Salon.com > trolling

Missouri state senator rips constituent’s facial hair

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:02:00 +0000

Though his mission was simple enough -- to unsubscribe from Missouri state Sen. Brian Nieves' distribution list -- Missouri resident Bart Cohn ended up trolling the senator. Hard. And succeeded.

The Daily Riverfront Times has published an email exchange between Cohn and Nieves -- two adult men -- that begins with Cohn rudely but simply asking to be removed from the distribution list: "Take me off your mailing list. Freak."

As with Internet comments, most people sending comments to a d-list don't expect a direct response from the owner. But in Cohn's case, that's exactly what he got. The comment bugged Nieves enough to respond personally:

Who are you? Is there something wrong with you? Are you incapable of communicating in a way that common, decent people do?

Tell me this, how did you ever even get on MY Distribution list?

Cohn responded, saying, "Remove me from your list. I despise you."

Nieves responded within two hours, calling Cohn a "troll." The emails devolved from there, initiating an increasingly rapid back-and-forth between someone who has little to lose and someone who potentially has a lot to lose:

Meet the man trolling America’s liberal elite

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:30:00 +0000

The New York Times has described Michael Goldfarb, the 32-year-old founder of conservative site Washington Free Beacon as an "all-around anti-liberal provocateur,"a "hawkish magnet of liberal scorn" who is "known as a flamethrower on both sides of the aisle;" a man who revels in this reputation so much that he identifies himself as a cudgel. The most recent controversy that Goldfarb's stirred up? Digging up a report of questionable merit that eventually led to the Senate Republicans filibustering the defense secretary nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel.

As the Times explains, Goldfarb has made a career out of controversy:

"Often working with money from major Republican donors, most of whom have preferred anonymity, Mr. Goldfarb has been in the middle of nearly every major partisan dispute of Mr. Obama’s presidency — over Iran, Israel, terrorism policy and now Mr. Hagel and guns. For a time, Mr. Goldfarb worked as a communications strategist to the leading bêtes noires of liberals, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch."

Sci-fi writer makes $50,000 for charity off of his “troll”

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 12:45:00 +0000

Here's how you beat the trolls: Turn their hatred into cash for charities they despise.

That's what science-fiction writer John Scalzi has done -- and in the process, he's raised more than $50,000 in pledges for Emily's List and the Human Rights Campaign, specially chosen to earn the ire of a blogger Scalzi calls "my racist sexist homophobic dipshit."

Every time Scalzi's online nemesis -- a former WorldNetDaily columnist who writes under the name Vox Day -- used his name or called someone by a derogatory nickname, Scalzi set aside $5 for charity -- and his readers pitched in, too, raising tens of thousands for charities designed to uplift women, minorities and gays. Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network and the NAACP also benefit; Scalzi capped his own donation at $1,000 and his readers took over from there.

"The whole point of this is not to intimidate him to stop speaking. You will not get this guy to stop speaking. He sees this as a contest, as a battle of wills," said Scalzi, in an interview with Salon. Giving money to charities like RAINN and the NAACP is, he says, "an extra stab in the eye."