Mattathias Schwartz has a great piece in this week’s New York Times Magazine that covers trolling, online identity management and lulz.

“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.

Covering topics ranging from the Megan Meier MySpace suicide to the epilepsy foundation hack the article is a road map to internet cruelty and the real life faces behind flame wars and cyberbullying. The piece looks at some of the most notorious trolls and hackers online today and examines their motives and methods for gaining lulz. Some trolls even take their hijinx offline and send threatening messages to their victims in the real world. As a result of these death threats and harassing phone calls:

 Several state legislators have recently proposed cyberbullying measures. At the federal level, Representative Linda Sánchez, a Democrat from California, has introduced the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, which would make it a federal crime to send any communications with intent to cause “substantial emotional distress.”

[SNIP]

Many trolling practices, like prank-calling . . . and intimidat[ion], violate existing laws against harassment and threats. The difficulty is tracking down the perpetrators. In order to prosecute, investigators must subpoena sites and Internet service providers to learn the original author’s IP address, and from there, his legal identity.

ReputationDefender has looked at the legal difficulties surrounding internet harassment and online anonymous  hate speech before and is committed to helping people lead safe, productive, online lives.

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