Triceratops
February 26th, 2011, 06:14 AM
Tormented by trolling: The vile web craze that taunted family of bullied Natasha even after her suicide
As incomprehension turned to grief in the aftermath of his teenage son Tom’s suicide, Robert Mullaney was able to draw some small comfort from the messages of sympathy posted on an online memorial page.
It was only two days earlier that 15-year-old Tom had been looking forward to a family holiday, and had just become the proud owner of a season ticket for his beloved Birmingham City.
So the youngster’s sudden disappearance from the family home in Bournville was mystifying, giving rise to a sleepless night for his worried parents Robert and Tracy, who hoped their son had decided to stay over at a friend’s.
The following morning, Robert was preparing to go to work at the local car plant when he made a tragic discovery: in a sudden and apparently savage act of despair, Tom had hanged himself behind the shed at the bottom of the garden.
In anguish and disbelief, Robert returned to the house to break the devastating news to his wife.
Of course, no parent should ever have to bear the agony of such untimely loss.
But the grief of their son’s suicide was only the start of a dreadful nightmare for the Mullaneys — triggered by a bizarre new internet trend known as ‘trolling’.
Only days later, sitting at his computer reading messages of condolence from Tom’s friends, Robert came across one of several photographs of his son and could not believe what he was seeing.
The pictures had been digitally doctored: in one, a noose had been added to the image and whoever was responsible, posting under the name ‘Derrick Smith’, had written a caption which said: ‘Hang in there Tom!’
‘I was horrified,’ says Robert, 48. ‘It’s disgusting that somebody can degrade a memorial in that way. At first I saw the images on Facebook, which were so distressing I can’t describe them, then there were vile comments.’
A posting under the name ‘Odette “Oph” Philly-Cross’ read: ‘Why would you make an RIP page about someone that’s clearly a wimp?? That’s just embarrassing.’
Robert was appalled. ‘It was just awful. Tracy was with me, so there was no way of shielding her from it. She was crying and in bits, and people were phoning to ask if we’d seen what was on Facebook.
‘I didn’t know who could have done it, or why. I had to spend 45 minutes sitting at the computer with those terrible images in front of me, trying to erase them, which eventually I managed to do. But I will never, ever forget them.’
The images are an insult to a young boy’s memory. They are also symptomatic of the methods used by twisted individuals — known as ‘trolls’ — who take pleasure in making inflammatory posts which cause grief and pain.
Trolls — the term is thought to derive from a fishing technique of slowly dragging a baited hook from a moving boat — anonymously seek to provoke outrage by posting insults and abuse on online message boards.
Even more appallingly, some enjoy ‘RIP trolling’ where they post shocking comments on memorial pages.
Their intention is to be as inflammatory as possible, then they sit back and revel in online reaction to the hurt they have caused.
They say they do it for the ‘LULZ’, or laughs, a computer shorthand version of LOL, meaning Laugh Out Loud. Yes, trolling even has its own language: YHBT means You Have Been Trolled, for example.
The sadistic craze made the headlines earlier this week following the death of Worcestershire schoolgirl Natasha MacBryde, 15, who died under a train on Valentine’s Day.
Friends set up a remembrance page for Natasha on Facebook, but among the many touching words of condolence were sick images created by someone who had posted Natasha’s photograph, surrounded by phrases including: ‘I caught the train to heaven LOL.’
A macabre video on YouTube entitled ‘Tasha The Tank Engine’ brought further grief for her family.
All images were removed within hours, and Facebook deleted the page belonging to the person who had posted it — someone calling himself ‘Pro Fesser’ — but the harm was already done.
‘I am disgusted at these comments made by some seriously sick individuals,’ said Natasha’s father, Andrew.
‘I cannot understand how or why these people get any enjoyment or satisfaction from making such disgraceful comments.’
Last week the Mail tracked down two trollers, one of them the ‘Pro Fesser’. He agreed to speak to us after we found him with the help of an American expert on trolling.
