 "Trolling is serious business")
Lolli looked timidly into her webcam, and flashed a simple message written on her palm: “What’s up, everyone?” Lolli had uploaded an image, announcing to the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of users logged on to a website, 4chan, that she was ready to put up her photographs.
Viewers began posting requests, which Lolli performed, photographed and uploaded on the image-sharing website.
Usually, female users are ignored or insulted on this site that is known for its freewheeling attitude towards offensive behaviour — unless they post photographs of themselves, for male approval.
Every day, countless girls appear here and perform.
Minutes after she had posted her first photograph, a user requested that she take one with her first name written on her hand. Soon, another asked for a photograph of her with any medicine she was taking. She performed both tasks.
This was a mistake.
A user said, “I hope no one tracks her down.”
Another replied, “Dude, get a grip. Everyone else — go, go, go.”
Lolli had unintentionally provided enough information to allow users to trace her identity.
Before long, 4chan users had located Lolli on her university’s searchable directory and revealed her full name, address and telephone number. Next, they tracked her Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Lolli was still at her computer, watching helplessly.
Within minutes, almost everyone in Lolli’s social-media network had been sent the photographs. Also, her phone number had been posted on 4chan.
A user announced, “Just called her, she was crying. Sounded like a sobbing whale. Is anyone else calling her?”
“Anyone?”
Welcome to trolling. The operation mentioned above took under an hour. Soon, the messaging-board thread had vanished, and Lolli forgotten.
This is one way to troll, and the term today means any nasty behaviour online.
Some form takes place on almost every online space. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter — all have their own species of trolls. The comment sections on sites routinely burst with insults.
But there is much more to trolling.
I met Hellrazor on a 4chan forum, where he was vying for notoriety with others. He is in his early 30s, and has been trolling for over a decade. “Trolling is not about bullying people,” he insists, “It is all about unlocking situations, creating new scenarios and calculating the best way to provoke a reaction. Threatening to beat someone on Twitter is not trolling: that’s just threatening to beat someone.”
He told me that he had posted on reddit (a networking site) an invented story about the problems he was having with a co-worker. He then himself replied as the co-worker, demanding an apology and explaining that he had difficulty making friends. Reddit users believed the story, and some even offered to send flowers to the abused colleague. In effect, they had been trolled. “It was glorious,” says Hellrazor.
There are plenty from the old school, such as Hellrazor, still lurking around, who consider annoying people in clever ways an art form — a calling even. They are upset that trolling has degenerated into abusing celebrities on Twitter. These trolls say they delight in pushing the boundaries.
Hellrazor has spent years refining his skills. His best-loved tactic is to make spelling mistakes, throw them around like baited lines, and wait for his catch.
He told me he had posted a poorly written comment on a website. An incensed user responded, and Hellrazor immediately hit him with a barrage of arguments and insults, to which his target couldn’t muster a response.
Warlord is a member of several trolling groups. They seek out people, and “bother the hell out of them”.
“Riling up users of an Internet forum is never going to change the world, but it’s nice to know there are people giving up their free time to worsen those who deserve it.”
“But what is the point?” I ask him.
There’s a short pause. “I don’t know, but it is fun. It doesn’t really matter if it is fruitless.”
For Warlord, trolling is part art, part science, part joke, but also much more.
“It is a culture, a way of thinking,” he says.
And one, he thinks, that has existed since the birth of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, when people had started joining groups and boards with the sole purpose of starting an argument. This was called flaming: creating tension for fun’s sake. The best flames always bit you. People would eagerly await clever posts, and celebrate them. For many, it was an opportunity to have their efforts read and reviewed by others.
Warlord remembers a user posting a guide to help flamers old and new refine their skills. “A commandment said: When in doubt, insult.”
So, how did the flamers go extinct? Answer: useless tactics.
A flame was just a string of insults. Although there was some overlap between flaming and trolling, the latter was considered more careful, subtle and imaginative. “A troll will hold back, understanding the value of a bigger spank,” says Warlord.
“And the bigger the spank, the better.”
I tried verifying the stories but was never certain. After all, I was probing a subculture built on lies and deception. If I had doubts about whether Warlord was who he said he was, he had the same doubts about me. I first contacted him by email (trolls often leave visiting cards on 4chan). He replied a few days later. “I checked you out on Facebook,” he said. “You seem legitimate.”
“But,” he remarked in a chat session, “You have white hair in your Facebook profile photo. Did you know that?”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“The mirror tells me that my hair is black.”
