October 13, 2012

A Look Behind the Handle: Two Trolls in Real Life

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Are you curious about what makes a troll tick? Not your garden-variety rude commenter, mind you, but the real, raging jackasses who explicitly get their jollies by harassing other people online. What are they really like IRL?

Recently we’ve gotten up-close-and-personal looks at two of these creatures. Both accounts are fascinating, and both are quite different. And both are recommended. Here they are:

Leo Traynor: The day I confronted my troll

Adrian Chen: Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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