Do you have too little to do all day? Do you have poor social skills, problems with impulse control and anger issues? Do you have the courage of your convictions, provided you can hide behind anonymity? Do you regard “Weasel****!” as a witticism? If so, chances are you’re an Internet commenter, or in danger of becoming one.
Millions of Americans are stuck in this sad rut, but help is on the way — for you, for the Internet and for the country. Last week, on YouTube and at www.commentorvote.com, Benjamin Wittes and I announced the Comment or Vote campaign. Our mission: Take back the Internet! Our method: a constitutional amendment barring anyone who leaves an Internet comment from voting in any election for at least two years.
A groundswell of support has already begun. My sister and three other people are on board, with millions more to follow. Commenters have taken notice, in their own inimitable fashion. As one of them pithily summarized their argument in a YouTube comment, “You guys are faggots.”
Why, you may wonder, is a constitutional amendment needed?
With exceptions that are all too rare, Internet commenting is a behavioral disorder, provisionally identified by psychologists as Truculent Repetitive On Line Logorrhea Syndrome, or TROLLS. Symptoms include behaviors characteristic of, among other things, paranoia, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. Yet TROLLS combines those behaviors in a new and distinctive way, and is often seen in persons who seem fairly normal offline. Perhaps because anonymity is the rule online and impulsive behavior is so easy there, the Internet seems to have spawned, in TROLLS, a disorder all its own.
Typically, TROLLS sufferers will spend hours every day haunting websites where they leave immature, abusive or simply nonsensical comments. Their paranoid tendencies trigger frequent spasms of flaming, name-calling, score-settling and other antisocial behaviors. Because of the OCD-like nature of the syndrome, and because they have nothing better to do, commenters outlast and outmaneuver efforts to repel them, thus exhibiting a sometimes zombie-like persistence.
Of course, TROLLS is not good for commenters (though admittedly it provides them with a safer outlet than, say, homicide). But it is devastating for the Internet. I am among the many who have learned this the hard way.
Some years ago, I co-founded a website that was intended to elevate the debate about gay rights. We enabled comments, because everyone said we had to. (“This is the Internet! You have to have comments!”) In short order, commenters overran the site. “Such a statement makes you a hack as it is both utterly idiotic and absolutely wrong,” ran one typical comment. “Quoting a leftist front group makes you look even more foolish, Jimmy,” said another. Commenters insisted they had a right to scribble on the website, as if it belonged to them. Yet not one of them ever contributed a dime to the site’s upkeep, despite annual fundraising appeals.
We tried banning some of the commenters, but that only provoked more hostility from the rest. None of us had the time or, frankly, emotional energy to moderate the stream; the volume was too high, the chore too depressing. As intelligent commenters understandably fled, the bad drove out the good. The site’s tone sank. We lost. TROLLS won.
The Internet would have been better off if the “comment” feature had never caught on. Smarter and more civil forms of discussion would have arisen: forms more like social network conversations, perhaps, and less like graffiti walls. Now that commenting is established as the norm, however, respectable websites are trapped in a dilemma: Either let parasitic comments swarm and despoil the site, or spend precious resources moderating them, a labor-intensive and unpleasant task.
What to do? Though banning or hospitalizing commenters is tempting, discouraging them seems the more temperate approach. Taxing comments is an interesting idea, but setting a rate would be tricky. We think the better solution is to give commenters a fair choice: They can spoil the Internet or they can spoil democracy, but they can’t spoil both.
Under the Federal Comment Amendment, problem commenters might still be pests on the Internet, but they would be sequestered there. And those who value their franchise would avoid commenting, thus curtailing the spread of TROLLS.
Our approach is compassionate and sensible. Don’t take my word for it; ask a commenter, such as the one who writes, “F*** you a*******! The first Amendment says we can do both, now quit your biching [sic] and go toss each others salad and rape each other in the ass.”
