Slashdot Mirror
The Day Leo Traynor Confronted His Troll
McGruber writes "Dublin-based writer Leo Traynor has written a piece about confronting the troll who drove him off Twitter, hacked his Facebook, and abused and terrified his family. Quoting: 'I blocked the account and reported it as spam. The following week it happened again in an identical manner. A new follower, I followed back, received a string of abusive DMs, blocked and reported for spam. Two or three times a week. Sometimes two or three times a day. An almost daily cycle of blocking and reporting and intense verbal abuse. ... Then one day something happened that truly frightened me. I don't scare easily but this was vile. I received a parcel at my home address. Nothing unusual there – I get lots of post. I ripped it open and there was a Tupperware lunchbox inside full of ashes. There was a note included, saying, "Say hello to your relatives from Auschwitz." I was physically sick. ... In July I was approached by a friend who's basically an IT genius, and he offered some help. He said that he could trace the hackers and trolls for me using perfectly legal technology, which would lead to their IP addresses. I said yes. Then I baited them – I was deliberately more provocative toward them than ever I'd been before.'"
Keywords in the original text:
"basically an IT genius,"
"hacked my facebook account"
"trace the hackers and trolls for me using perfectly legal technology, which would lead to their IP addresses."
"the abuse had emanated from three separate IP addresses in different corners of Ireland."
"The third location was a friend's house."
so, you can know the house location of each poster on twitter ? - troll-
He did. And they were not helpful.
I was petrified.
They had my address.
I reported it to the authorities and hoped for the best.
Two days later I opened my front door and there was a bunch of dead flowers with my wife's old Twitter username on it. Then that night I recieved a DM. 'You'll get home some day & ur b**ches throat will be cut & ur son will be gone.'
I got on to the authorities again but, polite and sympathetic as they were, there didn't seem much that could be done.
Sort of surprising because I'm fairly certain the language of that threat rises to a criminal level with the threat of bodily harm and kidnapping, especially given that the person making the threat knows the address of the person they are threatening.
I'm disappointed that the author didn't press charges. This kid is probably a sociopath. When he stalks and hurts other people in the future the police won't have the evidence they need of past cases. Sociopaths don't learn how to stop hurting people, they just learn not to get caught the next time.
Or he's a messed up kid who didn't have a clue that his actions were hurting someone.
If it was me being stalked I'd be demanding that the kid doesn't go near a computer for 6 months (or until he's legally an adult) and that he has a curfew at night so he can't just be off at a mates place doing the same thing. It should give him a chance to catch up on Jewish/German history and have some appreciation for what he's ranting and raving about.
I think he should be given another chance, but only one. I'm not sure what it's like in the country where Leo Traynor resides but people have gone to jail over here for less.
It's a nice moralistic story but it doesn't pass the smell test
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sociopaths don't learn how to stop hurting people, they just learn not to get caught the next time.
That's not true. A sociopath merely lacks empathy - they may be aware that they are hurting someone, but they don't understand why that's a bad thing. Placed in an incentive system where hurting people is penalised and provides no advantages, they'll do what's best for them and stop.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"There are a lot of people arguing that this whole story is a fable; the IT guy the author presents to defend his account is a feckless bullshitter. Basically it's a case of two guys who don't know that they don't know the technical difficulties in what they claim to have done. The whole thing is embarrassing and annoying."
Are we getting ... wait for it ... trolled? (Can I start a meme? Rick-Trolled?)
What's really out of whack is the sequence of events. So the cops can't find this guy, they're wringing their hands in helplessness. Along comes "An IT Genius" that traces the house by IP ... and the cops couldn't call any of their guys on the entire force to do that? However if the kid torrented a Song they would have found him pronto.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If you want to see a good troll, read some of the threads started by roman_mir.
Not only is good trolling rare, but no one even knows what trolling is anymore! Someone isn't trolling just because they say something you disagree with. I can say with certainty that although I disagree with roman_mir, there are people who genuinely have similar 'extremist' views.
Who cares. Prison isn't there to make people better or to rehabilitate them. Its purpose is to punish people.