“That’s interesting. I guess that you understand you have white hair as well as you understand that you are a terrible reporter.”
“What do you mean? What did I do?”
“That’s an interesting reaction,” Warlord said. “Why didn’t you get so defensive when I said you had white hair?” I knew I was a bad reporter, he said, which is why I couldn’t ignore his comment. I was involved in trolling, he argued, because I was willing to get hurt.
Warlord says his work has value and purpose — “trolling in the public interest” to expose hypocrisy and stupidity in society. He admires the late Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. “Freud was a gifted troll. His theories on sexuality needled the entire 20th century.”
Warlord has even created his own religion to grow his legend. “I have a special relationship with imaginary ponies, who are my Gods.”
Warlord has quite obviously no real friends to hang out with. Cute, flowery pony characters keep him company all day. He even goes as far as Photoshopping them into his family photographs.
Trolling is a broad church, it seems.
Indeed, serious trolls like Warlord seem to follow a libertarian ideology: pushing the boundaries just because these exist.
When I ask Warlord if he has ever gone too far, he says, “Yeah, there were a few I hounded so bad they left the Internet.” But the powerful and the rich are not always the targets. Too often it is the weak, newcomers like Lolli, who are the easiest to attack.
Warlord offers his Freudian analysis, “Spotty boys shunned by women
seek revenge.”
The catchphrase used to justify this is: I did it for the “lulz” — words employed to justify anything where the chief motivation is to generate a laugh at someone else’s expense. The problem, as Warlord explains, is you need a bigger and bigger hit to keep the lulz going. Trolling can quickly spin out of control.
Solly is a modern-day Rapunzel locked inside a Saudi Arabian “fortress”. The fresh graduate from the Philippines works as a maid and rarely leaves her employer’s house.
Off duty, she spends hours Photoshopping her mildly unflattering images before uploading them on 4chan. “What kind of life should I say I have here, away from family and friends?” she asks over Skype.
Solly looks younger than her age: probably because of the dolls and teddy bears lying in her background.
Every day 4chan users refer to her as a chan, which both empowers her and fuels her desire to post. She says she has become addicted to the attention, and checks comments on her photos as soon as she gets time.
Sharing every intimacy is her shortcut to finding affection and belonging in an alien country.
But for Solly, those images could be a precursor to something awful.
“Don’t feed the trolls,” warns Mero, a 4chan user. “We play around with your need to seek encouragement, endorsement and support.”
He points to the countless rate-my-photo forums on 4chan and across the web; sites dedicated to rating images of babies, puppies, hairstyles, arms, muscles and even poo. Every one contains thousands of images, each with its own list of comments and ratings.
These are happy hunting grounds for trolls who seek out people suffering from “image anxieties”.
Mero says he rates pictures almost always, with a score out of ten. “The rate-me phenomenon makes it much easier to push people’s buttons. Also, there are digital breadcrumbs to follow.”
And this image-sharing epidemic often stretches into the intimate.
As much as it may seem, Solly is not an outlier. She is just the visible tip of a very big iceberg.
An increasing desire for digital approval and affirmation is leading more of us to share our most intimate and personal lives online, often with complete strangers. What we like, what we think, what we wear — we all want to be rated and we all want to go up in someone else’s estimation. So, there is a lot for trolls to feed on.
Solly is not ignorant about trolls. She sees their shadows lurking every day. “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” she says.
But what might happen if no one knows you are a dog?
Names, online names and identifying details have been altered to protect the privacy of the persons
WHAT THE LAW SAYS
Cyber law expert Prashant Mali says the Indian law is not clear on trolls. “Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, lays down imprisonment of up to three years and fine for sending offensive messages through a communication service,” he says. “But the terms ‘annoyance’ and ‘inconvenience’ in the Act are ambiguous.”
The new Section 354A (iv) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) says anyone who makes (even while trolling) a "sexually coloured remark" would be guilty of sexual harassment and could be imprisoned for up to a year, or fined, or both.
“If trolling amounts to encouraging a suicide, the person could be charged under Section 306 of IPC, with up to 10 years in jail, and fine,” he says.
On laws abroad, Mali says the United Kingdom has a maximum imprisonment of six months for trolls and other Internet troublemakers.
In the United States, transmission of any communication in interstate or foreign commerce containing a threat to injure someone is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
In India, there is no agency to monitor trolling. “If one complains to the police, the latter can ask a court to direct Indian Computer Emergency Response Team and Google to delete defamatory content,” he says.
