PurpleCar

Outing a troll, free speech, and being anonymous on the Internet

Mean, disgusting, vile, self-appointed Reddit community manager troll Violentacrez has been outed by gossip website Gawker. Allegedly “Violentacrez” (the nym is pronounced “violent acres”, like a furious land measurement) was a trolling identity created and maintained by a one Mr. Michael Brutsch of Texas, USA.

 

The revelation threw old school Internetters, nym proponents, new school bullies, and www compatriots into dizzying circular arguments over what constitutes free speech, whether trolls serve a purpose, and whether we have a right to put forth an anonymous face (or use pseudonyms) on-line.

 

Free speech arguments are moot in this case. One-off comments can be “free” (i.e., without consequence) but consistent speech is not free. Consistent speech from one individual or group will be scrutinized by the society in which it occurs. This is OK. It’s how human and some animal societies work.

 

Violentacrez was going to be outed no matter what. Even if all of the pushy pundits on Facebook or Twitter could settle all those “free speech” arguments, Mr. Brutsch’s trolling adventures would have come to a close anyway because he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Violentacrez wanted to sport an identity but still remain anonymous.

 

Identity and anonymity are mutually exclusive human conditions

 

Let’s take a look at how Merriam-Webster defines “identity”:

 

unity and persistence of personality : unity or individual comprehensiveness of a life or character <lost consciousness of his own identity>

 

According to reports from Gawker and other Reddit users, Violentacrez definitely put forth a very consistent image. He built up a predictable, reliable, trolling-cum-power-user-support persona. He built up a following. He was a head honcho user that commanded respect and/or disgust. Even the Reddit founders allotted Violentacrez privileges and never curbed his comments or message boards supporting child pornography, Naziism, and other not-socially-acceptable views. Reddit users with any experience with the site could sense Violentacrez’s place at Reddit (i.e., how his actions were tolerated and at times encouraged), and made decisions on interacting with him based on their knowledge of his personality.

 

Let’s take a look at how Merriam-Webster defines the state of being “anonymous”:

 

not having or not imparting a sense of clearly marked individuality or personality : producing an effect of being without name or identity <a sea of anonymous faces>

 

 

Violentacrez wanted to gain respect of other trolls and users. He wanted an online space within which to exist over time. He wanted to gain authority and trust from users (even if that trust was that Violentacrez would troll). [Merriam-Websters defines “pseudonym” as a time-sensitive state: “: a fictitious name assumed (as by an author) for the time“]

 

Off-line social rules and mores (“the vast body of community beliefs which shape private action”) dictate that bullies and trolls be outed and stopped from behaving in offensive ways. We have not only social guidelines but in some cases legal ones; there are laws against libel, stalking, threatening violence, etc.

 

Free speech is not unlimited. It is a right to be used within these social and legal guidelines. If you violate those guidelines, people will come for you. They will try to expose, ban, punish, arrest, cite, sue and stop your offensive actions. That’s how societies work. That’s how the animal kingdom works. You must generally obey the group’s rules to be defined as a group member. Errant behavior will be corrected because that’s what makes animals feel secure.

 

Group membership is necessary for identity to work

 

Violentacrez was operating on his own. He may have had Reddit troll fans, but he did not have a group of anonymous trolls working to protect his identity. Violentacrez was stepping outside the rules of even the most foul-sewage-tolerating extremist Internet users (this is how awful Violentacrez was, apparently), and he perhaps expected to build and keep that identity forever. It just wasn’t going to happen.

 

A group of like-minded supporters is necessary if an individual wants to rewrite society’s rules. The gay community is a great example. This community is still working hard to break stereotypes, but think back to 30 years ago and ask yourself whether a show like Glee would be on television then. The gay community banded together and made progress. I grew up in a conservative roman catholic environment and was taught that “gayness” was a scary threat to our society, but now I am not only fully accepting of gay people but encourage others to live full lives, whether those lives be gay or straight. My transformation of my ideals would have never occurred if the gay community didn’t band together and get active like they did over the course of my lifetime. (Thanks ladies and gents!)

