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Often times I think we characterize trolls as normal people who just let out their anti-social side under the cloak of internet anonymity. Probably that is eve

Often times I think we characterize trolls as normal people who just let out their anti-social side under the cloak of internet anonymity. Probably that is even true for the majority. But the scary thing we need to address is the number of isolated and devalued individuals subsisting in modern society, but without dignity. Under the veneer of societal abundance, the struggle to survive is replaced with the pursuit of abstract accomplishments (career, sports, fame, etc). When someone is not successful in these things, it's very easy to survive but not thrive, and in the absence of real survival pressure it's too easy to be left alone with ones thoughts and descend into a depressive downward spiral.

smrtinsert 8y ago
The most severe trolls I've had the misfortune of meeting online have actually been mentally ill and highly sociopathic. Some will look to harm others in real if they could whether it be socially, economically, or even physically. Doxxing is entry level stuff for them. I no longer find online gaming fun for this reason.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
  Trolls, stalkers, doxers, etc. are a serious problem. A recent example that comes to mind: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18049311 https://www.patreon.com/posts/18049311 This post raises a lot of questions that I don't have a good answer to.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    It's worrying that while reading the article I was nodding along thinking "yep, sounds like 4chan" and it turned out to be tumblr. When both extremes of the political spectrum have groups of stalkers and trolls trying to ruin people's lives for committing some imaginary sin, you know things are screwed.
    - astrodust 8y ago
      It's not extremes of the political spectrum, but extremes of behaviour. If this is Kiwi Farms, though... https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
      - beaconstudios 8y ago
        the two seem to have a form of magnetism.
        astrodust 8y ago
        It's not magnetism, it's attractiveness to abusive people. Some people don't really care what cause they get behind so long as they get to bully people and raise hell. They'd be anarchists, leftists, alt-right, whatever, so long as they get to beat up people and set things on fire. This is not to say both political extremes are identical, but that certain people will latch on to any group that will tolerate their behaviour.
        beaconstudios 8y ago
        absolutely, that's IMO the nugget of truth nested within horseshoe theory.
      - tomrod 8y ago
        The internet is a dark place in some corners.
        astrodust 8y ago
        Those dark corners need a healthy dose of napalm.
    - joe_the_user 8y ago
      Edit: You are misread the post (and I didn't quite read it in enough detail myself). The post claims, Kiwi Farms, large alt-right-influence forum, is manipulating progressives to attack this person. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
- ljm 8y ago
  I think you only need to look at Reddit and the ProRevenge/PettyRevenge/etc subreddits to see the mindset of a very large amount of people who find joy in completely ruining somebody’s life. The common theme being you suffered so you deliver 100x suffering in return in cruel and unusual ways. Redefining karma as cold revenge, being an innocent victim who is a victim but no longer innocent. This doesn’t even come close to healthy. It usually takes therapy to get there in such a case but when you revel in the pain...
  - learc83 8y ago
    It's no surprise when almost half of the voters in the country voted for a man who's personal motto is "get even". "Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it." "When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder."
    - leesalminen 8y ago
      Should you not stand up for yourself in business? Anecdotally, I was screwed once in a business. I didn’t retaliate. Same thing happened a second time because this person knew I wouldn’t react. I won’t let it happen again. Edit:: to be clear, I’m talking 7-figure screwed, not “this person was mean to me”.
      - learc83 8y ago
