The Dark Net (28 page)

p.25
‘Abusers would torment the sysop . . .’
http://textfiles.com/bbs/abusebbs.txt
. ‘The Abusing Handbook’, written by ‘The Joker’. There is no date, but the style places it in the late 1980s. It reads as if it was written by a thirteen-year-old, and the entire text is in capital letters (quoted here without corrections).

ABUSERS DO ANYTHING TO MAKE THE BBS A WORSE THING THEN IT IS AND TO MAKE IT HARDER ON THIS SYSOP, MOSTLY THE REASONS ARE IS BECAUSE THE SYSOP IS A MAJOR ASSHOLE. THE FIRST THING IS TO DISPLAY WHAT TYPE OF THINGS ABUSING STARTS WITH LOG ON, IF YOU GET ON USING THAT TYPE OF NAME THAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT. IF THE SYSOP IS WATCHING, EITHER THEY’LL HANG UP AND LOCK YOU OUT OR BREAK IN FOR CHAT, IF THEY BREAK IN FOR A CHAT, HEARS SOME IDEAS WHICH YOU CAN SAY. 1, I’M BUSY, FUCK OFF. 2, I’M GOING TO TRASH YOU BAD! 3, LET ME OUT I HAVE ABUSING TO DO! 4, I HAVE TO CRASH YOUR BOARD NOW, SORRY, UNOIN RULES! 5, CAN I HELP YOU! 6, CAN YOU GIVE ME SYSOP ACCESS 7, WANT TO TRY A NEW VIRUS A MADE

p.27
‘A 1990s Usenet troll . . .’ Here is a slightly extended snippet: ‘You are a fiend and a sniveling coward, and you have bad breath . . . You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just knowing that you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. You are jetsam who dreams of becoming flotsam. You won’t make it. I beg for sweet death to come and remove me from a world which became unbearable when the bioterrorists designed you.’
www.guymacon.com/flame.html
.

p.28
‘Any who replied . . .’
http://ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html#item2
.

p.28
‘In 1999, one user called “Cappy Hamper” . . .’ A very lengthy and valuable resource documenting early trolling is available here:
http://captaininfinity.us/rightloop/alttrollFAQ.htm
. ‘Dalie the Troll Betty, Joe Blow the Troll, Otis the Troll-in-Denial, and everyone from AFKMN’ contributed to the document.

p.29
‘The Meowers began setting up . . .’
http://xahlee.info/Netiquette_dir/_/meow_wars.html
.

p.30
‘Alt.syntax.tactical attacks were carefully planned . . .’ Alt.syntax’s own guide to their methods was made available by users who I think may have hacked into their account, and then posted the results for others to be more aware of. Here it is: ‘Waves would generally break down into this kind of structure: (a) Reconnaissance (RECON): These people will go in early and usually set up camp as “friends of the newsgroup”. They will also act as “double-agents” to counter-flame the other waves as the invasion progresses. The key is building a bit of credibility. (b): Wave One: Wave one will usually be what starts the flame war. Those involved in this wave can go on and each have a different flame, or go on and flame in unison. They can bring in a subject of their own or flame a previous discussion. This wave calls for extreme subtlety. The quality of the flame MUST be at its highest point here. (c) Wave Two: Wave two will consist of tactics to attack the people who were sent in as recon and attempt to start totally new flame threads. The key here is that even if we attack a group of people restrained enough to resist our flame-bait, wave two will stir things up and get others to join in. (d) Wave Three: Wave three will generally change depending on the campaign, but will generally be added to push the confusion and chaos over the top. Flame the recon, flame the first wave, flame the second wave. These guys are our balls out, rude SOB’s. Mop up and clean out.’
http://ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html#item2
.

p.31
‘But real life investigations into . . .’
http://internettrash.com/users/adflameweb/TROLLFAQ.html
.

p.31
‘The vicious troll, it turned out . . .’
http://magstheaxe.wordpress.com/2006/08/16/memories-of-the-usenet-wars
; Boyd’s email to the group about Kehoe is in full here:
http://internettrash.com/users/adflameweb/2belo.html
.

