Trolls are ''psychopaths and sadists'' say researchers.

[aliceBB 10]

Aye that's what I mean. It's all about intent. I've been told many a time times that I'm going to get raped, mainly by presumably kids during online gaming. I wouldn't dream of involving the police in such circumstances.

 

If for some reason I thought the threat was genuine then I would have no qualms involving the police, but that has never happened.

 

That doesn't seem a very satisfactory maxim. How is the recipient of such a threat to know what the perpetrator's intent is?

 

I wouldn't game online with people who use the term 'rape' as a joke, either. Perhaps I am choosier than you...

[Epic Fail 10]

That doesn't seem a very satisfactory maxim. How is the recipient of such a threat to know what the perpetrator's intent is?

 

I wouldn't game online with people who use the term 'rape' as a joke, either. Perhaps I am choosier than you...

 

You don't know. That's up to the individual to make a judgement call.

 

I'm not sure if you have much experience of modern online gaming, but in general you don't choose who you game with. You are connected to people from all around the globe. That's why I said "presumably kids", because I don't actually know these people.

[aliceBB 10]

You don't know. That's up to the individual to make a judgement call.

But how can you judge fairly or accurately with limited context and no personal knowledge of the threatener?

 

I'm not sure if you have much experience of modern online gaming, but in general you don't choose who you game with. You are connected to people from all around the globe. That's why I said "presumably kids", because I don't actually know these people.

You're right, I don't. And after what you have told me, I'm even happier that I don't!

[Epic Fail 10]

But how can you judge fairly or accurately with limited context and no personal knowledge of the threatener?

 

You're right, I don't. And after what you have told me, I'm even happier that I don't!

 

You can never judge fairly, you can only go on what you think. If you told me now that you were going to rape me, I wouldn't believe it, but there's every chance that I could be wrong. All you can do is go on your gut feeling, but if in doubt contact the police.

[Ash Tray 10]

Do you think rape threats are trivial and not worth bothering about?

Should women threatened with rape just man up and take it? .

 

So let's get this straight you're saying that if a woman is threatened with rape she should become a Tranny.

[aliceBB 10]

So let's get this straight you're saying that if a woman is threatened with rape she should become a Tranny.

 

I think you know what Halibut meant.

[Halibut 12]

So let's get this straight you're saying that if a woman is threatened with rape she should become a Tranny.

 

Yeah, try and reduce it all to a cheap laugh again. Rape's such a laugh isn't it?

[Blaschka 10]

I don't believe that the 'trolls' deserve dragging through the courts and locking up. I don't see what point it serves.

 

In fact this article from Brendan O'Neil in Spiked magazine states the case very well. Spiked is the new name for Living Marxism and always has a challenging and contrarian view worth considering:

 

At last, we know the truth about the hysterical troll panic

 

So now we know: the great internet troll panic of last summer wasn’t only packed with exaggeration and mythmaking about the dastardly power of such bedroom-bound twitterers; it was actually a complete inversion of the truth about what was happening online.

 

The story shoved down every British newspaper readers’ throat last July and August was this: vulnerable female commentators and politicians are being harassed, even silenced, by a massive mob of trollish men who have been empowered by centuries of misogyny. The power dynamic, we were told, was one in which privilege-wielding men were harrying and shutting down isolated women who felt ‘utterly powerless’. It was a classic battle between brutish assumed authority and ordinary citizens, mostly female, who wanted simply to express themselves.

 

The reality? Well, two trolls – not a thousand, or a hundred, or even 10 – had charges brought against them and this week pleaded guilty. And these two trolls, this non-army, these completely insignificant individuals, are being crushed by the full forces of the state and the media. They’ve been named, shamed and demonised across the tabloid press, doggedly pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service and the cops, dragged before courts of law, and now face possible detainment at Her Majesty’s pleasure. What we were told was happening online – that vulnerable women in the media and politics were being silenced by a veritable army of haters – is the polar opposite of what has really happened, which is that influential women, backed by the media, the police and the courts, have successfully silenced two not-very-threatening individuals. Of all the numerous media scare stories of 2013, the troll one has proven to be the most myth-packed and warped.

