{"id":5602,"date":"2014-12-13T20:00:01","date_gmt":"2014-12-13T20:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=5602"},"modified":"2014-12-13T20:00:01","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T20:00:01","slug":"trolling-and-anonymous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=5602","title":{"rendered":"Trolling and Anonymous"},"content":{"rendered":"

Useful research is finally emerging about trolling in its different forms. The Guardian had a nice overview article by a professor of business psychologies\u00a0titled Behind the online comments: the psychology of internet trolls<\/a>. Researchers at the University of Manitoba and UBC have published an article with the title Trolls just want to have fun (PDF preprint)<\/a> that found evidence that sadists like to troll.\u00a0They conclude,<\/p>\n

The Internet is an anonymous environment where it is easy to\u00a0seek out and explore one\u2019s niche, however idiosyncratic. Consequently,\u00a0antisocial individuals have greater opportunities to connect\u00a0with similar others, and to pursue their personal brand of\u00a0\u2018\u2018self expression\u2019\u2019 than they did before the advent of the Internet.\u00a0Online identity construction may be important to examine in research\u00a0on trolling, especially in terms of antisocial identity\u00a0and its role in trolling\u00a0behavior. The troll persona appears to be a malicious case of a virtual\u00a0avatar, reflecting both actual personality\u00a0and one\u2019s ideal self . Our research suggests that, for those with sadistic\u00a0personalities, that ideal self may be a villain of chaos and mayhem\u00a0\u2013 the online Trickster we fear, envy, and love to hate: the cybertroll. (Buckels, E. E., et al. Trolls just want to have fun. Personality and Individual Differences (2014), http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1016\/j.paid.2014.01.016)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By contrast, McGill professor Gabriella Coleman recently published a book about Anonymous, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous<\/a>. Coleman also compares the trolling of Anonymous to traditions of the trickster, but is far more sympathetic as she tracks the politicization of Anonymous. About trolling she writes,<\/p>\n

Trolls enjoy desecrating anything remotely sacred, as cultural theorist Whitney Phillips conveys in her astute characterization of trolls as \u201cagents of cultural digestion [who] scavenge the landscape, re-purpose the most offensive material, then shove the resulting monstrosities into the faces of an unsuspecting populace.\u201d In short: any information thought to be personal, secure, or sacred is a prime target for sharing or defilement in a multitude of ways. Lulz-oriented actions puncture the consensus around our politics and ethics, our social lives, and our aesthetic sensibilities. Any presumption of our world\u2019s inviolability becomes a weapon; trolls invalidate that world by gesturing toward the possibility for Internet geeks to destroy it\u2014to pull the carpet from under us whenever they feel the urge. (Location 491)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She sees anonymous hacking as one of the ways we can resist the blanket surveillance that Snowden revealed. Anonymous may be the future of resistance even as it emerges from the nasty side of trolling. I can’t say that I’m convinced the ends justify the means, at least when you aren’t willing to take responsibility for the means you employ, but, she is right that it has become a form of resistance for the surveillance age.<\/p>\n

Anonymous is emblematic of a particular geography of resistance. Composed of multiple competing groups, short-term power is achievable for brief durations, while long-term dominance by any single group or person is virtually impossible. In such a dynamic landscape, it may be \u201ceasy to co-opt, but impossible to keep co-opted,\u201d … (Location 5691)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Useful research is finally emerging about trolling in its different forms. The Guardian had a nice overview article by a professor of business psychologies\u00a0titled Behind the online comments: the psychology of internet trolls. Researchers at the University of Manitoba and UBC have published an article with the title Trolls just want to have fun (PDF … Continue reading Trolling and Anonymous<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,58,11,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-games","category-ethics-of-data-science","category-internet-culture-and-technology","category-media-and-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5602"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5604,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602\/revisions\/5604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}