Professional Trolls - They'll Mess You Up! | FerrariChat

Professional Trolls - They'll Mess You Up!

Discussion in 'Other Off Topic Forum' started by REMIX, Aug 8, 2008.

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

  1. REMIX

    REMIX Two Time F1 World Champ

    Pretty intense. Long read, but good.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&hp&oref=slogin

    By MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ
    Published: August 3, 2008

    One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minn., took a .22-caliber rifle down from a shelf in his parents’ bedroom closet and shot himself in the head. The next morning, Mitchell’s school assembled in the gym to begin mourning. His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was “an hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back. . . . ” Someone e-mailed a clipping of Mitchell’s newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead. From MyDeathSpace, Mitchell’s page came to the attention of an Internet message board known as /b/ and the “trolls,” as they have come to be called, who dwell there.

    /b/ is the designated “random” board of 4chan.org, a group of message boards that draws more than 200 million page views a month. A post consists of an image and a few lines of text. Almost everyone posts as “anonymous.” In effect, this makes /b/ a panopticon in reverse — nobody can see anybody, and everybody can claim to speak from the center. The anonymous denizens of 4chan’s other boards — devoted to travel, fitness and several genres of pornography — refer to the /b/-dwellers as “/b/tards.”

    Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand.

    Something about Mitchell Henderson struck the denizens of /b/ as funny. They were especially amused by a reference on his MySpace page to a lost iPod. Mitchell Henderson, /b/ decided, had killed himself over a lost iPod. The “an hero” meme was born. Within hours, the anonymous multitudes were wrapping the tragedy of Mitchell’s death in absurdity.

    Someone hacked Henderson’s MySpace page and gave him the face of a zombie. Someone placed an iPod on Henderson’s grave, took a picture and posted it to /b/. Henderson’s face was appended to dancing iPods, spinning iPods, hardcore porn scenes. A dramatic re-enactment of Henderson’s demise appeared on YouTube, complete with shattered iPod. The phone began ringing at Mitchell’s parents’ home. “It sounded like kids,” remembers Mitchell’s father, Mark Henderson, a 44-year-old I.T. executive. “They’d say, ‘Hi, this is Mitchell, I’m at the cemetery.’ ‘Hi, I’ve got Mitchell’s iPod.’ ‘Hi, I’m Mitchell’s ghost, the front door is locked. Can you come down and let me in?’ ” He sighed. “It really got to my wife.” The calls continued for a year and a half.
     
  2. ski_bum

    ski_bum Formula 3

    Dec 26, 2002
    1,492
    San Diego
    Full Name:
    Michael
    WOW. That is seriously FU'ed! I can't imagine the hell the parents went through. :(
     
  3. djui5

    djui5 F1 Veteran

    Aug 9, 2006
    5,418
    Phoenix, Arizona
    Holy ****! People are sic.
     
  4. Fan512bbi

    Fan512bbi Two Time F1 World Champ
    BANNED

    Mar 25, 2004
    20,938
    Wales-UK
    Full Name:
    Steve.
    What goes around comes around, these sick ****s will get theirs :)
     
  5. zoRob

    zoRob Formula 3

    Oct 31, 2006
    2,004
    Cambs, UK
    Hopefully, sick ***** :(
     
  6. SefacHotRodder

    SefacHotRodder F1 World Champ

    Dec 20, 2003
    11,158
    NJ
    Full Name:
    Chris
    /b/ is seriously where the scum of the earth hang out
     
  7. PaulK

    PaulK F1 Rookie
    Silver Subscribed

    Apr 24, 2004
    4,781
    Michigan
    Full Name:
    Paul
    These people need to get a life.
     

Share This Page