[Transcribed discussion of “The Trolls Among Us,” by Mattathias Schwartz, published in The New York Times Magazine.
This article focuses on a burgeoning Internet subculture populated by people called trolls. “Troll” arose in the late 1980s as a description for anyone “who intentionally disrupts online communities.” Back then, writes Schwartz, trolling was innocuous, no more than the occasional asinine question posted on a message board. These days, however, trolls are craftier and more powerful. Schwartz opens the story with an example: after a seventh-grader named Mitchell Henderson shot himself, his friends created a MySpace page in his memory. The details of Henderson’s death eventually got posted on /b/, a message board known for its graphic and insulting posts. Henderson’s story then caught the attention of trolls who frequent the site. The boy’s face started appearing all over the net, even appended collage-style over actors’ faces in hardcore porn flicks. People took pictures at his gravesite and posted them online. Someone claiming to be “Mitchell’s ghost” prank called his parents. “The front door is locked,” the caller told Henderson’s dad. “Can you come down and let me in?”]
Joseph: I’ve heard of this kind of thing happening. Actually something like this happened to someone at my school. Someone hacked into his MySpace page and really messed with it.
Molly: You can do that?
Joseph: I think it’s pretty easy to do, actually.
Bora: At my school someone created a Facebook account for this one teacher we had. It made fun of him. This teacher was the kind of guy you did not want to mess with. There was this big meeting in the school auditorium and he stood up and said, “This is harassment,” and threatened to call the police. But they never found out who did it. That’s kind of troll-ish, isn’t it?
Joseph: I would say so. That’s why I found this article interesting. Because this stuff has happened to people I know. I’ve seen it happening.
Javier: Yeah, I liked this article a lot. But I had never heard of this. So I learned a lot from it.
[The students were asked whether they have any sympathy for the trolls]
Javier: Not at all.
Molly: No.
Joseph: I don’t, no. I’ve met some of these troll types—they just want power. They want to be recognized and respected in this screwed-up way. It gives them a feeling of power to make other people’s lives miserable online. Why else would they get into this stuff? There is some massively twisted thinking here, like that whole “the right of the superior to rule over the inferior”? That’s nuts!
[In the article, Schwartz quotes a troll who’d posted this statement on a message board: “There is no morality. Only the right of the superior to rule over the inferior.” The students were then asked whether troll behavior constitutes evil.]
Joseph: I don’t know if I’d call this evil…
Javier: Yeah, I would.
Molly: Yeah, I’d call it evil.
Bora: Maybe it’s just because I always want to see the good in people, but I don’t think they’re evil, I just feel bad for these people. Obviously they’ve gone through something really horrible that creates the need in them to lash out. Something’s gone wrong in their lives and it makes them feel that hurting people in an anonymous way is good or justified or somehow their right.
Joseph: I’m not saying they’re evil, but the reason these people do this is because you can get this excitement out of it. I think some of them are just doing it to prove that they can, and that they can get away with it. People have always done crazy things just to prove something to themselves. Here they do it anonymously so they can pull it off without suffering any consequences. And I think the author gives a really good introduction to all this. He really gets into the psychology of why people do this and what they’re thinking. He does it all pretty non-judgmentally, which is impressive. It’d be so easy to hate these people, but that would make it hard to portray them fairly as a writer. He does a good job of putting us in their shoes.
Bora: I liked the writing, and I also liked all the details he gave us. It was really thought-provoking. It grossed me out, but it made me think: Why would these people do all this mean stuff? Why would they need to behave like this?
Meeting 8/5/08
[Transcribed discussion of “The Eureka Hunt,” by Jonah Lehrer, published in The New Yorker.
Lehrer’s article explores how good ideas come to us. The author talks with neurologists and psychologists about the interplay between right- and left-brain, and about how brain-imaging techniques reveal the complex web of communication our gray matter uses to solve problems. For example, the writer explains why our good ideas so often come to us in the shower. Mental relaxation—as one might experience under warm water—can be more crucial to having an epiphany than brow-furrowing concentration.]
