Trolls Just Want to Have Fun

It was an interesting fortnight on planet UOSM2033, with people making forays into the world of vlogging and including more imaginative media in their posts, something I tried to demonstrate with the Powtoon in my post. (On a side note here, many thanks to Calum and Jess for pointing out my fantastically stupid mistake of making the video private when it was meant to be unlisted… I’m a silly one.)

The discussion floated in a number of different directions as well, although I feel this did make some aspects a little less incisive than in previous weeks where there has been a little more overlap in terms of content people are discussing. I had three comments on my blog to help the discussion along, and responded to them in turn, and the reoccurring theme in them was one of police resources – I was very keen on going after these trolls and trying to bring them to justice, but where was the time going to come from to do that.

My reaction was twofold – Firstly, and ideologically, for me, if there are not enough police to deal with all the crime, we need more police and not just a redefinition of crime. Secondly, I think a lot of these trolls would stop after a simple warning letter… as soon as they realised that their actions might have real world consequences, they would be forced to take different routes to fulfilling their sadist needs.

One of the blogs I commented on this week was Calum’s, which took an intriguing look at the #GamerGate movement, something I had only heard negative things about from the media and various celebrities. I was interested to read about where the movement had actually started and what it was meant to be rallying against, and that story links back into my topic well by showing just how easy it is for an internet campaign like this to be totally undermined by a few trolls and abusers pushing everything too far.

(My other comment this week was made on Catherine’s blog.)