We were told he was an American, living in Britain, who would not engage in direct communication but would answer online questions through a third party.
Anonymity is an all-too-convenient cloak for trolls, who operate under a string of bogus user names.
As one would expect, ‘Pro’s’ responses to our questions were provocative and shocking. His twisted boasts about how much fun it is to mock the dead will sicken anyone, but particularly those who have lost a loved one.
Why did he make these shameful posts?
‘My basic motivation for making these images, as well as many, many others, is that I despise people that feel the need to make RIP pages, and hunt for people to tell them they feel sorry for them.
‘In my opinion a grief tourist (someone who doesn’t know the deceased) is a terrible person. They feel the need to find random memorial pages and tell people how bad they feel for them.
‘Also, it’s very funny to mock the dead. I find humour in seeing other people being hurt. If I can make my friends and myself laugh at the expense of a dead person, who won’t be bothered one bit, I’m guessin’, then why not do it?’
But even if the dead can feel no pain, what about the victim’s family and friends? Does he feel no remorse or guilt for the inestimable hurt he causes them?
‘I’m not going to lie. I should feel bad about what I did,’ he said. ‘But I don’t. It’s for the LULZ.
‘I’ve trolled everything,’ he bragged, adding that he was introduced to the sick trend by his wife ‘Daizy’.
‘It doesn’t matter what I troll, as long as I’m laughing. My main motivation is bringing chaos into a perfect little world some have been enjoying.
‘I thrive on others’ pain and stupidity. The pages I tend to go to are either found by me or another troll, out on the hunt for LULZ. Finding a site to troll isn’t a problem. It’s being clever enough to make people laugh and hate you at the same time.’
‘Pro’ said Facebook shut down his account up to ten times a day, but he can have another one up and running within three minutes.
Facebook has become a playground for trolls, but so too have other social networking sites — not least a huge U.S.-based arena called 4chan, the largest active forum in America, with 8.2 million unique users every month.
Such is the popularity of trolling that it has now developed an online ‘community’ with websites dedicated to creating ‘memes’ — the word trolls have adopted to describe their taunting images and videos.
The craze is celebrated on a website calling itself the Encyclopedia Dramatica, which lists various trolls and their exploits. Set up in 2004 by American Joseph Evans, much of its content is racist, misogynist and sexually explicit, and the site prides itself on being controversial and uncensored.
One page is dedicated to 13-year-old Gloucestershire boy Sam Leeson, who was driven to suicide in 2008, after being taunted online by cyber-bullies. The Encyclopedia Dramatica mockingly describes him as ‘an hero’ — another trolling phrase, deliberately ungrammatical, used to refer to people who have committed suicide.
After Sam’s death the cyber-bullying continued, this time by an anonymous group of trolls who mocked him with cruel one-liners, and even created ‘joke’ videos of cartoon figures swinging by their necks.
A video parodying Sam’s death was posted on YouTube. The man responsible for that video, an American from California calling himself David Failkips, offered the Mail an insight into the trolls’ sick mentality.
‘It’s not real life, even though real people are the participants,’ he said, sneering that anyone upset by the posts had a simple option.
‘If you don’t like what you’re reading, you can always close a window or hit a “block” button or disconnect,’ he said.
‘Mourning should be a private thing for friends and family of the deceased, and I see internet memorial pages as being disrespectful to the dead.
‘Internet-based memorial is irresistible to those who are bored enough for some mud-slinging.’
Whitney Phillips, a PhD student at the University of Oregon, studied trolls for her doctorate. She says they are mostly men in their 20s and early 30s, usually college-educated and intelligent.
‘They are scavengers, picking up scraps of what is being discussed in the media and then doing stuff with it,’ Phillips says.
It is impossible to say how many of them exist: Phillips estimates there are probably thousands, but the number is growing.
‘Trolling started to grow online in the 1990s,’ she says. ‘But it was in the early 2000s that it started to take on its own sub-culture, with its own language, jokes and identity.