Yes but sadly we see more and more of this, sick little maladjusted fucks that decide for whatever reason YOU are the cause of some problem in their lives or the world would be better off without you and will go VERY stalkerish on you.
In fact as someone who recently had to deal with something not as sick, but creepy and weird where some asshole was hacking into a nice former customer of mine. this guy is soooo fucking bland I can't imagine how he could do anything but bore someone to death but this little prick would take over his computer and wipe his files, trash the OS, even pop up a box calling him filthy names. I have to thank the slashdot community for when i put up a list of what i had done trying to stop this guy with no luck you guys pointed out things I had not thought to check and thanks to you I was able to stop him, so thanks guys.
But what we old greybeards think of when we think of the word troll and what we are seeing now? Two totally different things. Hell I had one last year that followed me around the net for a solid year, making piles of accounts everywhere I went. For what purpose? just so he could post a response to everything I said with the sentence "Die you fat fucker DIE!". That's it, just that sentence over and over and over, across dozens of websites. While it never phased me, when you think about how much work he had to do, searching the web for every place he could possibly find where I was, spending a good 15 minutes or more making fake accounts...just for that sentence.
We are seeing more and more sick puppies out there, personally i think its just what happens when one of Gabe's fuckwads loses touch with anything other than the little bubble they create for themselves on the web. I'm sure if a shrink got a hold of this nutbag he would believe that he was actually the moral one here, that Traynor had somehow "insulted" him, dared to enter the space HE owned, or some other bullshit that to HIM would be perfectly rational, just as the cockbag that trashed a couple of years worth of data on a nice bland nobody's PC probably felt it was somehow "justified". Which just goes to show how truly warped and twisted those without a firm grasp of reality can get when they live in cyberspace.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
... In the UK you're not allowed to protect yourself either -- it undermines government authority.
While in essence what you say is true, in practice, you'll find that not all the police, judiciary and juries are 'on side' with that particular message.
Another thing, whilst I'm at it, the UK has three separate legal systems, one covering England/Wales, one covering Scotland, and lastly Northern Ireland. There may be UK wide laws, which are usually 'rubber stamped' by the Scottish and NI legal systems, but the implementation and interpretation of said laws depends on which legal jurisdiction of the UK you're in.
Having been told by a Chief Constable in Scotland that in the event of anyone breaking into my house, so long as it's within my property, I have the right to defend myself and my family, and if I fear for their or my life, then extreme actions are permissible, then I'd think it's safe to say that I do have a right to protect myself, the issue lies with how much force I use to do so and in what circumstances.
I've no idea what the legal position is in England/Wales, but having lived there for 15 years and having on at least one occasion been caught on 'surveillance' cameras 'defending myself' against a couple of muggers (one ran, I left the other U/S on the ground) and despite the incident being on camera/tape, and despite my good self being a somewhat easy individual to spot in a crowd the police never did anything about it.
So, yes, we have a bunch of control freaks in power who'd love to regiment every microsecond of our lives (irrespective of what political party they're pretending to be this month), yes, we're not allowed to own guns the same way you Americans are, yes, these restrictions haven't done a damn thing to stop the increase in 'gun crime' in the UK (Fact: gun crime is on the rise, and it is now easier to get large calibre handguns on the 'black market' since the UK government banned the ownership of the things), but, please, please don't get hung up on the fact that we do not own firearms somehow equates to we're without the means of defending ourselves, and, despite the best efforts of the State and despite the picture the media paints, we are allowed to do so.
The laws are still policed and implemented by the more than occasional human being, a lot of incidents never get to the legal system in the first instance as the Police/CPS/Procurator Fiscals take one look at the evidence and won't present it, of those which do go, you only hear about the 'being prosecuted for self defence' cases that papers with a political agenda like the 'Daily Mail' want you to hear about, you'll never read about the people who are admonished/found 'not guilty' (unless it suits the paper 'politically').
Happened to me in high school.
I blocked at least a dozen AIM accounts a night for weeks (maybe months); I can be fortunate there was no "twitter" then, nor this "book of faces", and that smartphones were this exciting new thing Handspring was just introducing to the market that nobody could afford.
