There is a sad story out of London that is a commentary on the mutating influence of anonymity on the Internet. Brenda Leyland killed herself after being confronted about her online abuse of the parents of the missing girl Madeleine McCann. Sky News tracked her down as the troll responsible for thousands of hate filled messages to Kate and Gerry McCann, whose three-year-old daughter went missing in Portugal in 2007.
What is interesting is that she faced a criminal investigation. We have previously discussed the worrisome trend in England in criminalizing different forms of speech. While Leyland (writing as @Sweepyface) was vicious, the 63-year-old was also engaged in what appears to be free speech. She is an online bully — something that we all have had to deal with on blogs as a constant reality. Some people find anonymity intoxicating — unleashing the most vile and hateful sides of personalities. It is truly chilling to think that some many people actively repress such impulses until they find a vehicle to attack others without accountability. However, I have serious concerns over the criminalization of speech.
Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has made clear that social media could be a criminal offence if they contain “credible threats of violence” or target an individual in a way that “may constitute harassment or stalking”. It is the harassment element that can be highly ambiguous. The prosecutors have said that “Grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false” messages can be a crime if a “public interest” case. That creates a huge chilling effect on a wide range of speech that some might see as offensive or untrue. As one of the greatest vehicles for free speech in the history of humanity, these prosecutions threaten to curtail a significant resource for free speech.
The article below cites a study by Canadian researchers that concluded that “Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun… and the Internet is their playground!”
The glee turned to a nightmare for Leyland when her true identity was revealed.
Source: Yahoo
http://youtu.be/o7Fku8n9uD0
In honor of JT’s trip to Sicily.
Chaplin and Keaton as well.
Laurel and Hardy were much funnier IMO.
Nick – when I got older I realized the true genius of Buster Keaton. I cannot stand the 3 Stooges now.
Good, the Whining party is over? Because the Fontinella cheese was starting to stink up the place.
Au contraire, Mark, they watched too few of them.
Woop woop woop!!
“You offered someone’s definition of socialism
Someone?
Leszek Kolakowski was a leading authority on the subject.
Not well known in the US, he has been called The Man Who Killed Marxism.
As for “our well right of center president, hah!, then William Ayers, the avowed communist, sure wasted his time, didn’t he? But maybe that’s the new leftist meme, like calling the National Socialists “the right”.
All the left’s failures eventually get redefined as “not the left.”
The “no true Scotsman” defense.
Adult bullies most likely watched to may violent cartoons and the Three Stooges when they were kids.
Mark – I do not think you CAN watch too many 3 Stooges films as a kid. As an adult, yes, as a kid, no.
Paul C. Schulte, “bettykath – so, a young man shots at a cop in Fergeson and gets shot in return and he is a punching bag? Do I understand you correctly?”
Paul, this is the sort of nonsense that makes one think of you as a sometimes troll. You know very well, hmmm, maybe I’m giving you too much credit. You should know, that the demonstrations have to do with the multiplicity of events, many of which have been documented here of police brutality (punching bags) and of cops killing unarmed Black youth (targets). Even in the case you mention there are questions about whether or not the teen was able to shoot the cop with his sandwich.
bettykath – we know from the number of children taken out of schools for having guns that a sandwich is a very dangerous weapon.
Pogo, You nailed it. The great Jackie Robinson warned black people about putting all their eggs in the Dem basket. And, as we know, LBJ called the 1964 Civil Rights Bill his “Nigger Bill’ and rejoiced that the Dems would have the black vote locked down for centuries.
Pogo, I stand by my comment. You offered someone’s definition of socialism and I see that definition as the one being used by those who accuse our well right of center president as a socialist. Or does the definition vary depending on which side of the ocean? Oh, I see, the definition you provided is for the right, as in the ride side of the Atlantic and it’s used by the right of this country in determining the political leaning of President Obama.
David, Thanks for quickly summing up the history, silencing the revisionists, and getting the discussion to where those w/ ideas can discuss them. Kudos.
Pogo,
You’re making an argument that requires a curiosity to question established norms and to consider outcomes that may not conform to one’s worldview. Without that we would still be living in the Dark Ages.
When I first began participating in blogs I argued from what I thought to be a truthful position and I got pummeled for it. I discovered if I couldn’t prove it (with original sources) then I had no more standing than the person I was arguing against. I consider myself fortunate to live in an age where information is a mouse-click away, but that still requires the humility to search for answers to questions instead of answers to beliefs.
I believe it’s our ego that motivates every one of us to participate in these discussions and it’s our humility (or lack of) that sets the tone. It’s not difficult to determine those seeking the truth and those uncomfortable with it; the former remain civil and the latter, well not so much.
Pogo,
Or “cultist”.
In some ways, “troll” has become a useless term for “someone I dislike”, much like “bully”, “fascist”, “homophobe”, and “hater.”
Aaaaaaand off we go away from the interesting and rather important topic of free speech, internet protocols and what constitutes bullying to the tired old Bush did it rhetoric and whether Obama is a socialist, Marxist or fascist.
“The African American community is tired of being treated as second class citizens.”
The they should get off the Democrat plantation. They sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.
They got welfare and Obamaphones in exchange for their votes, and were left with fatherless homes, generational poverty, thug culture, and crime as lifestyle.
The protests will do nothing but make grease a few Democrat palms and then turn Ferguson -and maybe St. Louis- into a no-go zone. Businesses are already leaving. Families are next.And what college students 9or their parents) want their kids by this chaos?
Let’s check Ferguson again in one year and see who is right, me or you.
Oh Paul, that napalm comment just made you fall another notch on my integrity meter.
Bettykath, Obama is disturbingly closer to Bush in his centrist policies than an socialist I ever heard of. Jill actually has stated Obama is to the right of Bush.
@bettykath
“I guess this is the definition being used by those who say that the President is a socialist.”
I named Britain, you inferred Obama.
From The Economist:
Having spent his youthful years as an ardent communist and atheist, Leszek Kolakowski, one of the great minds of the modern era, turned into Marxism’s most perceptive opponent, and one with a profound respect for religion.
…His magnum opus was the three-volume “Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution”, published in the 1970s. It calmly and expertly demolished the pillars of Marxist thought: the labour theory of value, the idea of class struggle, historical materialism and the like. He also pointed out, again without unnecessary polemics, the practical shortcomings of communist systems. Stalinism was not an aberration, he argued, but the inevitable consequence of pursuing a communist utopia.“
Yes, there are a small number of trolls on this blog, and at least one who is a bully.