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Comment by gibba999 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the right word is 'trolls,' so much as bullies. While there's a fair bit of trolling on reddit, what concerns me more is the culture of bullying.

Entire subreddits -- iamverysmart and similar -- which are devoted to finding people who made a comment which was embarrassing in some way, and publicizing it widely. One day, half of the videos on the front page of reddit (default page when not logged in) were random cell phone and surveillance footage -- people who don't know they were being filmed -- doing something dumb or being jerks.

Now, those people were genuinely jerks, but we've all been jerks at some point in our lives. Should that really become an internet phenomenon that will track those people for the rest of their lives?

We've got the political mobs too (the liberal mob and its feminist sub-mob tend to be particularly aggressive in ripping people apart, with similar but smaller communities on the right).

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Basically none of these videos will have the full name of that person attached to it (if it is even known).

Nobody is going to find it by googling their name.

And many videos of people faceplanting going viral are actually going to be used to the effect of providing cred in that person's circles.

"Look I went viral! Hahaha"

That's people for you.

> are actually going to be used to the effect of providing cred in that person's circles

And some comments are questions about programming or accurate technical answer to them, but neither that, nor what I quoted, is relevant in this context.

You're saying it's okay to bully people and violate people's privacy because it's good for them? Interesting argument.

If you really believe that argument, post the most cringeworthy video of yourself on the Internet. For the cred.

You're right that the way these things get found usually isn't by Googling. If something's on the front page of reddit, the most likely way is your friends or colleagues will run into it and pass it around. In smaller communities, that may continue for years.

But Google is certainly a way people will find it too, even if the name isn't in the post. Search engine 101: the way Google works is by looking at text in incoming links. If I have a few links posted on social media which say "Hey, chmod775 lost his temper in a restaurant and boy did he make a fool of himself," that's exactly what Google will point to. If this person isn't famous enough to have other high-profile pages about them, it's likely to be on page 1, or even the top link.

> You're saying it's okay to bully people and violate people's privacy because it's good for them? Interesting argument.

No. Don't put words in my mouth. That's rude.

I merely said that those videos generally have much less of a fallout on people's personal lives than they are often made out.

The "Angry RV Man" went viral on VHS in the 80s, and even though Google didn't exist it effectively ruined his life. There is a very sad documentary called "Winnebago Man" about his current life secluded in the mountains just to escape it.

Think of it, the last 30 years of this man's life made a living hell all so people can laugh at his angry outburst. In no way was this good for him.

"Star Wars Kid" lived through hell in high school, it certainly didn't help him either.

Its fine for you who doesn't have to live through it to just laugh it off. But these viral videos cause real harm to real people.

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