You can help. Learn about the amendment at www.commentorvote.com. Familiarize yourself and others with the warning signs of TROLLS. And if this article makes you mad enough to leave a comment — don’t.
Millions of Americans are stuck in this sad rut, but help is on the way — for you, for the Internet and for the country. Last week, on YouTube and at www.commentorvote.com, Benjamin Wittes and I announced the Comment or Vote campaign. Our mission: Take back the Internet! Our method: a constitutional amendment barring anyone who leaves an Internet comment from voting in any election for at least two years.
A groundswell of support has already begun. My sister and three other people are on board, with millions more to follow. Commenters have taken notice, in their own inimitable fashion. As one of them pithily summarized their argument in a YouTube comment, “You guys are faggots.”
Why, you may wonder, is a constitutional amendment needed?
With exceptions that are all too rare, Internet commenting is a behavioral disorder, provisionally identified by psychologists as Truculent Repetitive On Line Logorrhea Syndrome, or TROLLS. Symptoms include behaviors characteristic of, among other things, paranoia, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. Yet TROLLS combines those behaviors in a new and distinctive way, and is often seen in persons who seem fairly normal offline. Perhaps because anonymity is the rule online and impulsive behavior is so easy there, the Internet seems to have spawned, in TROLLS, a disorder all its own.
Typically, TROLLS sufferers will spend hours every day haunting websites where they leave immature, abusive or simply nonsensical comments. Their paranoid tendencies trigger frequent spasms of flaming, name-calling, score-settling and other antisocial behaviors. Because of the OCD-like nature of the syndrome, and because they have nothing better to do, commenters outlast and outmaneuver efforts to repel them, thus exhibiting a sometimes zombie-like persistence.
Of course, TROLLS is not good for commenters (though admittedly it provides them with a safer outlet than, say, homicide). But it is devastating for the Internet. I am among the many who have learned this the hard way.
Some years ago, I co-founded a website that was intended to elevate the debate about gay rights. We enabled comments, because everyone said we had to. (“This is the Internet! You have to have comments!”) In short order, commenters overran the site. “Such a statement makes you a hack as it is both utterly idiotic and absolutely wrong,” ran one typical comment. “Quoting a leftist front group makes you look even more foolish, Jimmy,” said another. Commenters insisted they had a right to scribble on the website, as if it belonged to them. Yet not one of them ever contributed a dime to the site’s upkeep, despite annual fundraising appeals.
We tried banning some of the commenters, but that only provoked more hostility from the rest. None of us had the time or, frankly, emotional energy to moderate the stream; the volume was too high, the chore too depressing. As intelligent commenters understandably fled, the bad drove out the good. The site’s tone sank. We lost. TROLLS won.
The Internet would have been better off if the “comment” feature had never caught on. Smarter and more civil forms of discussion would have arisen: forms more like social network conversations, perhaps, and less like graffiti walls. Now that commenting is established as the norm, however, respectable websites are trapped in a dilemma: Either let parasitic comments swarm and despoil the site, or spend precious resources moderating them, a labor-intensive and unpleasant task.
What to do? Though banning or hospitalizing commenters is tempting, discouraging them seems the more temperate approach. Taxing comments is an interesting idea, but setting a rate would be tricky. We think the better solution is to give commenters a fair choice: They can spoil the Internet or they can spoil democracy, but they can’t spoil both.
Under the Federal Comment Amendment, problem commenters might still be pests on the Internet, but they would be sequestered there. And those who value their franchise would avoid commenting, thus curtailing the spread of TROLLS.
Our approach is compassionate and sensible. Don’t take my word for it; ask a commenter, such as the one who writes, “F*** you a*******! The first Amendment says we can do both, now quit your biching [sic] and go toss each others salad and rape each other in the ass.”
You can help. Learn about the amendment at www.commentorvote.com. Familiarize yourself and others with the warning signs of TROLLS. And if this article makes you mad enough to leave a comment — don’t.