Javier: This was definitely interesting. It had a lot of depth. After I put it down, I was thinking about this stuff for the next few days. Any time an author does that to me it’s good.
Will: I liked that it wasn’t as hard to follow as some other science-related articles we’ve read. It’s tough to write about science for a non-scientist audience. He didn’t dive so deep that he lost us. But at the same time he really dug into his subject matter.
Javier: It made sense, too. It was true to my experience. My parents are always telling me to wake up early. They say the morning is the best time for thinking. [Lehrer] is saying that too—just after you wake up is the best time to do things that take a lot of mental energy. Like homework. Sometimes I have great ideas in the shower.
Will: Sometimes you’ll wake up and have something on your mind from the night before and it doesn’t click until morning, just like he says.
Javier: Although I will say I’m not always that sharp in the morning. But that’s probably because I go to bed too late. Another thing I was really into was the story about the fireman he used in the beginning.
[Lehrer introduces his essay with a story of a Montana fireman caught in a massive forest fire. The fire was advancing at a rate of seven hundred feet per minute. With no time to outrun it, the fireman lit a match and burned a patch of grass just large enough for him to lie down in. The fire jumped over the fireman as he lay there but killed thirteen other firefighters who couldn’t outrun it. Later, he couldn’t explain how he’d suddenly come to the idea of burning himself a small haven. It was an epiphany. All he could say was “it just seemed the logical thing to do.”]
Will: Yeah that story was perfect for this. The author was able to combine a story like that with an essay on brain science. So we get a little human narrative and some science to help us understand what’s happening in the narrative.
Javier: I agree. That introduction drew me in. And then he came back to it in the end nicely. It also fits well because the idea of Eureka! is that you kind of get struck by lightning. And this fire in Montana was started by a lightning strike.
Will: I noticed that while I was reading the story I started thinking about what was happening in my brain. It was making me conscious of my own insight process even while I was reading.
Lehrer’s article explores how good ideas come to us. The author talks with neurologists and psychologists about the interplay between right- and left-brain, and about how brain-imaging techniques reveal the complex web of communication our gray matter uses to solve problems. For example, the writer explains why our good ideas so often come to us in the shower. Mental relaxation—as one might experience under warm water—can be more crucial to having an epiphany than brow-furrowing concentration.]
Javier: This was definitely interesting. It had a lot of depth. After I put it down, I was thinking about this stuff for the next few days. Any time an author does that to me it’s good.
Will: I liked that it wasn’t as hard to follow as some other science-related articles we’ve read. It’s tough to write about science for a non-scientist audience. He didn’t dive so deep that he lost us. But at the same time he really dug into his subject matter.
Javier: It made sense, too. It was true to my experience. My parents are always telling me to wake up early. They say the morning is the best time for thinking. [Lehrer] is saying that too—just after you wake up is the best time to do things that take a lot of mental energy. Like homework. Sometimes I have great ideas in the shower.
Will: Sometimes you’ll wake up and have something on your mind from the night before and it doesn’t click until morning, just like he says.
Javier: Although I will say I’m not always that sharp in the morning. But that’s probably because I go to bed too late. Another thing I was really into was the story about the fireman he used in the beginning.
[Lehrer introduces his essay with a story of a Montana fireman caught in a massive forest fire. The fire was advancing at a rate of seven hundred feet per minute. With no time to outrun it, the fireman lit a match and burned a patch of grass just large enough for him to lie down in. The fire jumped over the fireman as he lay there but killed thirteen other firefighters who couldn’t outrun it. Later, he couldn’t explain how he’d suddenly come to the idea of burning himself a small haven. It was an epiphany. All he could say was “it just seemed the logical thing to do.”]
Will: Yeah that story was perfect for this. The author was able to combine a story like that with an essay on brain science. So we get a little human narrative and some science to help us understand what’s happening in the narrative.
Javier: I agree. That introduction drew me in. And then he came back to it in the end nicely. It also fits well because the idea of Eureka! is that you kind of get struck by lightning. And this fire in Montana was started by a lightning strike.
Will: I noticed that while I was reading the story I started thinking about what was happening in my brain. It was making me conscious of my own insight process even while I was reading.
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