The following list should not be a surprise to anyone!
So, Arizona wants to outlaw trolling. Good luck with that, nubes. Specifically, House Bill 2549 — which has passed the state’s legislature and is awaiting signature or veto from Governor Jan Brown — reads, "It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use ANY ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL DEVICE and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person."
Media Coalition, a watch group for first amendment rights, posted a letter to the state’s governor on the issue (read it in its entirety here). In the letter, the group asks that Governor Brown veto the bill because, they argue, "[w]hile protecting people from harassment is a worthy goal, legislators cannot do so by criminalizing speech protected by the Constitution. All speech is presumptively protected by the First Amendment against content-based regulation, subject only to specific historic exceptions." And they’re exactly right. It’s impractical (and unconstitutional, and a bit too Thought Police-y) for Internet speech to be illegal, especially if it’s merely the type that’s used to annoy. Don’t Feed The Trolls usually works pretty well, and rarely does it involve the police.
And the story comes at a good time. This week also gave us Samantha Brick, a British writer that’s being riffed on, demonized, and trolled to the hilt over her Daily Mail article regarding her life struggles with being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And the popular site Jezebel seems to think, in the wake of Samantha BrickGate, that the Daily Mail is trolling us all. From an article in Wednesday’s Jezebel posts: "I can’t help but feel like the Daily Mail is playing a trick on her [Samantha Brick]. The Daily Mail is a large-scale professional troll, and this article is troll-bait of the highest order — a master stroke of carefully orchestrated misogyny. It basically screams, ‘HERE, TROLLS!’" And you may have been the unwilling victim of trolling on Reddit, 4Chan, or even on Facebook. And honestly (especially if you hang out on 4Chan or Reddit), who’s to say that you aren’t a troll yourself?
While trolling shouldn’t be illegal, there are some criminally bad types of trolls on the Internet. But with so many options to mute, ban, and opt out, it’s doubtful that any measure as Draconian as banning bullies will remain a law for long. It does, however, warrant an investigation into the whys and hows of the Internet troll. First things first: trolling is rude. And it’s mean. And annoying. And, often, inevitably fruitless. Just as there are so many ways to be uncool, there are so many ways to be an Internet troll. In Brazil, trolls are referred to as pombos, which comes from pombos enxadristas, which means "chessplayer pigeons." This term comes from the popular Portugeuse adage, "arguing with fulano is the same as playing chess with a pigeon: the pigeon defecates on the table, drop the pieces and simply fly, claiming victory." Such is the process of the Internet troll. On today’s forums, up-votes and down-votes can sometimes change a troll’s behavior, but there are a lot of personalities that just don’t quit — regardless of the reaction.
What gives, trolls? Why do you have to be so anti-? Your behavior is attention-seeking at its best, and putrid vitriol at its ugliest. And even though we don’t want you to act like that, and certainly prefer not to have you around — we don’t want you to be illegal. But if that’s going to happen, we hope that this typology will have all you trolls considering moving to the great desert state of Arizona. Scotsdale, Phoenix, Tuscon, wherever — if Internet trolling becomes illegal there, these are the seven types of people that should seriously relocate.
The YouTube Commenter
Are you having a great day? Well, we’ve got the solution for you. YouTube.com is the web’s leading video sharing site, and has become a hugely popular search engine. Comments on the videos are those of an open forum, with very little moderation (especially in the pre-YouTube-by-Google days), and are generally a web junkie’s daily reminder that everyone on the Internet (so, pretty much everyone in the world) is grossly ignorant, contributing to global idiocy in scads, and generally sucks really, really hard. Reading public YouTube comments is guaranteed to kill any hope that you had left for humanity, and has proven itself to be an effective activity for taking that optimism of yours down a notch or two.
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kennymotown
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