        So you learned your lesson and you've made sure to devote a significant portion of your resources to getting your revenge? There's a difference between not letting someone take advantage of you and spending significant time repaying every perceived slight 10 fold. Even iterative prisoners dilemma shows that without forgiveness a tit for tat strategy dissolves into an endless cycle of vengeance.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  It is worth mentioning that the mentally ill are (sadly) fairly common in this society. Historically mentally ill people have not tended to be more dangerous than average people and it important not to assume that mentally equals dangerous today. That said, I think, historically, a substantially part of the reason mentally people usually are harmless is because they can see their grasp on reality is shaky. Others have generally not shared their delusions and so no one validates their desires to lash out at those who they imagine have harmed them. The Internet seems to have changed that - communities of people who share pathological illusions seem to have come together and produced a still small number of horrendous crimes - the "incel movement" being one very visible example. These folks might well in dangerous (to others) gray area between debilitating insanity and approximate sanity. Pathological enough to embrace problematic ideas and functional enough act on them.
  - GW150914 8y ago
    A lack of insight, denial of the very fact that they are ill is a prominent feature in a number of mental disorders, most notably schizophrenia. I think that what you’re saying about people getting together online to share delusions is a factor, but I don’t think it’s because they used to have a sense that they were deluded. Rather, they were isolated. Someone who thought that power lines were controlling their thoughts had very little ability to spread that belief. They could shout on a street corner, print and pass out pamphlets, and that was it. Unless you were nuts and rich, you couldn’t really spread the “word” far. Now that has changed, and everyone, however disorganized and deprived of resources, can publish their every thought. People who think they’ve been “gang stalked” and people who think that the government is behind contrails all have a megaphone to the world. As a “bonus” they also are able to just type their delusions into Google and find sites to confirm and expand them. The same network effect that connects hobbyists and enthusiasts of rare things around the world does the same for people with delusional frameworks. It also does the same for Holocaust deniers, and general shitheads.
    - joe_the_user 8y ago
      I think that what you’re saying about people getting together online to share delusions is a factor, but I don’t think it’s because they used to have a sense that they were deluded. It's hard to phrase these things. I wouldn't say people were less confident in the delusional beliefs. Rather, an isolated delusional person has less general confidence - the world is "against them" and their relative weakness relative to the world is fairly evident. Overall, success at doing horrible things requires some of the same mix that success at doing constructive things needs; confidence, support, plans and ideas. The process you describe and we all can see helps in all those things.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
  Same for me with respect to online gaming. Having worked in the games industry and made my own too it's a sad realization that a seemingly large minority of our own customers are abusive. Too many are just an unhappy bunch of people frustrated with life. Attacks extend beyond personal to companies too. For instance, games offer some of the best value for money entertainment and yet many 'gamers' just constantly complain about the price of anything even if it's low. I don't think a lot of these people understand how the general economy works. Some of this may be due to age or immaturity too.
imbokodo 8y ago
> societal abundance These might be times of abundance, but not societal abundance. Trump did not win speaking about there being societal abundance. It does not exist in the US, and certainly not in the third world. Just walk down to the Tenderloin in San Francisco or take an extended walk around Oakland, and you can see this for yourself.
branchless 8y ago
Society is far too rigid. We have people who are harmless, who can't cope with the horrible full time jobs we force people into via high land rent, who are kicked to the edge of society. We need a choice and that choice comes with cheap rent as a prerequisite. Yet our institutions strive for the opposite. I'd disagree that it's easy to survive. Many people in good jobs are now one bad week away from ruin.
ggg9990 8y ago