But national jurisdictions pose a problem. “It may be that a victim of an Indian troll using an Australian server is in England. Hence, the case involves three jurisdictions. The extradition will depend on the countries involved,” says Mali.
Viewers began posting requests, which Lolli performed, photographed and uploaded on the image-sharing website.
Usually, female users are ignored or insulted on this site that is known for its freewheeling attitude towards offensive behaviour — unless they post photographs of themselves, for male approval.
Every day, countless girls appear here and perform.
More From This Section
That day, it was newcomer Lolli.
Minutes after she had posted her first photograph, a user requested that she take one with her first name written on her hand. Soon, another asked for a photograph of her with any medicine she was taking. She performed both tasks.
This was a mistake.
A user said, “I hope no one tracks her down.”
Another replied, “Dude, get a grip. Everyone else — go, go, go.”
Lolli had unintentionally provided enough information to allow users to trace her identity.
Before long, 4chan users had located Lolli on her university’s searchable directory and revealed her full name, address and telephone number. Next, they tracked her Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Lolli was still at her computer, watching helplessly.
Within minutes, almost everyone in Lolli’s social-media network had been sent the photographs. Also, her phone number had been posted on 4chan.
A user announced, “Just called her, she was crying. Sounded like a sobbing whale. Is anyone else calling her?”
“Anyone?”
Welcome to trolling. The operation mentioned above took under an hour. Soon, the messaging-board thread had vanished, and Lolli forgotten.
This is one way to troll, and the term today means any nasty behaviour online.
Some form takes place on almost every online space. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter — all have their own species of trolls. The comment sections on sites routinely burst with insults.
But there is much more to trolling.
I met Hellrazor on a 4chan forum, where he was vying for notoriety with others. He is in his early 30s, and has been trolling for over a decade. “Trolling is not about bullying people,” he insists, “It is all about unlocking situations, creating new scenarios and calculating the best way to provoke a reaction. Threatening to beat someone on Twitter is not trolling: that’s just threatening to beat someone.”
He told me that he had posted on reddit (a networking site) an invented story about the problems he was having with a co-worker. He then himself replied as the co-worker, demanding an apology and explaining that he had difficulty making friends. Reddit users believed the story, and some even offered to send flowers to the abused colleague. In effect, they had been trolled. “It was glorious,” says Hellrazor.
There are plenty from the old school, such as Hellrazor, still lurking around, who consider annoying people in clever ways an art form — a calling even. They are upset that trolling has degenerated into abusing celebrities on Twitter. These trolls say they delight in pushing the boundaries.
Hellrazor has spent years refining his skills. His best-loved tactic is to make spelling mistakes, throw them around like baited lines, and wait for his catch.
He told me he had posted a poorly written comment on a website. An incensed user responded, and Hellrazor immediately hit him with a barrage of arguments and insults, to which his target couldn’t muster a response.
Warlord is a member of several trolling groups. They seek out people, and “bother the hell out of them”.
“Riling up users of an Internet forum is never going to change the world, but it’s nice to know there are people giving up their free time to worsen those who deserve it.”
“But what is the point?” I ask him.
There’s a short pause. “I don’t know, but it is fun. It doesn’t really matter if it is fruitless.”
For Warlord, trolling is part art, part science, part joke, but also much more.
“It is a culture, a way of thinking,” he says.
And one, he thinks, that has existed since the birth of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, when people had started joining groups and boards with the sole purpose of starting an argument. This was called flaming: creating tension for fun’s sake. The best flames always bit you. People would eagerly await clever posts, and celebrate them. For many, it was an opportunity to have their efforts read and reviewed by others.
Warlord remembers a user posting a guide to help flamers old and new refine their skills. “A commandment said: When in doubt, insult.”
So, how did the flamers go extinct? Answer: useless tactics.
A flame was just a string of insults. Although there was some overlap between flaming and trolling, the latter was considered more careful, subtle and imaginative. “A troll will hold back, understanding the value of a bigger spank,” says Warlord.
“And the bigger the spank, the better.”
I tried verifying the stories but was never certain. After all, I was probing a subculture built on lies and deception. If I had doubts about whether Warlord was who he said he was, he had the same doubts about me. I first contacted him by email (trolls often leave visiting cards on 4chan). He replied a few days later. “I checked you out on Facebook,” he said. “You seem legitimate.”
“But,” he remarked in a chat session, “You have white hair in your Facebook profile photo. Did you know that?”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“The mirror tells me that my hair is black.”
“That’s interesting. I guess that you understand you have white hair as well as you understand that you are a terrible reporter.”
“What do you mean? What did I do?”