‘Pretty much everybody who goes online has encountered jokes that have emerged from trolling. RIP trolling is just one part of a bigger trend.’
Campaigners for tighter controls on the internet say trolling can and must be stopped. Sherry Adhami, director of communications for the charity Beatbullying, says: ‘This is utterly unacceptable and just another kind of cyber-bullying.
‘What social networking has done is provide another platform for bullies. Emotional abuse like this is utterly unacceptable, and just conjures up more pain for the grieving and vulnerable.
‘This is an epidemic. There is no law to stop it, and it needs absolute, immediate intervention. No matter what pseudonym these people use, they need to understand that they are not invincible. It is possible to find out who they are: somebody can trace them.’
Social networking sites eject those who don’t put up pages under their own names or ban those intent on malicious activity. This has made trolling more complicated, but it has not stopped users returning to sites with a new profile.
A spokeswoman for Facebook says it encourages its users to report any misuse or abuse of the site.
‘In instances when abuse is reported to us, we react swiftly, and we will disable accounts that are found to be in breach of these terms,’ the spokeswoman said.
‘Once we identify a trolling account, or one is reported to us, we have systems in place that analyse the account to identify other suspicious profiles, allowing us to identify and remove other malicious accounts. (Not an easy task when Facebook has 500 million users worldwide.)
‘Sadly, a tiny number of malicious people wish to upset others, both in real life and on the internet.’
The site insists that blocking the unique code that identifies every computer in Britain (otherwise known as an Internet Protocol address) is not realistic.
But the Mullaneys, the MacBrydes and others like them insist that something must be done to improve policing of the internet.
‘We’d never heard of trolls before Tom died,’ says Robert Mullaney.
‘But now we know what they are, and every time we hear of another family going through what we went through nine months ago, everything comes flooding back.
‘What the trolls do is disgusting. They descend like a pack of wolves.
‘They think they’re invincible, but there has to be a way to show them they are not.’
Article was taken from here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360788/Tormented-trolling-The-vile-web-craze-taunted-family-bullied-Natasha-suicide.html
As incomprehension turned to grief in the aftermath of his teenage son Tom’s suicide, Robert Mullaney was able to draw some small comfort from the messages of sympathy posted on an online memorial page.
It was only two days earlier that 15-year-old Tom had been looking forward to a family holiday, and had just become the proud owner of a season ticket for his beloved Birmingham City.
So the youngster’s sudden disappearance from the family home in Bournville was mystifying, giving rise to a sleepless night for his worried parents Robert and Tracy, who hoped their son had decided to stay over at a friend’s.
The following morning, Robert was preparing to go to work at the local car plant when he made a tragic discovery: in a sudden and apparently savage act of despair, Tom had hanged himself behind the shed at the bottom of the garden.
In anguish and disbelief, Robert returned to the house to break the devastating news to his wife.
Of course, no parent should ever have to bear the agony of such untimely loss.
But the grief of their son’s suicide was only the start of a dreadful nightmare for the Mullaneys — triggered by a bizarre new internet trend known as ‘trolling’.
Only days later, sitting at his computer reading messages of condolence from Tom’s friends, Robert came across one of several photographs of his son and could not believe what he was seeing.
The pictures had been digitally doctored: in one, a noose had been added to the image and whoever was responsible, posting under the name ‘Derrick Smith’, had written a caption which said: ‘Hang in there Tom!’
‘I was horrified,’ says Robert, 48. ‘It’s disgusting that somebody can degrade a memorial in that way. At first I saw the images on Facebook, which were so distressing I can’t describe them, then there were vile comments.’
A posting under the name ‘Odette “Oph” Philly-Cross’ read: ‘Why would you make an RIP page about someone that’s clearly a wimp?? That’s just embarrassing.’
Robert was appalled. ‘It was just awful. Tracy was with me, so there was no way of shielding her from it. She was crying and in bits, and people were phoning to ask if we’d seen what was on Facebook.
