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You're thinking about Something Awful around 2005, or 4chan's /b/ in 2007 or so. That's not what we're seeing. While I'm hardly a rigorous ethnographer of the
by aaronem 11y ago
You're thinking about Something Awful around 2005, or 4chan's /b/ in 2007 or so. That's not what we're seeing.
While I'm hardly a rigorous ethnographer of the Internet's cesspits, my (often firsthand) observations suggest that "for the lulz" was never as significant a motivation as it was made out to be, and it's less so now than then.
Too, trolling "for the lulz" tends to show a pretty typical pattern of high intensity combined with short period -- people doing it just for fun tend to get bored and wander off after a little while, save in the relatively rare case of a high-value "lulzcow" who can be trolled over and over to good effect (i.e., producing responses which lulz trolls consider funny.)
Meanwhile, the attacks directed at our female colleagues seem to vary widely in intensity, but to occur over a relatively long period; sometimes it ebbs, and sometimes (as for example in the wake of increased public prominence, such as a conference presentation) it hits high tide, but pretty much all our colleagues who've chosen to speak up about it have described it as an overall ongoing thing.
That's not a characteristic pattern of lulz trolls; for one thing, they don't have the staying power, and for another, lulz trolls actually do go away if you don't feed them. Instead, that's a pattern characteristic of people who are doing what they do, not for its own sake, but as a tactic to advance some purpose -- in this case, I think a reasonable surmise is that they actually are trying to drive women away from the industry, by making it just not worth putting up the bullshit involved in staying in it.
- corysama 11y agoMaybe I'm wrong. Since I got bored of 4chan, I've only seen trolls when they're being well fed --such as right now. I guess it comes down to: Which is most likely to be the more prevalent source of the problem? A) There is a small, but significant population of men in technology who aggressively harass prominent women in tech and they do it primarily because they want to actively work against the growth of female participation in the general tech community. B) There is a small, but significant population of people on the internet who enjoy aggressively and anonymously harassing anyone they think they can get a good reaction out of. Some of these trolls participate in the tech industry. Their distant familiarity with prominent women in tech makes those women into particularly fun targets. The problem of aggressive, anonymous harassment in tech is almost always portrayed as A). But, I believe B) is by far the more prominent source. This misportrayal distracts the conversation from discussing real solutions. Instead, it actually feeds the trolls by generating highly entertaining, heated arguments where neither side is even talking about the real source of problem: them.
- snowwrestler 11y agoIt is A, as the responses above, and hundreds of blog posts and similar discussions have made clear. There are big disparities in the gender balance, specifity, longevity, and personal nature of the attacks. And it happens to women who are not prominent in any sense of the word. I think you want it to be B, because you don't want to believe it's A. But it is definitely A.