Grousing about grousing

I read this really disturbing article last week, and it's kind of been on my mind for awhile. It concerns internet trolling, which means intentionally pushing peoples' buttons to get them riled up, just for fun. We've all seen this behavior. It's the sort of thing that would get you punched in the face in a real-world setting, but it has been accepted as inevitable in the setting of the world wild web. The article discusses some of the more extreme incidences of trolling, where people's lives are affected by the meanness of anonymous strangers.

Denizens of my favorite online forum, the Chit Chatters on Boardgamegeek, often proclaim "Sheesh. It's the internet. Don't take things so seriously!", implying that it's the fault of the offended party for being so uncool as to be offended. Apparently, the biggest social faux pas in the virtual world is to bear the belief that the person you're interacting with, somewhere out there, actually represents an entity with convictions.

In the same vein, one of the trolls in the article tells the interviewer, "You have green hair.". The interviewer is puzzled, but amused, and denies this. The troll says, "That must be why you're a terrible reporter". The reporter responds, "Why do you think that?". The troll then triumphantly points out that if the reporter was truly confident in his skills, he would have laughed off the second comment as quickly as the first. He says that he uses this concept to "educate" people on how to properly respond to things that they read on the internet. On his internet.

When I first read that, I thought that I got what he was saying, but on reflection I realize that I really don't. If I tell you something that is a concrete fact that you know to be untrue, and that you know that I know to be untrue, and vice versa ad infinitum (just to be safe), then of course you'd laugh it off. If I followed that with a critical assessment of your worth as a parent (assuming you have kids), you may want to know why I came to that conclusion. Presumably, I've met your kid and seen you interacting with him or her, so I have reason to have an independent opinion. These are normal reactions to these types of statements. Normal reactions shouldn't have to change because of the medium.

It's really too bad. We have this great medium for getting together publicly and anonymously, and an handful of pricks decide that it must serve their vulgarity first. Like sheep, we comply.