“That’s an interesting reaction,” Warlord said. “Why didn’t you get so defensive when I said you had white hair?” I knew I was a bad reporter, he said, which is why I couldn’t ignore his comment. I was involved in trolling, he argued, because I was willing to get hurt.
Warlord says his work has value and purpose — “trolling in the public interest” to expose hypocrisy and stupidity in society. He admires the late Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. “Freud was a gifted troll. His theories on sexuality needled the entire 20th century.”
Warlord has even created his own religion to grow his legend. “I have a special relationship with imaginary ponies, who are my Gods.”
Warlord has quite obviously no real friends to hang out with. Cute, flowery pony characters keep him company all day. He even goes as far as Photoshopping them into his family photographs.
Trolling is a broad church, it seems.
Indeed, serious trolls like Warlord seem to follow a libertarian ideology: pushing the boundaries just because these exist.
When I ask Warlord if he has ever gone too far, he says, “Yeah, there were a few I hounded so bad they left the Internet.” But the powerful and the rich are not always the targets. Too often it is the weak, newcomers like Lolli, who are the easiest to attack.
Warlord offers his Freudian analysis, “Spotty boys shunned by women
seek revenge.”
The catchphrase used to justify this is: I did it for the “lulz” — words employed to justify anything where the chief motivation is to generate a laugh at someone else’s expense. The problem, as Warlord explains, is you need a bigger and bigger hit to keep the lulz going. Trolling can quickly spin out of control.
Solly is a modern-day Rapunzel locked inside a Saudi Arabian “fortress”. The fresh graduate from the Philippines works as a maid and rarely leaves her employer’s house.
Off duty, she spends hours Photoshopping her mildly unflattering images before uploading them on 4chan. “What kind of life should I say I have here, away from family and friends?” she asks over Skype.
Solly looks younger than her age: probably because of the dolls and teddy bears lying in her background.
Every day 4chan users refer to her as a chan, which both empowers her and fuels her desire to post. She says she has become addicted to the attention, and checks comments on her photos as soon as she gets time.
Sharing every intimacy is her shortcut to finding affection and belonging in an alien country.
But for Solly, those images could be a precursor to something awful.
“Don’t feed the trolls,” warns Mero, a 4chan user. “We play around with your need to seek encouragement, endorsement and support.”
He points to the countless rate-my-photo forums on 4chan and across the web; sites dedicated to rating images of babies, puppies, hairstyles, arms, muscles and even poo. Every one contains thousands of images, each with its own list of comments and ratings.
These are happy hunting grounds for trolls who seek out people suffering from “image anxieties”.
Mero says he rates pictures almost always, with a score out of ten. “The rate-me phenomenon makes it much easier to push people’s buttons. Also, there are digital breadcrumbs to follow.”
And this image-sharing epidemic often stretches into the intimate.
As much as it may seem, Solly is not an outlier. She is just the visible tip of a very big iceberg.
An increasing desire for digital approval and affirmation is leading more of us to share our most intimate and personal lives online, often with complete strangers. What we like, what we think, what we wear — we all want to be rated and we all want to go up in someone else’s estimation. So, there is a lot for trolls to feed on.
Solly is not ignorant about trolls. She sees their shadows lurking every day. “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog,” she says.
But what might happen if no one knows you are a dog?
Names, online names and identifying details have been altered to protect the privacy of the persons
WHAT THE LAW SAYS
Cyber law expert Prashant Mali says the Indian law is not clear on trolls. “Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, lays down imprisonment of up to three years and fine for sending offensive messages through a communication service,” he says. “But the terms ‘annoyance’ and ‘inconvenience’ in the Act are ambiguous.”
The new Section 354A (iv) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) says anyone who makes (even while trolling) a "sexually coloured remark" would be guilty of sexual harassment and could be imprisoned for up to a year, or fined, or both.
“If trolling amounts to encouraging a suicide, the person could be charged under Section 306 of IPC, with up to 10 years in jail, and fine,” he says.
On laws abroad, Mali says the United Kingdom has a maximum imprisonment of six months for trolls and other Internet troublemakers.
In the United States, transmission of any communication in interstate or foreign commerce containing a threat to injure someone is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
In India, there is no agency to monitor trolling. “If one complains to the police, the latter can ask a court to direct Indian Computer Emergency Response Team and Google to delete defamatory content,” he says.
But national jurisdictions pose a problem. “It may be that a victim of an Indian troll using an Australian server is in England. Hence, the case involves three jurisdictions. The extradition will depend on the countries involved,” says Mali.