 

For Violentacrez to escape societal push-back on his errant behavior, he would’ve needed vocal and active protection. Other ANONYMOUS trolls (who are also breaking society’s rules) aren’t taking to the streets for Violentacrez’s cause.

 

Now, Mr. Brutsch could have made numerous logins with various usernames and left the same kinds of vomitous comments, but he would’ve been more likely dismissed by readers than he would have been with his well-known ID. He would not have been able to construct a consistent identity with which to reap the rewards of his behavior (fan base, Reddit-bestowed legitimacy, etc.). Think anonymous comments on blogs or on sites like YouTube: Those comments are ignored or deleted because there is nothing to anchor the comments to a consistent opinion, a predictable personality or to a group membership.

 

Everything’s got a price

Take it or leave it, this is how the Internet works, despite being made up of many different societies. Those societies are still made up of animals (humans… though no one knows you’re a dog on the Internet). Trolls can troll, and the Internet can hold them accountable for their behavior. Although the system is not quick or efficient, the checks-and-balances will happen over time. Take the lesson: be anonymous online, have a pen name, grab a nym, but don’t skirt the boundaries of acceptable behavior and do not keep the same ID too long. For you, my secretive friend, must lead a nomad’s life, lest be folded into the fabric of society. That is the price you pay for long-term anonymity.

 

*The links in the photo captions are affiliate links to Amazon

Further reading:

In Ruining Violentacrez’s Life

 Anderson Cooper: Violentacrez interview

and I just found this Cole Stryker interview, along the same lines (but not exactly the same take)

Anyone want to sum up how Violentacrez came in the US Presidential debates? Did Obama or Romney bring it up? Did Obama or Romney spread this stupid vitriol about how we have to “protect” free speech? (free speech will be protected here because as a society we value it, this is my main point). Anyway, I missed it. Hit me up in the comments. Thanks.

I just used the wordpress.org iphone app to post this, as I learned about it in class. I wanted to see if posting something to the Gallery would work. I’m thinking of putting up a separate page for photography, maybe integrating Flickr and Instagram? Maybe running the NextGen Gallery… I have a lot of coding to do.

It’s nice when conferences actually work out, when you learn lessons that make you a better coder/designer/person, etc. What do you hope to get out of conferences? What happened at the last one you attended?

 

TechCrunch has some market analysis about ubiquitous Facebook-game-manufacturer Zynga today.  The article outlines some hard facts about the game maker and some apparent missteps. The commenters have even more value to add to the discussion.

 

TechCrunch blames Zynga’s failure on its varied leadership and the limiting moves by Zuckerberg, but Zynga’s fall out of fashion was its own fault. TechCrunch misses a major point by neglecting to mention human behavior. The nature of trends, psychological and sociological aspects of human behavior, is behind the immediate success and eventual petering out of Zynga games like Farmville and Cityville.

 

Zynga games are built to be trendy. They are light, have viral elements, and are mindless. The problem: Trends don’t last. Viral games don’t sustain players. Zynga seemed to recognize that trendy game-making was their brand’s forté; The company put out game after game with similar names and almost identical aesthetics in attempts to lure players to new ‘Villes while they left the old ones to whither. This is an OK business model, in theory. But Zynga studied up on gaming, game culture and the typical Facebook user when they should have been going to Fashion design school. In the über-trendy fashion industry, some houses have managed to stick around for centuries, seemingly by simply putting out trendy pieces and then moving on; This isn’t the whole story behind their staying power, though. Zynga should’ve uncovered some of the fashion industry’s secrets.

 

Zynga may acknowledge we’ll all be wearing silly bell-bottoms again once a new generation discovers the joys of those voluminous cuffs, but Zynga doesn’t notice the 30 to 40 years that pass between fashion trends. Zynga’s iterations of games came very quickly with little or no rebranding. If the fancy new Zynga execs had studied the fashion industry, they would have learned what fashion industrialists know about trends and human behavior. These experts carefully study the silhouettes of the past to predict the future, then they constantly re-brand the house to answer the customers’ needs. They expand into new (but related to their core customer) markets, e.g., related products like perfumery or children’s clothes. They change their look, offer new accessories, etc., all staying within the brand’s values and reputation.