p.32
‘Smart was also stalked by . . .’ On 2 April 2003, Derek Smart posted the following on his website (his exasperation with the consistent trolling I think is fairly self-evident): ‘I have three police reports and in one such case, that kid he instigated got visited and was almost carted away. That’s when they found out that he was, in fact, a juvenille. I have spoken to the San Diego police. So has my attorney. They can’t do anything until he does something criminal. And they offered that we contact the FBI if we have all this evidence because it leads directly to criminal cyberstalking. We did. Nothing has become of that yet. I tried to get a restraining order – in San Diego (I actually flew there!) but it wasn’t granted because there was no implied violence or threat. I guess they’re waiting for him to show up at my house and kill my family first. Especially considering that shortly after this kid mentioned spotting me in my neighborhood (he lived about 20 mins from me at the time – according to the police report), was boasting about owning a shotgun. And that was before the kid got visited and then said that he had made the whole thing up (about me calling his house, following him etc) and that Huffman had asked him to
find out where I lived
. I have almost had SEVEN years of this crap. I choose NOT to post about it nor even talk about it because some of them have been very, very painful experiences. To the extent that when this kid posted – on July 4th weekend 2000 (while I was out of town!!) – that he had seen me (he described the car I was driving, what I was wearing etc), my fiance threatened to up and leave unless we moved. So, wumpus, while somewhere obviously in your brain you have a few brain cells on the fritz and which lead you to believe that
THIS IS FUN
, let me tell you something, retard,
ITS NOT FUCKING FUN!!
I have NO idea what your motivations are and I don’t give a flying fuck. You want us to turn the forum into a battleground, fine, that is EXACTLY what we’ll do!’

p.32
‘Smart applied for restraining orders . . .’ The US court documents relating to the charges brought by Smart against Huffman:
http://ia700703.us.archive.org/0/items/gov.uscourts.casd.404008/gov.us courts.casd.404008.1.0.pdf
.

p.32
‘At the turn of the . . .’
SomethingAwful.com
hosts a wide variety of funny and offensive content – especially blogs, videos and stories – written by editors and forum members; it also hosts several large forums.
Fark.com
is a satirical site with stories submitted by users of the site.
Slashdot.com
was more about open-source software and technology but also had a subversive edge and was opposed to censorship. Slashdot, founded in 2000, had a vast online community, many of them Usenetters, and celebrated user-generated in-jokes and memes. SomethingAwful forum members – those who posted regularly on the site called themselves ‘Goons’ – frequently targeted other more serious websites for raids and general mischief-making.

p.35
‘Out of this milieu came . . .’
http://www.thestar.com/life/2007/ 09/22/funny_how_stupid_site_is_addictive.html
.

p.35
‘Futaba’s web address was . . .’
http://jonnydigital.com/4chan-history
.

p.35
‘The quasi-enforced anonymity meant that /b/ . . .’
Shock trolling
(v.) Shock value trolling is a common tactic practised by exposing the targeted victim to disturbing or shocking content, such as materials from shock sites, horror or pornographic images, in order to provoke a strong reaction. The Goatse image is probably the best known example (Source: Know Your Meme).
YouTube Troll
(n.) Hateful, racist, sexist, immature, misspelled, questionable comments made by internet trolls mainly consisting of an age group of 7–13, where immature coward kids go to gain confidence by writing hateful messages they’ll never have the guts to say in their lifetime (Source: Urban Dictionary).
YouTube Troll II
(n.) 4chan /b/ users who randomly pick an obscure YouTube video from an obscure band, and simultaneously write serious-looking RIP messages of condolences about a band member that has supposedly just passed away. The intention is to scare fans, other band mates, family members, friends et cetera. (Disclaimer: this is actually quite funny.) (Source: Me, watching them do it).
Advice trolling
(v): Advice trolling is used to mislead people by offering dubious or false advice, especially to newbies who are less experienced and more gullible than others. Prime examples include Download More RAM, Delete System 32 and Alt*+ F4 (Source: Know Your Meme).
Bait-and-switch trolling
(v.) A common tactic in online fraud and practical humour that involves falsely advertising a hyperlink as a destination of interest, when in fact, it leads to something that is irrelevant or undesirable. Examples of bait-and-switch images and videos include The Hampster Dance, Duckroll, Rickroll, Trololol, Epic Sax Guy and Nigel Thornberry Remix, as well as copypasta stories like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Spaghetti Stories, Tree Fiddy and Burst into Treats among others (Source: Know Your Meme).
Facebook Memorial / RIP Troll
(n.) Groups of users who look for the memorial pages on Facebook of users – especially those who have committed suicide – and then bombard the page with insults, pornography and anything else that might cause offence.
www.knowyourmeme.com
.

