TEXT B
Tyranny of the Mob
Trolls are turning the web into a cesspool of aggression and violence. What watching them is doing to the rest of us may be even more harmful. […] The Internet’s personality has changed. Once it was a geek with lofty ideals about the free flow of information. Now the web is a sociopath with Asperger’s. If you need help improving your upload speeds it’s eager to help with technical details, but if you tell it you’re struggling with depression it will try to goad you into killing yourself. Psychologists call this the online disinhibition effect, in which factors like anonymity, invisibility, a lack of authority and not communicating in real time strip away the mores society spent millennia building. And it’s seeping from our smartphones into every aspect of our lives.
The people who relish this online freedom are called trolls […] Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the […] laughs. What trolls do for the [laughs] ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats.[…] Trolls are turning social media and comment boards into a giant locker room in a teen movie, with towel-snapping racial epithets and misogyny.
Joel Stein, Time, August 29th, 2016
The people who relish this online freedom are called trolls […] Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the […] laughs. What trolls do for the [laughs] ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats.[…] Trolls are turning social media and comment boards into a giant locker room in a teen movie, with towel-snapping racial epithets and misogyny.
Joel Stein, Time, August 29th, 2016
TEXT B informs us that trolls claim they utilize online freedom for