‘I didn’t know who could have done it, or why. I had to spend 45 minutes sitting at the computer with those terrible images in front of me, trying to erase them, which eventually I managed to do. But I will never, ever forget them.’
The images are an insult to a young boy’s memory. They are also symptomatic of the methods used by twisted individuals — known as ‘trolls’ — who take pleasure in making inflammatory posts which cause grief and pain.
Trolls — the term is thought to derive from a fishing technique of slowly dragging a baited hook from a moving boat — anonymously seek to provoke outrage by posting insults and abuse on online message boards.
Even more appallingly, some enjoy ‘RIP trolling’ where they post shocking comments on memorial pages.
Their intention is to be as inflammatory as possible, then they sit back and revel in online reaction to the hurt they have caused.
They say they do it for the ‘LULZ’, or laughs, a computer shorthand version of LOL, meaning Laugh Out Loud. Yes, trolling even has its own language: YHBT means You Have Been Trolled, for example.
The sadistic craze made the headlines earlier this week following the death of Worcestershire schoolgirl Natasha MacBryde, 15, who died under a train on Valentine’s Day.
Friends set up a remembrance page for Natasha on Facebook, but among the many touching words of condolence were sick images created by someone who had posted Natasha’s photograph, surrounded by phrases including: ‘I caught the train to heaven LOL.’
A macabre video on YouTube entitled ‘Tasha The Tank Engine’ brought further grief for her family.
All images were removed within hours, and Facebook deleted the page belonging to the person who had posted it — someone calling himself ‘Pro Fesser’ — but the harm was already done.
‘I am disgusted at these comments made by some seriously sick individuals,’ said Natasha’s father, Andrew.
‘I cannot understand how or why these people get any enjoyment or satisfaction from making such disgraceful comments.’
Last week the Mail tracked down two trollers, one of them the ‘Pro Fesser’. He agreed to speak to us after we found him with the help of an American expert on trolling.
We were told he was an American, living in Britain, who would not engage in direct communication but would answer online questions through a third party.
Anonymity is an all-too-convenient cloak for trolls, who operate under a string of bogus user names.
As one would expect, ‘Pro’s’ responses to our questions were provocative and shocking. His twisted boasts about how much fun it is to mock the dead will sicken anyone, but particularly those who have lost a loved one.
Why did he make these shameful posts?
‘My basic motivation for making these images, as well as many, many others, is that I despise people that feel the need to make RIP pages, and hunt for people to tell them they feel sorry for them.
‘In my opinion a grief tourist (someone who doesn’t know the deceased) is a terrible person. They feel the need to find random memorial pages and tell people how bad they feel for them.
‘Also, it’s very funny to mock the dead. I find humour in seeing other people being hurt. If I can make my friends and myself laugh at the expense of a dead person, who won’t be bothered one bit, I’m guessin’, then why not do it?’
But even if the dead can feel no pain, what about the victim’s family and friends? Does he feel no remorse or guilt for the inestimable hurt he causes them?
‘I’m not going to lie. I should feel bad about what I did,’ he said. ‘But I don’t. It’s for the LULZ.
‘I’ve trolled everything,’ he bragged, adding that he was introduced to the sick trend by his wife ‘Daizy’.
‘It doesn’t matter what I troll, as long as I’m laughing. My main motivation is bringing chaos into a perfect little world some have been enjoying.
‘I thrive on others’ pain and stupidity. The pages I tend to go to are either found by me or another troll, out on the hunt for LULZ. Finding a site to troll isn’t a problem. It’s being clever enough to make people laugh and hate you at the same time.’
‘Pro’ said Facebook shut down his account up to ten times a day, but he can have another one up and running within three minutes.
Facebook has become a playground for trolls, but so too have other social networking sites — not least a huge U.S.-based arena called 4chan, the largest active forum in America, with 8.2 million unique users every month.
Such is the popularity of trolling that it has now developed an online ‘community’ with websites dedicated to creating ‘memes’ — the word trolls have adopted to describe their taunting images and videos.
