become a nightmare for all
of free peoples and will eventually destroy the credibility of social media in
general.
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Carl Weiss is president of
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routinely works with bloggers and other online marketers.
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The trolls are here and they're getting worse all the time. Oh, the humanity!
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