and his age etc, and perceive him as he truly is and all that he really is: a black hole of perpetual unhappiness and living death.
Sean Duffy is the name to the pain. Sean Duffy is the real face of RIP trolling in all its infinitely pathetic reality. That is what lies behind it. It all makes a bit more sense now, doesn’t it?
When much-loved kids die these RIP trolls like to make Internet images featuring the faces of the dead youths along with the words ‘LOL YOU’RE DEAD!,’ but a much more insightful mockery of tragic circumstances could be better achieved by making in a similar style images featuring the faces of trolls like Sean Duffy although inscribed instead with the legend ‘LOL YOU’RE ALIVE!’ Because the irony of this all is that for individuals like Sean Duffy, living is a much worse fate than being dead. My belief is that they envy the dead. They certainly envy the attention and the love that those deceased people are seen to be getting.
I think this is the part of the book now where I’m meant to balance out things by pointing out that it’s not all evil and nastiness on /b/ and that is has its marginally joyous side too, but really, I couldn’t be bothered. Who gives a fuck what else it has done or which slightly amusing memes it has spawned? None of it changes the fact that it encourages and empowers the worst psychopaths on the Web and that what has both gone on and been bred there has caused serious hurt to a lot of innocent people. Whatever happens to the site itself in the future, one of its enduring legacies will be that the strain of evil which was seeded and then allowed to grow tall on it back in 2006 will keep going on and on. I asked on Facebook four different trolls as to how they got immersed in RIP trolling. Three out of those four told me that it was through 4Chan. I don’t know what site owner Christopher Poole makes of organised RIP trolling but he certainly has never spoken out against it, and he knows exactly what his site breeds, as likewise his site’s users know exactly what congregates there. I have observed individuals post on it to ask other users to come with them and harass grieving people – including one gathering up other dead-inside little psychotics to come with him or her to Facebook to private message the friends of a boy at school who had just committed suicide (who the troll didn’t know personally but thought his death ‘lulzy’). In all cases of which I have observed of this sort of thing on the site, the trolls readily found many like-minded ghouls to join in with their proposed adventures.
The only thing I will say is that, in fairness to it, not all of its users are horrible. /b/ doesn’t make people into psychos, it just gives said psychopaths a home and a community. Like Sean Duffy, they were already psycho when they first went there. It is like the Charlie Manson of the Internet: sucking in the lost, the stupid, the bad, and the mad, and if it twists some into committing acts of evil, well it’s probably because they were evil before they visited the place. I get the impression that some people just like to hang out in it because it has its finger on the pulse of the Net, being the home of many memes. Others go there out of boredom, or a morbid sense of voyeurism. It is a strange mix to be found on /b/ and nothing shows that better than the group which isn’t a group that is Anonymous, and it is important for us to understand the concept of Anonymous as it applies to trolls and trolling.
An idea and not an organisation, Anonymous is whoever wants to be it. There is no one true Anonymous, and the power of the idea lies just with however many number of people are following any one action at any one time. Even though Anonymous has its own identifiable symbols and motto for Anons, that is people styling themselves as belonging to Anonymous, to rally around, that doesn’t mean that ‘Anonymous’ speaks with one voice. It’s
Sean Duffy is the name to the pain. Sean Duffy is the real face of RIP trolling in all its infinitely pathetic reality. That is what lies behind it. It all makes a bit more sense now, doesn’t it?
When much-loved kids die these RIP trolls like to make Internet images featuring the faces of the dead youths along with the words ‘LOL YOU’RE DEAD!,’ but a much more insightful mockery of tragic circumstances could be better achieved by making in a similar style images featuring the faces of trolls like Sean Duffy although inscribed instead with the legend ‘LOL YOU’RE ALIVE!’ Because the irony of this all is that for individuals like Sean Duffy, living is a much worse fate than being dead. My belief is that they envy the dead. They certainly envy the attention and the love that those deceased people are seen to be getting.
I think this is the part of the book now where I’m meant to balance out things by pointing out that it’s not all evil and nastiness on /b/ and that is has its marginally joyous side too, but really, I couldn’t be bothered. Who gives a fuck what else it has done or which slightly amusing memes it has spawned? None of it changes the fact that it encourages and empowers the worst psychopaths on the Web and that what has both gone on and been bred there has caused serious hurt to a lot of innocent people. Whatever happens to the site itself in the future, one of its enduring legacies will be that the strain of evil which was seeded and then allowed to grow tall on it back in 2006 will keep going on and on. I asked on Facebook four different trolls as to how they got immersed in RIP trolling. Three out of those four told me that it was through 4Chan. I don’t know what site owner Christopher Poole makes of organised RIP trolling but he certainly has never spoken out against it, and he knows exactly what his site breeds, as likewise his site’s users know exactly what congregates there. I have observed individuals post on it to ask other users to come with them and harass grieving people – including one gathering up other dead-inside little psychotics to come with him or her to Facebook to private message the friends of a boy at school who had just committed suicide (who the troll didn’t know personally but thought his death ‘lulzy’). In all cases of which I have observed of this sort of thing on the site, the trolls readily found many like-minded ghouls to join in with their proposed adventures.
The only thing I will say is that, in fairness to it, not all of its users are horrible. /b/ doesn’t make people into psychos, it just gives said psychopaths a home and a community. Like Sean Duffy, they were already psycho when they first went there. It is like the Charlie Manson of the Internet: sucking in the lost, the stupid, the bad, and the mad, and if it twists some into committing acts of evil, well it’s probably because they were evil before they visited the place. I get the impression that some people just like to hang out in it because it has its finger on the pulse of the Net, being the home of many memes. Others go there out of boredom, or a morbid sense of voyeurism. It is a strange mix to be found on /b/ and nothing shows that better than the group which isn’t a group that is Anonymous, and it is important for us to understand the concept of Anonymous as it applies to trolls and trolling.
An idea and not an organisation, Anonymous is whoever wants to be it. There is no one true Anonymous, and the power of the idea lies just with however many number of people are following any one action at any one time. Even though Anonymous has its own identifiable symbols and motto for Anons, that is people styling themselves as belonging to Anonymous, to rally around, that doesn’t mean that ‘Anonymous’ speaks with one voice. It’s
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