Food For Thought

[Anna Woman von NRW]

Not an argument starter. I just genuinely found this interesting in view of recent shenanigans round here

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/02/what-happened-confronted-cruellest-troll-lindy-west

[Bunny]

Interesting read. Very feminist angle which is possibly the only criticism Id make. Its isnt a solely male thing, youve only gotta read the stupid comments on any newspaper to see that bile is thrown from either gender.
I think it speaks volumes about the cowards behind anonymity though.

[Pol]

It's disgusting what people have to put up with

[sozbot]

I read this article earlier this morning - shocking that someone would use the identity of someone's deceased relative to troll them. Disgusting. But, also eye-opening inasmuch as that same person actually took responsibility and apologised, when confronted.

A friend of mine has suffered quite badly, recently - she's managed to inadvertently step on someone's toes (I know exactly what happened and while I won't go into it here, it was minor), and it seems that someone has reported all her social media accounts for "abuse" (totally wrongly), and even gone so far as to hack her and send abusive messages in her name to all sorts of professional contacts.

Fortunately, this person has a good reputation and none of this is likely to stick, but it's unbelievable the lengths some people will go to in order to put one over on somebody.

[Anna Woman von NRW]

Agree with you Drummy on the feminist tone of the piece - it certainly is all genders who behave like this, for example there was the woman who trolled the McCanns which came to a very tragic end.

It is quite insane how far some people take this sort of thing, assuming the identity of a dead parent to attack their daughter? And you can't do that on a whim. I mean getting the hump and firing off a pissed off post somewhere is one thing but taking on an identity must involve thought, planning and sustained action to actually achieve. How on earth does the inner voice not kick in while doing that to ask "What the **** are you doing?".

I guess it's the anonymous nature of the internet. People feel fully secure and free of the consequences of their words and actions - they don't see/feel the human being on the other end. When I started using the internet at the end of the 90's (good old dial up connections !) the general rule of thumb was don't say something you would not be prepared to say face to face - doesn't seem to be the case anymore 

[Bunny]

Good point mate. Dial up. Bloody hell. I just remembered the whistling noise as it connected.
I can only assume the interweb, empowers people who would otherwise have none. Its a fairly unhealthy time killer tbh. Great for finding information but equally harmful when it becomes life.