I know I'm a little late for the bandwagon here...

[faeshale]

...which renders my opinions perhaps that much more personal?

Let me begin with this simple statement.

There is no justification for the actions of any of these people.

"Trolling" is the purview of half-assed misanthropists, losers who couldn't hack it (pardon the pun) in the world of flesh and blood and unable to reconcile themselves with the

Comments

[vintagerose]

See, that's the thing. I've never really considered myself a troll. Just a black girl with a big ass mouth, but apparently having that big ass mouth (and in the past associating with the wrong people) has made me a troll. Then again maybe (probably not even maybe) I have done some trollish things in the past. I dunno, I just don't like that label since it describes a far more malicious person now than I think I am.

You Fail

[faeshale]

You missed the point entirely. Being critical doesn't make you hitler. Assuming your own intellectual and emotional superiority, and further assuming that such would give you the right to torment someone (not "challenge", torment) does. The moment you convince yourself that someone is really too inferior to be allowed to live, you're crossing that line.

Convincing a little girl to commit suicide is sociopathic. The things the Paulites did to Greg is trolling. I'm not talking about the mere act of trading insults. I'm talking about manipulation and "IRL" attacks, which you yourself have been the victim of, whether you admit it or not.

There are many people who troll on the internet who aren't sociopaths, or who try to challenge people in non-destructive ways for genuinely good reasons.Don't confuse yourself. Abusing someone who is unstable "for the lulz" is not "challeng(ing) people in non-destructive ways for genuinely good reasons". It's no different from a husband beating his wife to teach her "respect

[raeoninrionach]

It's when people do go to the extremes such as putting that personal info up for the world to see when things have gone too far. I'm not one to say I'm better than anyone else I've not gone to doing that though I've thought about it which is bad enough . My soon to be ex husband has done it to me so I get where Nick is coming from with this. I think it's a shame when someone does have to go to these lengths to basicly "get back" at someone else it's petty and childish.

[aisforapathy]

Unfortunately, content on the Internet will never be regulated to the point that it needs to be in order to prevent things like this from occurring. I understand the need for privacy but there are some who take it way too far and more or less demand that anything they say on the Internet under the guise of their anonymity be constitutionally protected. I say fuck them. Let's make the clear and present danger test as applicable to cyberspace as it is to public life.

[aisforapathy]

As an addendum, I see trolls who don't do destructive things as nothing more than bored-to-death assholes.

[faeshale]

Here here!

[aureantes]

I think it's undeniable that the standards of literacy, intelligence and civil behaviour have gone way way down because of (generally) indiscriminate Internet access. Not that there should be discrimination of access, of course, but that it logically puts a greater responsibility onto online communities (at least the ones who are trying to retain the virtues of civilization) to provide a balance between intolerance of any/all audible dissent and laissez-faire "let the loudest/rudest win" -- where the lack of fair regulation/mediation often drives intelligent people to seek conversation elsewhere rather than have to deal with constant heckling. Either extreme is wrong for a community, I think, and between individuals in their own respect I'd think that the most decent behaviour is to not mess with others nor (unsolicitedly) criticize them to their faces unless it is clear that their attitudes/mindsets/theories/etc. are actually both fucked-up and destructive to their lives. Which is rather more explicitly Hippocratic than many

[aureantes]

I don't know who that is, and I'm fairly certain that my viewpoint is unlikely to be the same as his, if he has (as mentioned somewhere above) actually managed to have a class-action lawsuit leveled against him. Controversial as I may be, I simply can't compare