This will be the biggest struggle of post-scarcity economies. Some people need to be distracted with the struggle to survive to keep them from destructive thoughts.
- sli 8y ago
  It's a bit disingenuous to put today's society in the place of a hypothetical society immediately before post-scarcity (or society before any major societal shift in the far future). They are in no way comparable. Society as it is could not handle post-scarcity, but a huge contributor is the simple fact that post-scarcity is a very long way away.
  - konschubert 8y ago
    > post-scarcity is a very long way away I'm surprised that you think that. What would you consider a scarce good in today's society?
    - Regardsyjc 8y ago
      Clean water is still a scarce basic need in many parts of the world and even in some parts of the United States even beyond Flint, Michigan. Many women do not have access to or can afford feminine hygiene products in the world or US. If high speed internet can be considered a good, it's a scarce utility in many parts of the world. I think there's still many basic needs or utilities that are scarce...
      - konschubert 8y ago
        But isn't this more of a distribution problem than a general scarcity problem?
      - opportune 8y ago
        Yes, globally. But many people individually live in a post-scarcity society. A young man with no job who has everything they need or even want (short of large-ticket items like expensive vacations, cars, house, etc.) provided by their parents arguably is living a post-scarcity lifestyle.
baybal2 8y ago
>Under the veneer of societal abundance, the struggle to survive is replaced with the pursuit of abstract accomplishments (career, sports, fame, etc). When someone is not successful in these things, it's very easy to survive but not thrive, and in the absence of real survival pressure it's too easy to be left alone with ones thoughts and descend into a depressive downward spiral. You grasped the idea very well. Life in the West gives you a lot of "false idols," way more than just plain income (in)security and social acceptance. A lot of very well doing people are insecure about what you call class attributes: "have you sent your kid to an Ivy league college? is your MBA still hip enough? have you launched a tech startup by 30? have you appointed trophy diversity hires of a current trendy ethnicity to your C-Suite? is an apartment you bought shares the floor with influential people A, B, and C?" and so on. I myself felt nearly crushed morally when my employer was unsuccessful extending my work permit in Canada after 6 years of my life there. I worked towards having "a perfect immigration case" since my mid-teens: from learning French, to having all and every pre-college education credentials that can benefit an immigration application possible, and yes, studying like crazy, wasting best years of life for a piece of paper. Now, I'm feeling more or less recovered from that. Not only I came back with a heavy bag of cash, I was still doing more than 99% of locals just from "insubstantial" freelance gigs, had solid resume, and tons of calls from recruiters offering jobs in every country imaginable, and finally, after nearly 9 years of my life I could wake up at a time of my volition, and not what was mandated by job or college. That last thing was near surreal for me at the time. But what was the best was not "prestige checkboxes" on the resume, nor an approving looks of female classmates from my highschool class, nor a trophy apartment I bought for pocket change when the Rouble was on its way to a seafloor. The best things from all of that were things of universal value: skills, life experience, being alive and well, fat rolodex, and knowledge "where to scratch fat cats" from places awash with cash. Now I'm happy working in engineering consulting with a Chinese company, netting more than 99.99% of locals, having nearly careless lifestyle in comparison to what I had, and living in a city without gloomy weather. I can't believe that just 2 years ago I thought of my whole life as failure. Another valuable thing, China has introduced me to was the entirely different, "BS Free," work culture centered on value: contract, payment, and CAD files in the morning — widgets ready in the evening, without any manager title holder in the loop.
- 8y ago
hinkley 8y ago
Maslow's Hierarchy. Getting food and shelter is only the beginning of the process.
noobermin 8y ago
I will say that Japan is exceptional as far as I can tell (and I'm not Japanese), so the level of social isolation is a bit different in extent and even character compared to the US.
- mattj1 8y ago
  Exceptional how?

