The End of Kindness: Weev and The Cult of The Angry Young Man

- Rare

- Sensational (treat someone well and nobody notices, treat someone badly and it will be news somewhere)

- A facet of pure human freedom: you can hate jerks, but you can't reconcile the desire to silence them with the desire for freedom of speech

- An easy way to fake confidence and power; diplomacy is better than the stick, but the stick requires less effort and planning

- A shield against attacks from other people: when you're known as someone who won't spare any effort to put other people down, they will be less confident in counter attacking you for fear of what could happen if you're caught

- An easy way to make something happen when you don't have much power or you don't want to be punished: for whatever reason, you're obsessed with the idea of killing someone or making them suffer. What do you do—anonymous, borderline legal psychological manipulation until they kill or maim themselves, or a physical crime?

I think there's a conundrum: should we talk more about trolls and their victims so people can avoid falling for their attacks and keep trolls from doing them—giving them airtime and feeding into their desire for attention and repercussions, or do we ignore them so they don't get rewarded with popularity and more power, but keep people in the dark about them and leave their actions unpunished?

> Immediately, there was a call in the tech sector to rally around Auernheimer. Tech pundits predicted that his prosecution would prevent security analysts from exposing vulnerabilities. Lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the group that advocates for internet users and tech companies, jumped in to help with his defense.

> “I have this beef with a lot of organizations, including EFF,” Aurora said. “This is another case where they’re saying, ‘The cases we care about are the ones white men are interested in. We’re less interested in protecting women on the web.’”

You can despise or hate someone and still want justice for them. Someone can be in the wrong on some subject and still be right (or almost right) on another subject. That's why prison rape is unacceptable even if the prisoner is a murderer, for instance. I can't speak for the EFF, but I assume they want to protect the freedom of both people who are victims of trolls and trolls.[1] Freedom is messy.

> There were plenty of techies who criticized Auernheimer and said he was getting his due. He should get his due where his due is. Punishment by proxy isn't justice. To get him in jail for his attacks as a troll, he should be persecuted for his attacks as a troll, not for an unrelated situation.

[1] At the risk of sounding like an apologist for men who attack women on the web, I should note that men are victims of trolls (male and female) too. So, the division of men as trolls and women as the victims to be protected seems like a facile argument made to defend an otherwise good point.