Then I got two unsolicited copies of the TSR novel "Death of the Dragon" in the mail - this may have been an error by a small book distributor I did business with, so I can't be sure -- but "Dragon" was part of the IM name I used at the time, and I could never be sure. I still have both copies, and I haven't read either. I don't actually think I even touched either after I put them on the bookshelf those years ago.
Then the fella proved himself grossly incompetent, and threatened to beat me to death. In a public library, where I "was", he was "behind" me. I was sitting at a desk, at home, with a baseball bat within arms' reach. I mocked him for the rest of the night, and then it ended. He failed. Epically. His confrontation... wasn't.
But I'm not in high school any more. I spent the next couple years reading books like "Shooting To Live" and "Kill or Get Killed". I took years of aikido, tae kwon do, and studied a few forms of swordplay for a few more years. I carry a gun, and enough ammo to get through the statistically average civilian-defense gunfight, and then a little more. Sometimes, more than one. I'm seriously considering building some ghetto-but-effective body armor. (Steel rifle plates went out of style because they're heavy and unconcealable, but they offer an awful lot of protection). I don't carry a gun because I expect to get in a fight; I carry because I don't expect to get in a fight. If I expected one, I'd simply send a SWAT team in my stead, and sip Starbucks in the mobile command center. (No police department takes documentable, documented conspiracy to commit murder lightly in this age of lawsuits!) I don't sit with my back to the door at restaurants any more, I know what phrases like "condition yellow" mean, and I look for the bulge of a poorly-concealed weapon now when someone walks into the gas station while I'm fueling up.
Fortunately, for the most part, I don't mind living like this. In practice, 98% of the time, it just means I can make unplanned trips to the gun range without going home for weapons. And - unlike most liberals - I know a secret: The shooting sports are fun. I hesitate to say it, but it's a blast to put 20 shots into a single hole not any bigger than a nickel; mastery for its own sake is one of the most rewarding things.
But somewhere, deep down, I know and cannot forget: I found this thing I enjoy because someone threatened to kill me in a public place, in front of witnesses, and get away with it. And other geeks may not get through it as well as I did. I may enjoy the trappings, but I wouldn't want to put anyone through the scary parts on the way to where I am today.
Let us not mistake this for an isolated incident; it is not. Let us not mistake it for something new; it is not. Let us not allow this to happen again; it should not.
360 degrees means you're looking directly at the xbox again ...
Leo Traynor is a fiction. Apparently he has lived in no less than seventeen countries over the past eight years, including some of the most politically unstable regions on the planet; more that he has managed to stay still long enough to gain a DPhil in international politics (no school anywhere has any record of him), that he has worked for all three main parties in the UK as a press liaison officer (yet no mention of him in the Press, ever). That he has worked for both parties in the US as a Press liaison officer (ditto). His story is so full of holes you could drain chips with it.
Leo Traynor, you are a bullshitter.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
With respect, I don't think roman_mir/udachny is a troll.
I thought he was, but then he started replying to some of my anti-libertarian bait threads.
Eventually he started rambling incoherently about how Stalin's goons killed his family, how evil I was, etc., descending into telling me that he would be in prison right now if I were closeby as he wouldn't be able to hold himself back. He also told me he now has a "personal interest" in me or something.
At that point I decided that either I'd out-trolled him and he didn't know what to do next, or that he really was a guy whose family had been killed by Stalin and who - as a result - decided that anything which wasn't his perceived diametric opposite must be pure evil. IOW, roman_mir/udachny is another example of someone with a harrowing childhood experience with X who quickly associates everything with X.
Of course, that itself could have been part of the troll. But mindless threatening abuse isn't trolling - it's mindless threatening abuse. Anyone with enough time can do it.
A more subtle conclusion would be that which, I believe, applies to many trolls: they are reflecting a good dose of their opinion, but know it's too irrational to be able to justify soundly, so instead they pretend to themselves that they're playing a game. Eventually they get so caught up in the game that they forget that they've been coming out with bullshit. I believe this is particularly true with the libertarianism/social Darwinism crap that's also popular in the mainstream media these days. Consider Fox News: after a few months working at that place, I am convinced that you entirely forget just how unscientific your journalism is. You've come in as a conservative possibly genuinely wanting to Expose Liberal Lies, and you come out as a conservative prepared to say absolutely anything as long as it seems to advance the Party Line.
tl;dr A Troll is someone with an unsound belief doggy-paddling in a slough of anti-intellectual culture.