smrtinsert 8y ago

The most severe trolls I've had the misfortune of meeting online have actually been mentally ill and highly sociopathic. Some will look to harm others in real if they could whether it be socially, economically, or even physically. Doxxing is entry level stuff for them. I no longer find online gaming fun for this reason.

CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
Trolls, stalkers, doxers, etc. are a serious problem. A recent example that comes to mind: https://www.patreon.com/posts/18049311 https://www.patreon.com/posts/18049311 This post raises a lot of questions that I don't have a good answer to.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  It's worrying that while reading the article I was nodding along thinking "yep, sounds like 4chan" and it turned out to be tumblr. When both extremes of the political spectrum have groups of stalkers and trolls trying to ruin people's lives for committing some imaginary sin, you know things are screwed.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    It's not extremes of the political spectrum, but extremes of behaviour. If this is Kiwi Farms, though... https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      the two seem to have a form of magnetism.
      - astrodust 8y ago
        It's not magnetism, it's attractiveness to abusive people. Some people don't really care what cause they get behind so long as they get to bully people and raise hell. They'd be anarchists, leftists, alt-right, whatever, so long as they get to beat up people and set things on fire. This is not to say both political extremes are identical, but that certain people will latch on to any group that will tolerate their behaviour.
        beaconstudios 8y ago
        absolutely, that's IMO the nugget of truth nested within horseshoe theory.
    - tomrod 8y ago
      The internet is a dark place in some corners.
      - astrodust 8y ago
        Those dark corners need a healthy dose of napalm.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Edit: You are misread the post (and I didn't quite read it in enough detail myself). The post claims, Kiwi Farms, large alt-right-influence forum, is manipulating progressives to attack this person. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms
ljm 8y ago
I think you only need to look at Reddit and the ProRevenge/PettyRevenge/etc subreddits to see the mindset of a very large amount of people who find joy in completely ruining somebody’s life. The common theme being you suffered so you deliver 100x suffering in return in cruel and unusual ways. Redefining karma as cold revenge, being an innocent victim who is a victim but no longer innocent. This doesn’t even come close to healthy. It usually takes therapy to get there in such a case but when you revel in the pain...
- learc83 8y ago
  It's no surprise when almost half of the voters in the country voted for a man who's personal motto is "get even". "Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it." "When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder."
  - leesalminen 8y ago
    Should you not stand up for yourself in business? Anecdotally, I was screwed once in a business. I didn’t retaliate. Same thing happened a second time because this person knew I wouldn’t react. I won’t let it happen again. Edit:: to be clear, I’m talking 7-figure screwed, not “this person was mean to me”.
    - learc83 8y ago
      So you learned your lesson and you've made sure to devote a significant portion of your resources to getting your revenge? There's a difference between not letting someone take advantage of you and spending significant time repaying every perceived slight 10 fold. Even iterative prisoners dilemma shows that without forgiveness a tit for tat strategy dissolves into an endless cycle of vengeance.
joe_the_user 8y ago
It is worth mentioning that the mentally ill are (sadly) fairly common in this society. Historically mentally ill people have not tended to be more dangerous than average people and it important not to assume that mentally equals dangerous today. That said, I think, historically, a substantially part of the reason mentally people usually are harmless is because they can see their grasp on reality is shaky. Others have generally not shared their delusions and so no one validates their desires to lash out at those who they imagine have harmed them. The Internet seems to have changed that - communities of people who share pathological illusions seem to have come together and produced a still small number of horrendous crimes - the "incel movement" being one very visible example. These folks might well in dangerous (to others) gray area between debilitating insanity and approximate sanity. Pathological enough to embrace problematic ideas and functional enough act on them.
- GW150914 8y ago
  A lack of insight, denial of the very fact that they are ill is a prominent feature in a number of mental disorders, most notably schizophrenia. I think that what you’re saying about people getting together online to share delusions is a factor, but I don’t think it’s because they used to have a sense that they were deluded. Rather, they were isolated. Someone who thought that power lines were controlling their thoughts had very little ability to spread that belief. They could shout on a street corner, print and pass out pamphlets, and that was it. Unless you were nuts and rich, you couldn’t really spread the “word” far. Now that has changed, and everyone, however disorganized and deprived of resources, can publish their every thought. People who think they’ve been “gang stalked” and people who think that the government is behind contrails all have a megaphone to the world. As a “bonus” they also are able to just type their delusions into Google and find sites to confirm and expand them. The same network effect that connects hobbyists and enthusiasts of rare things around the world does the same for people with delusional frameworks. It also does the same for Holocaust deniers, and general shitheads.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    I think that what you’re saying about people getting together online to share delusions is a factor, but I don’t think it’s because they used to have a sense that they were deluded. It's hard to phrase these things. I wouldn't say people were less confident in the delusional beliefs. Rather, an isolated delusional person has less general confidence - the world is "against them" and their relative weakness relative to the world is fairly evident. Overall, success at doing horrible things requires some of the same mix that success at doing constructive things needs; confidence, support, plans and ideas. The process you describe and we all can see helps in all those things.
ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
Same for me with respect to online gaming. Having worked in the games industry and made my own too it's a sad realization that a seemingly large minority of our own customers are abusive. Too many are just an unhappy bunch of people frustrated with life. Attacks extend beyond personal to companies too. For instance, games offer some of the best value for money entertainment and yet many 'gamers' just constantly complain about the price of anything even if it's low. I don't think a lot of these people understand how the general economy works. Some of this may be due to age or immaturity too.

imbokodo 8y ago

> societal abundance These might be times of abundance, but not societal abundance. Trump did not win speaking about there being societal abundance. It does not exist in the US, and certainly not in the third world. Just walk down to the Tenderloin in San Francisco or take an extended walk around Oakland, and you can see this for yourself.

