7 ms·

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

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
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      The story itself claims tumblr users (and more generally, to quote, "young progressives") were behind the stalking, unless I misread. [edit] sounds like kiwifarms is a 4chan-type trolling/alt-right site and simply got tumblr to also attack these poor folks by making up stories about them being animal abusers.
      - tedajax 8y ago
        Yes you misread
        beaconstudios 8y ago
        what am I misunderstanding from this? "Still, this should be mundane. People say a wrong thing on the Internet. It happens. The trouble is, young "progressives" at the moment are falling all over themselves to be part of an expulsion — to root out and help exile some secret predator hiding in plain sight. So if you have a target whose life you want to ruin for funsies, all you need to do is dig through their history for some circumstantial evidence, concoct a vaguely related story that makes them sound horrible, and circulate it in a callout post. The problem, then, is not that someone pulled a story about Styx out of their ass. The problem is that Kiwi Farms is a well-oiled machine for producing hundreds of such stories, and the one about Styx is now listed on a Tumblr somewhere under a heading like "animal abuse", calling me a "known literal animal abuser". Because someone can't read Wikipedia." Sounds like someone found these stories, misinterpreted them (wilfully or not) to sound like abuse, then got tumblr all riled up to harass them. I suppose the initiator wasn't necessarily from that space, but it certainly seems like tumblr/progressives are taking part in the harassment.
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.

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
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    The story itself claims tumblr users (and more generally, to quote, "young progressives") were behind the stalking, unless I misread. [edit] sounds like kiwifarms is a 4chan-type trolling/alt-right site and simply got tumblr to also attack these poor folks by making up stories about them being animal abusers.
    - tedajax 8y ago
      Yes you misread
      - beaconstudios 8y ago
        what am I misunderstanding from this? "Still, this should be mundane. People say a wrong thing on the Internet. It happens. The trouble is, young "progressives" at the moment are falling all over themselves to be part of an expulsion — to root out and help exile some secret predator hiding in plain sight. So if you have a target whose life you want to ruin for funsies, all you need to do is dig through their history for some circumstantial evidence, concoct a vaguely related story that makes them sound horrible, and circulate it in a callout post. The problem, then, is not that someone pulled a story about Styx out of their ass. The problem is that Kiwi Farms is a well-oiled machine for producing hundreds of such stories, and the one about Styx is now listed on a Tumblr somewhere under a heading like "animal abuse", calling me a "known literal animal abuser". Because someone can't read Wikipedia." Sounds like someone found these stories, misinterpreted them (wilfully or not) to sound like abuse, then got tumblr all riled up to harass them. I suppose the initiator wasn't necessarily from that space, but it certainly seems like tumblr/progressives are taking part in the harassment.

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.