Boing Boing » trolls

The Troll Sanctuary

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:48:30 +0000

Gym instructor Michelle Kerrins owns more than 3,000 fiery-haired troll dolls and spends much of her week combing thrift stores for more. There's even a video tour of her collection—the segment is part of a forthcoming episode of TLC's My Crazy Obsession.

Donald Trump: #FEUDWHORE, the chart

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:17:06 +0000

Hilary "Chartgirl" Sargent has produced another amazing chart, chronicling the many feuds of the suspected orangutan and noted troll: "Donald Trump: FEUDWHORE."

Confronting a troll in real life

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 05:00:20 +0000

Leo Traynor, a "writer, analyst & political consultant" in Ireland, was hounded off of Twitter by a vicious anti-Semitic troll whose ghastly threats against him and his family were too much to bear. Traynor located his tormentor, though, and got quite a surprise. It's a tale well told, and gave me goosebumps.

Patent troll

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:20:14 +0000

Hat tip to Rebecca Rosen.

On Trolling

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:42:04 +0000

Zoe Williams examines the difference between trolls and the merely bad-mannered. [The Guardian via The Awl]

On Tweetbombing and the Ethics of Attention

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:49:39 +0000

Something weird happened on Twitter yesterday. It was annoying and upsetting at the time, but now it's meaty fodder for behavioral analysis discussions. Ethan Zuckerman wrote a blog post about it that extracts some of the more interesting questions raised about social media and activism.

* Postscript: I've since traded tweets with the two guys behind the stunt, and we're cool.

Righthaven domain sells for $3300

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:41:10 +0000

After a few days on the block, copyright troll Righthaven's domain name sold for $3,300 this afternoon. The funds go to creditors of the bankrupt firm, which tried -- and failed -- to build a business shaking down websites that excerpted content from its clients' publications.

We almost bought it just so we could redirect it at humorously-chosen sites, but it got a bit too racy for us around the $2k mark. The whois currently remains the law firm that seized it; if you won it, get in touch!

Previously: Righthaven in its death throes, domain going up for auction

Trollface restaurant

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:59:24 +0000

Yesterday I spotted Bisou, a new Libyan restaurant, which opened earlier this year here in Pittsburgh. At Reddit, Val_Holla reports that the proprietor claims no knowledge of his logo's origin, which may in turn indicate that he is a master troll. Here is the menu.

Joel versus the volcano

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 09:19:00 +0000

Joel Johnson delivers a blistering smackdown to the trolls, miscreants and entitled creeps who infest comment threads at Gizmodo.

Twetiquette Cops (and @johncusack) in NYT

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:00:03 +0000

The New York Times' John Metcalfe has a very funny story out today on self-appointed grammar and spelling nazis on Twitter: anal-retentive, fail-wailing buzzkills who troll fellow users (particularly high-profile ones) for typos and such. Boing Boing's esteemed guestblogger John Cusack starts off the piece, and I was also interviewed.

Cusack, it should be said, deserves real praise for keeping it real. He comes off in the piece as he does in person: self-deprecating humor, and just a cool, down-to-earth dude. So many stars of his stature farm out their tweets and Facebook interactions to assistants, publicists, PR handlers. Not him. As my Boing Boing colleagues know, I'm the biggest copyediting nitpicker obsessive in the world, but I really respect him for approaching the new experience of Twitter with sincerity, authenticity, and a desire to understand the medium by using it himself (and, fine, smashing a few cups in the china shop along the way). Bruteforce it, baby. Snip:

JOHN CUSACK tweets with his iPhone and, much like the characters he plays, his style is fast and loose. "I'm pretty new to it, and if there's a spell check on an iPhone, I can't find it," he said by telephone. "So I basically get in the general ballpark and tweet it."
Consequently, Mr. Cusack has birthed strange words like "breakfasy" and "hippocrite" and has given a more literary title to his new movie: "Hot Tub Tome Machine."
Most of his followers ignore the gaffes. But a vocal minority abuse him about it nonstop, telling the star that as much as they liked "The Sure Thing," his grammar and spelling sure stink. "If you're going to be political, maybe learn how to spell Pakistan, and all words in general," wrote one supposed fan.
"The vitriol was so intense that at first I didn't think they were serious," Mr. Cusack said. "Because, like, who would care?"
They do. A small but vocal subculture has emerged on Twitter of grammar and taste vigilantes who spend their time policing other people's tweets -- celebrities and nobodies alike. These are people who build their own algorithms to sniff out Twitter messages that are distasteful to them -- tweets with typos or flawed grammar, or written in ALLCAPS -- and then send scolding notes to the offenders. They see themselves as the guardians of an emerging behavior code: Twetiquette.

On the Twitter Patrol (New York Times)

(PHOTO: "Twitter Bird," a CC-licensed photo from the Flickr stream of tashmahal. This dog is not a Twitter cop, I just didn't want to reward bad human behavior by reblogging the photos of Twitter cops featured in the article.)