branchless 8y ago

Society is far too rigid. We have people who are harmless, who can't cope with the horrible full time jobs we force people into via high land rent, who are kicked to the edge of society. We need a choice and that choice comes with cheap rent as a prerequisite. Yet our institutions strive for the opposite. I'd disagree that it's easy to survive. Many people in good jobs are now one bad week away from ruin.

ggg9990 8y ago

This will be the biggest struggle of post-scarcity economies. Some people need to be distracted with the struggle to survive to keep them from destructive thoughts.

sli 8y ago
It's a bit disingenuous to put today's society in the place of a hypothetical society immediately before post-scarcity (or society before any major societal shift in the far future). They are in no way comparable. Society as it is could not handle post-scarcity, but a huge contributor is the simple fact that post-scarcity is a very long way away.
- konschubert 8y ago
  > post-scarcity is a very long way away I'm surprised that you think that. What would you consider a scarce good in today's society?
  - Regardsyjc 8y ago
    Clean water is still a scarce basic need in many parts of the world and even in some parts of the United States even beyond Flint, Michigan. Many women do not have access to or can afford feminine hygiene products in the world or US. If high speed internet can be considered a good, it's a scarce utility in many parts of the world. I think there's still many basic needs or utilities that are scarce...
    - konschubert 8y ago
      But isn't this more of a distribution problem than a general scarcity problem?
    - opportune 8y ago
      Yes, globally. But many people individually live in a post-scarcity society. A young man with no job who has everything they need or even want (short of large-ticket items like expensive vacations, cars, house, etc.) provided by their parents arguably is living a post-scarcity lifestyle.

baybal2 8y ago

>Under the veneer of societal abundance, the struggle to survive is replaced with the pursuit of abstract accomplishments (career, sports, fame, etc). When someone is not successful in these things, it's very easy to survive but not thrive, and in the absence of real survival pressure it's too easy to be left alone with ones thoughts and descend into a depressive downward spiral. You grasped the idea very well. Life in the West gives you a lot of "false idols," way more than just plain income (in)security and social acceptance. A lot of very well doing people are insecure about what you call class attributes: "have you sent your kid to an Ivy league college? is your MBA still hip enough? have you launched a tech startup by 30? have you appointed trophy diversity hires of a current trendy ethnicity to your C-Suite? is an apartment you bought shares the floor with influential people A, B, and C?" and so on. I myself felt nearly crushed morally when my employer was unsuccessful extending my work permit in Canada after 6 years of my life there. I worked towards having "a perfect immigration case" since my mid-teens: from learning French, to having all and every pre-college education credentials that can benefit an immigration application possible, and yes, studying like crazy, wasting best years of life for a piece of paper. Now, I'm feeling more or less recovered from that. Not only I came back with a heavy bag of cash, I was still doing more than 99% of locals just from "insubstantial" freelance gigs, had solid resume, and tons of calls from recruiters offering jobs in every country imaginable, and finally, after nearly 9 years of my life I could wake up at a time of my volition, and not what was mandated by job or college. That last thing was near surreal for me at the time. But what was the best was not "prestige checkboxes" on the resume, nor an approving looks of female classmates from my highschool class, nor a trophy apartment I bought for pocket change when the Rouble was on its way to a seafloor. The best things from all of that were things of universal value: skills, life experience, being alive and well, fat rolodex, and knowledge "where to scratch fat cats" from places awash with cash. Now I'm happy working in engineering consulting with a Chinese company, netting more than 99.99% of locals, having nearly careless lifestyle in comparison to what I had, and living in a city without gloomy weather. I can't believe that just 2 years ago I thought of my whole life as failure. Another valuable thing, China has introduced me to was the entirely different, "BS Free," work culture centered on value: contract, payment, and CAD files in the morning — widgets ready in the evening, without any manager title holder in the loop.

8y ago

hinkley 8y ago

Maslow's Hierarchy. Getting food and shelter is only the beginning of the process.

noobermin 8y ago

I will say that Japan is exceptional as far as I can tell (and I'm not Japanese), so the level of social isolation is a bit different in extent and even character compared to the US.

mattj1 8y ago
Exceptional how?