p.41
‘In 1990, the American lawyer . . .’ Remarkably, Godwin’s Law was itself consciously designed to become a meme to counter the use of Nazi analogies online.
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if.html
.

p.42
‘According to other academic studies . . .’ Pease, A. and Pease, B.,
The Definitive Book of Body Language: How to Read Others’ Thoughts by their Gestures
; Birdwhistell, R. L.,
Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication
; Mehrabian, A.,
Nonverbal Communication
.

p.43
‘The trolls themselves claim that they are . . .’ Phillips, W., ‘LOLing at Tragedy’, First Monday:
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3168/3115
.

Chapter 2
The Lone Wolf

p.49
‘Blood and Honour, the epicentre . . .’ De Koster, W. and Houtman, D. (2008) ‘Stormfront is like a Second Home to Me’.
Information, Communication and Society
, Vol. 11, Iss. 8. See also
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/white-homicide-worldwide
.

p.49
‘According to researchers at King’s College. . .’ Bergen, J. and Strathern, B.,
Who Matters Online: Measuring Influence, Evaluating Content and Countering Violent Extremism in Online Social Networks
, International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.

p.50
‘In early 2007, supporters of . . .’ Burkeman, O., ‘Exploding pigs and volleys of gunfire as Le Pen opens HQ in virtual world’,
Guardian
, 20 January 2007 (
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jan/20/news.france
, accessed 24 December 2013). The
Guardian
’s Oliver Burkeman, using an avatar, tracked the party down to Axel, another Second Life neighbourhood, ‘where they had rebuilt their headquarters and were engaging a handful of opponents in relatively restrained debate’. Au, Wagner James, ‘Fighting the Front’, 15 January 2007, New World Notes (
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/01/stronger_than_h.html
, accessed 24 December 2013). The arrival of the party led to a virtual riot, in which a peaceful protest descended into a battlefield. According to Second Life authority Wagner James Au, it was a ‘virtual conflagration of mini-guns, cursing Frenchmen and exploding pigs’. As he puts it: ‘And so it raged, a ponderous and dreamlike conflict of machine guns, sirens, police cars, “rez cages” (which can trap an unsuspecting avatar), explosions, and flickering holograms of marijuana leaves and kids’ TV characters, and more . . . And when the lag was not too overwhelming to stream audio, the whole fracas was accompanied by bursts of European techno . . . One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they’d explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel.’

p.50
‘The Jewish human rights organisation . . .’
http://web.archive.org/web/20140402122017/
http://web.archive.org/web/20140402122017/hatedirectory.com/hatedir.pdf;
; Council of Europe, Young People Combating Hate Speech On-Line, Mapping study on projects against hate speech online, April 2012,
www.coe.int/t/dg4/youth/Source/Training/Training_courses/2012_Mapping_projects_against_Hate_Speech.pdf
; Simon Wiesenthal Center,
2012 Digital Hate Report,
Simon Wiesenthal Center, (accessed 20 March 2013).

p.50
‘The online world has become . . .’ Wolf, C., ‘The Role of The Internet Community in Combating Hate Speech’, in Szoka, B. and Marcus, A. (eds),
The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet
, TechFreedom: Washington, DC. See also Tiven, L.,
Hate on the Internet: A Response Guide for Educators and Families
, Partners Against Hate,
www.partnersagainsthate.org/publications/hoi_defining_problem.pdf
(accessed 20 March 2013).

p.51
‘Large chunks of it were copied . . .’ Berwick, A.,
2083: A European Declaration of Independence
, p.595.

p.51
‘The term was popularised . . .’
http://nation.time.com/2013/02/27/the-danger-of-the-lone-wolf-terrorist/
.

p.53
‘By June 2011, he’d farmed . . .’ Berwick, A.,
2083: A European Declaration of Independence
, pp.1,416–8. He then goes on to say, ‘I just bought
Modern Warfare 2
, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year. I played
MW1
as well but I didn’t really like it as I’m generally more the fantasy RPG kind of person
Dragon Age Origins
etc., and not so much into first-person shooters. I see
MW2
more as a part of my training simulation than anything else. I’ve still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations.’