 

Last summer, I took part in a Radio 4 debate with the media woman who was on the receiving end of most of the stupid Twitter trollery: Caroline Criado-Perez. She had successfully campaigned to put Jane Austen on the new ten-pound note (as I told her behind the scenes at Radio 4, my choice would have been Sylvia Pankhurst, not Austen), and for doing so she’d been subjected to various horrible tweets.

 

During the radio discussion, I argued that the national hysteria about trolls was a moral panic which was promoting the evidence-starved idea that the internet is overrun by misogynists exercising a ‘reign of terror’. In truth, it’s likely to be very small numbers of ‘sad, isolated individuals’ who are doing this trolling and we should just ignore them, I argued. Ms Criado-Perez countered that actually large numbers of people are involved in the tsunami of trolling, and far from being sad, isolated individuals, ‘terrifyingly, they’re quite normal men - they’ve got wives, they’ve got children, they’ve got jobs’, she said.

Related categories

Free speech

 

We now know that I was right and Ms Criado-Perez was utterly wrong. ‘Normal men’? One of the two trolls who had charges brought against them isn’t even a man; it’s a 23-year-old woman called Isabella Sorley who reportedly has drinking and emotional problems, yet who now finds herself splashed across every newspaper in the land as a wicked and heartless deviant. If anyone deserves the tag ‘vulnerable’, it’s surely her rather than the very well-connected Ms Criado-Perez. The other troll is a 25-year-old man called John Nimmo, who is described as a ‘jobless recluse’. Normal man? Hardly.

 

In the troll panic, the ‘power’ was not exercised by trolls against vulnerable women; it was completely the other way round - the power of the police and the law was summoned up by very influential women in the media to crush two rather sad, isolated individuals, to make a national laughing stock of them in a way that no single troll could ever hope to achieve against one of his chosen targets.

[/Quote]

 

Full article online at http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/at_last_we_know_the_truth_about_the_hysterical_troll_panic/14494

[Halibut 12]

I don't believe that the 'trolls' deserve dragging through the courts and locking up. I don't see what point it serves.

In fact this article from Brendan O'Neil in Spiked magazine states the case very well. Spiked is the new name for Living Marxism and always has a challenging and contrarian view worth considering:

 

 

 

Full article online at http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/at_last_we_know_the_truth_about_the_hysterical_troll_panic/14494

 

Had you considered the point that rape threats, death threats, abuse and so on can have a devastating effect on the individual they're directed at?

 

Do you think threats to rape, kill etc are an acceptable kind of behaviour and that the victims of such should just tolerate it?

[Blaschka 10]

Had you considered the point that rape threats, death threats, abuse and so on can have a devastating effect on the individual they're directed at?

 

Do you think threats to rape, kill etc are an acceptable kind of behaviour and that the victims of such should just tolerate it?

 

Well it would depend on the nature of the threat in my view. Obviously there's a world of difference between a death threat from someone who posts it through your letterbox and someone who posts it on your Twitter page.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Blaschka

[Halibut 12]

Well it would depend on the nature of the threat in my view. Obviously there's a world difference between a death threat from someone who posts it through your letterbox and someone who posts it on your Twitter page.

 

Really? What's the difference as you see it?

 

Surely you would agree with me that such threats shouldn't be accepted whatever the means of their delivery?

[Epic Fail 10]

Really? What's the difference as you see it?

 

Surely you would agree with me that such threats shouldn't be accepted whatever the means of their delivery?

 

The person posting through the letterbox clearly knows where you live. The Twitter person plausibly not unless you know them personally.

 

That's not me saying then Twitter one shouldn't be taken seriously, but there is a clear difference.