Agreed. I'm an argumentative person, and generally like to debate. I basically can't post in regular forums any longer, as forums have devolved into dens of like-minded individuals that do not want to have their view points challenged. Disagree and they're shouting troll and locking your posts in seconds.
I really can't see how you can equate extremism with mental illness without coming to the conclusion we are already in the asylum and there are more of them than us.
Yes, but there are times when it feels like that is exactly the case. I have an acquaintance (I'll call him Nutcase A) who has swung far into the Teaparty side of politics. Now I'm not claiming anybody else at the last rally he attended is particularly mentally ill, but this guy has, for just one example, gotten so down on some people for letting their kids watch PBS that he has explained to a group of us how all those European travel shows are fake because the Russians tore up those European countries so bad they don't really look like that. A couple of people present with me drew him out on this point, and he now apparently genuinely believes that World War 2 was the US against Russia, that Russia conquered Europe as far as Italy and France, making them all Socialists, held that territory until the 80s, and that those countries weren't freed until Reagan won the cold war. By him, the Germans were on our side during WW2 until the Commies overran them. The Berlin wall enclosed all of Commie Europe, up the Atlantic seacoast. It's like he listened to some Limbaugh and Coulter descriptions of Hitler being a leftist because the Nazis were National Socialists and took that argument to heart so sincerely that he had to re-write fifty years of history to be consistant with it.
Oh, and Clifford the Big Red Dog is particularly a commie plot to indoctinate the youth of America. I know this guy passed at least a normal high school history class once, but it's like he's now rewritten it all in his mind, and everything he seems to believe is being filtered through an incredibly and increasingly warped version of right libertarian philosophy.
What your comment made me think of is that his example has made me ask other people on the Tea Party side about their nutcases, and there's a strong tendency for those people to claim there aren't any people like that guy attending their rallys and speaking at their town halls. I know some of these people have met Nutcase A, and in a couple of cases, have heard him say at least something totally whackjob. I was there when those cases happened. Even if Nutcase A is 1 in 1,000 and there's a lot more reasonable people making up the bulk of the group, I'm finding it harder and harder to believe those other people are not in some weird state of denial, deliberately or delusionally pretending they don't have any Nutcase A's at all around. And, I'm wondering about what else they are in denial over. When somebody claiming affiliation with the American right says, for example, that they haven't seen any signs the dislike of president Obama is racially motivated, I wonder if they have just ignored hearing a dozen rants and a hundred racial slurs at their last meeting - wondering if they start out thinking in each incident that those people aren't really the core of their group, and five minutes later have turned it into "that didn't happen at all - we aren't like that, so I didn't hear what I heard.". When people appear to be standing right next to some ranting and raving 'crazy people', and swearing they didn't hear anything crazy, yes, you start figuring the whole group is part of the illness.
Who is John Cabal?
No way... Dr.Bob,DC has him beat by a long shot. He's always very civil, and never insults anyone. In a Slashdot poll he would be number one. In fact, I wish they would do that poll.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This kid is probably a sociopath....Sociopaths don't learn how to stop hurting people, they just learn not to get caught the next time.
Fun fact, per the DSM-IV Sociopathy, or actually Antisocial Personality Disorder, as it's now known, can't be diagnosed before age 18.
What that source material doesn't cite, and what 5 seconds of googlin failed to turn up, and thus would require too much effort for me to cite, is why.
Put simply, almost all kids profile as sociopaths. Look at the diagnostic criteria, I'm sure you'll see why.
Now, before anyone jumps up and says "But...but...he's 17, that's close enough to 18, right?", I'll point out that like any developmental milestone, that's just a guideline, there's always some play in development, plus or minus.
Now, having said that, it's entirely possible that this kid actually is a sociopath, personally it doesn't read like that to me, but I'm willing to be wrong.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.