Posted on 03/09/2010 9:47:48 AM PST by Reaganesque
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, Mitchells 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 Mitchells newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead. From MyDeathSpace, Mitchells 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....
...snip...
Someone hacked Hendersons MySpace page and gave him the face of a zombie. Someone placed an iPod on Hendersons grave, took a picture and posted it to /b/. Hendersons face was appended to dancing iPods, spinning iPods, hardcore porn scenes. A dramatic re-enactment of Hendersons demise appeared on YouTube, complete with shattered iPod. The phone began ringing at Mitchells parents home. It sounded like kids, remembers Mitchells father, Mark Henderson, a 44-year-old I.T. executive. Theyd say, Hi, this is Mitchell, Im at the cemetery. Hi, Ive got Mitchells iPod. Hi, Im Mitchells 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.
...snip...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
wrong, try 1998. LOL! Another example of how people get it wrong.
“Target Practice...”
An excellent reason to have net anonymity, eh? That scenario would not be terribly helpful in the long run.
Of course I do. Bought and read the book several times. The SwiftBoat Vets ably served their country a second time! God bless the Swifties!
Bob J is Jerome Corsi?
The security guard at a store my wife worked at had a heart attack in front of the store. A bunch of low-lifes stood around and laughed at him while he died. They refused to call 911.
LOL!
There have always been evil men and there always will be but now it seems as though we are breeding generations of them...
LOLOLOLOL.
.
Yup. The “me” and “if it feels good do it” generation, and yes, the valueless generation “X” gave us these little monsters.
I guess Fr has taut many of us to spot trolls and we can agree to disagree.
Parents need to give their children a lesson it the hard realities of the internet.
It can be an ugly place. Especially for the young and inexperienced.
I agree with you and I think yours is the more important reason for the existence of Internet trolls - lack of discipline. I blame it on Dr. Benjamin Spock, who said that parents shouldn’t spank their children. The kids learn that actions don’t really have consequences, and because so much happens online these days, they don’t care that there’s an actual person behind every username they troll.
I spend a lot of time in the virtual world Second Life, and the chan types are part of the landscape there. Their “memes” are everywhere: longcats and mudkips and chocolate rain and goatse man. Generally in online games these folks are known as “griefers,” not as trolls. Their purpose in Second Life and other online games is not to play the game but to harass the other players so they can’t play the game. Here’s an article about Second Life griefers:
To oppose the virtual bullies, there are virtual Neighborhood Watch groups who volunteer to report them and get them banned. The practice is immensely satisfying, and such a service should be extended to the /b/tards to give them a taste of their own medicine. We could always “do it for the lulz.”
Really? You should ping Jim Robinson and let him know that the software for the site is messing up. For some reason, your join date is off by 11 years. Guess it must be a software glitch.
lol.
Bill Maher is a retarded man-child.
You are stuck one one explanation when there are several.
ON one
No, I can think of several explanations. Here’s another.
The anti-votemout forces that ran off the “liberals and libertarians” have somehow fitted me with special glasses which overlay the 1998 in your join date with 2009...in real time.
They’re quite fabulous.
The Troll (formerly known as Steve-b) was banned in early February. What a great day that was.
Thanks.
I was away from computers for most of the first half of February so I guess that’s why I missed it.
Is it a permanent ban?
I don’t know. I certainly hope so.
Seems to me that this should be the paramount issue.
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