The craze is celebrated on a website calling itself the Encyclopedia Dramatica, which lists various trolls and their exploits. Set up in 2004 by American Joseph Evans, much of its content is racist, misogynist and sexually explicit, and the site prides itself on being controversial and uncensored.
One page is dedicated to 13-year-old Gloucestershire boy Sam Leeson, who was driven to suicide in 2008, after being taunted online by cyber-bullies. The Encyclopedia Dramatica mockingly describes him as ‘an hero’ — another trolling phrase, deliberately ungrammatical, used to refer to people who have committed suicide.
After Sam’s death the cyber-bullying continued, this time by an anonymous group of trolls who mocked him with cruel one-liners, and even created ‘joke’ videos of cartoon figures swinging by their necks.
A video parodying Sam’s death was posted on YouTube. The man responsible for that video, an American from California calling himself David Failkips, offered the Mail an insight into the trolls’ sick mentality.
‘It’s not real life, even though real people are the participants,’ he said, sneering that anyone upset by the posts had a simple option.
‘If you don’t like what you’re reading, you can always close a window or hit a “block” button or disconnect,’ he said.
‘Mourning should be a private thing for friends and family of the deceased, and I see internet memorial pages as being disrespectful to the dead.
‘Internet-based memorial is irresistible to those who are bored enough for some mud-slinging.’
Whitney Phillips, a PhD student at the University of Oregon, studied trolls for her doctorate. She says they are mostly men in their 20s and early 30s, usually college-educated and intelligent.
‘They are scavengers, picking up scraps of what is being discussed in the media and then doing stuff with it,’ Phillips says.
It is impossible to say how many of them exist: Phillips estimates there are probably thousands, but the number is growing.
‘Trolling started to grow online in the 1990s,’ she says. ‘But it was in the early 2000s that it started to take on its own sub-culture, with its own language, jokes and identity.
‘Pretty much everybody who goes online has encountered jokes that have emerged from trolling. RIP trolling is just one part of a bigger trend.’
Campaigners for tighter controls on the internet say trolling can and must be stopped. Sherry Adhami, director of communications for the charity Beatbullying, says: ‘This is utterly unacceptable and just another kind of cyber-bullying.
‘What social networking has done is provide another platform for bullies. Emotional abuse like this is utterly unacceptable, and just conjures up more pain for the grieving and vulnerable.
‘This is an epidemic. There is no law to stop it, and it needs absolute, immediate intervention. No matter what pseudonym these people use, they need to understand that they are not invincible. It is possible to find out who they are: somebody can trace them.’
Social networking sites eject those who don’t put up pages under their own names or ban those intent on malicious activity. This has made trolling more complicated, but it has not stopped users returning to sites with a new profile.
A spokeswoman for Facebook says it encourages its users to report any misuse or abuse of the site.
‘In instances when abuse is reported to us, we react swiftly, and we will disable accounts that are found to be in breach of these terms,’ the spokeswoman said.
‘Once we identify a trolling account, or one is reported to us, we have systems in place that analyse the account to identify other suspicious profiles, allowing us to identify and remove other malicious accounts. (Not an easy task when Facebook has 500 million users worldwide.)
‘Sadly, a tiny number of malicious people wish to upset others, both in real life and on the internet.’
The site insists that blocking the unique code that identifies every computer in Britain (otherwise known as an Internet Protocol address) is not realistic.
But the Mullaneys, the MacBrydes and others like them insist that something must be done to improve policing of the internet.
‘We’d never heard of trolls before Tom died,’ says Robert Mullaney.
‘But now we know what they are, and every time we hear of another family going through what we went through nine months ago, everything comes flooding back.
‘What the trolls do is disgusting. They descend like a pack of wolves.
‘They think they’re invincible, but there has to be a way to show them they are not.’
Article was taken from here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360788/Tormented-trolling-The-vile-web-craze-taunted-family-bullied-Natasha-suicide.html