 

(For an example of a fashion house with staying power despite founders’ deaths, corporate takeovers and numerous designers, we can look at the history of the famous Paris house of Lanvin . Lanvin’s timeline is typical of the fashion juggernauts like YSL, Dior, Louis Vitton and Givenchy.)

 

Zynga’s seemingly endless supply of simple social games for Facebook and for mobile platforms didn’t look or act any differently from each other. The new games were the same old time-wasters that intruded on friends’ news feeds. It’s as if Zynga offered us bell-bottoms, over and over, without changing anything but the color of the denim. We got bored.

 

Another aspect Zynga seemed to miss was the social element. We know the sharing and the multi-player-like in-game features of Farmville, but Zynga forgot to examine real-world social cues and rewards that help habits and identity form. A casual Facebook surfer played out the social capital Farmville gave them quite quickly because the game was simple and the timing obligations (e.g. you lost your crops because you didn’t water them 5 times yesterday) were too constraining for a typical person. Then, that same user was forced to spend more social capital on credit when the Farmville updates started to annoy his real life friends.

 

Zynga experimented with some sticky power by tying in some real-world charitable donations, in essence trying to attract users to the game by integrating in philanthropy. Again, this is an OK business model. This approach doesn’t typically bring in new users as much as it helps keep old ones, but it’s usually pretty effective. But then Zynga tripped over some nasty scuttlebutt about keeping some of the donation money. Because Zynga changed from novelty to annoying on Facebook in a matter of months, users dropped loyalty with that whiff of scandal. Plus, charity or no charity, the games still required big time and asynchronous social commitments. Most users tire of that very quickly.

 

I also wonder what demographic research Zynga did. The games had wide-spread participation but then, to me, seemed to trickle down to only Baby Boomer women and young children (mostly girls) with smart phones. Neither one of these cohorts are on Facebook en masse yet, nor do they all have smart phones or mobile devices. Facebook bans children under 13 although many parents are allowing access by age 10, 11 or 12. But my 6-year-old likes Zynga games on his iPod and he’s nowhere near having a Facebook account. My 12-year-old would hangs out on Instagram and isn’t interested in Zynga games on her iPhone.

 

Companies need long-term demographic plans for trends, sketched out by age group and location at the very least. Fashion houses do this all the time. Lanvin, along with their designer Alber Elbaz, started offering pieces to discount clothing retailer H&M in 2001. Elbaz was quoted as saying, “It wasn’t about just doing a dress for less. It was about, ‘Can you take a dress by Lanvin and translate it for another audience?’” Zynga seemed to think their audience was every person in the world. They designed for the masses. They had the idea that everyone is a gamer and their lowest-common-denominator products would dominate across all platforms.

 

Fashion houses know they cannot please everyone, nor can they partake in every trend. They know that being loyal to their core customer, designing only for them, then designing for that customer’s family members, is the best way to keep reinventing yourself in a fickle market. Find your customer, know her values, her obligations, her demographic, her typical lifestyle, her past, her likely future. Deliver garments for each stage of her life, for each need that arises. Show her designs and new products that she knows were meant for her. Give her a new company name every once in a while so she can feel current and relevant when she tells her friends where she bought her pants. Don’t condescend. Don’t assume she can’t understand a complicated design. Give her substance and fill the part of her identity that she wants you to fill.

 

Zynga condescended to the users with mass garbage games. They didn’t target a core customer. They neglected to care for their users’ real-life social life by making game announcements intrusive and time-heavy. They never rebranded or offered different products of substance that answered the need of a core customer.

 

To a lot of us Internet and Web users, Zynga felt evil after a while. They turned evil not just because the games were ubiquitous and annoying, but because we got the sense that they thought of us as stupid automatons easily fooled by shiny new iterations of the same old pair of bell-bottoms.