Are the Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan's /b/ random message board a threat to civilization? I've come across Jason Fortuny before, and if you haven't, The New York Times magazine has published The Trolls Among Us, which includes conversations with Fortuny and Weev. The latter appears to take trolling a bit further than most of us would expect. Mattathias Schwartz writes:
I first met Weev in an online chat room that I visited while staying at Fortuny's house. "I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money," he boasted. "I make people afraid for their lives." On the phone that night, Weev displayed a misanthropy far harsher than Fortuny's. "Trolling is basically Internet eugenics," he said, his voice pitching up like a jet engine on the runway. "I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!"
It's scary stuff, if intended to be taken literally. And the internet obviously has its share of insane, depraved and evil users, just like the rest of "real life". But should we be taking this stuff more seriously than we (apparently) do?
