Malwebolence

This article will appear in the NYT Magazine on Sunday.  Being, like litbrit, a linguaphile, I love a good turn of phrase.  So hats off to the copywriter who came up with "malwebolence" to describe that particular brand of immaturity, cowardice, cruelty, and outright viciousness that has come to define a certain cadre of sad sacks on the web.  Not able to shove somebody on the playground, and too stupid to do anything productive with their lives, they turn to tormenting strangers, sometimes to the point of criminality.  One wonders what Socrates, Aristotle, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, et. al. would've made of this development?  Maybe nothing.  Maybe, they would say, the technology's changed, but human nature hasn't.

Comments

[Trevor J]

Fascinating and well-reported article. Thanks, Lisa. I don't really have a takeaway except I really feel sorry for that Fortuny guy. Seems like he doubled-down on a pretty sad and lonely path after the Craigslist Experiment.

[litbrit]

Oooh, malwebolence. That's a good one!

Will go read that piece now. Thanks.

[Delicious Pundit]

I dunno about "malwebolence." It sounds a little...Fuddian. Like, "You malwebowent wabbit, how would Wousseau or Wichard Worty wegard your unweasonable actions?"

(But I do kind of like the idea of Elmer Fudd as a philosophy professor who like to go hunting on weekends. It lends a hopeless, end-of-reason, I-can't-go-on-I'll-go-on tinge to the cartoons.)

[Lisa Simeone]

All hail, Delicious One! I bow to your mighty skills -- you are so right about "malwebolence"! It is, indeed, Fuddian.

But on to more important things. What about my question last night about Larry David? Do you have an in?

[Delicious Pundit]

I don't, but I can make inquiries, if you let me know details about what it's for. (Y'all should have my email address, it's on my blog anyway.)

[nimh]

Also in that article:

"the etiolated complexion of one who works in front of a screen."

Etiolated?

Luckily, as I only now found out when I tried to copy the word and accidentally double clicked on it instead, the NYT site has a dictionary function (just click any word). Because now there's a word I'd never seen or heard..

[nimh]

Hm. Really interesting article. Thoroughly revealing. And must have taken a hell of an effort to research.

And yet, at the end of it all, I feel quite uneasy about it. The article I mean.

Yes, it reveals the featured trolls as being psychologically damaged, headed on a dead-end road in life that is likely to leave them lonely or paranoid, and either lacking or having the most distorted sense of ethics and empathy. But all of that can also easily be said about any number of drug-addled rock stars. And in fact, they come across not just as crazy as, I dont know, Courtney Love or Amy Winehouse, but also as twistedly glamorous.

In fact, I think both Fortuny and Weev will be thoroughly pleased with how they are portrayed. The one as amoral, but highly intelligent and reflective eccentric; the other as crazed underground man of mystery, a baddie straight from James Bond. It's like the nerd version of gangsta, with Fortuny at the earnest end like an old-school Ice-T and Weev at the end where it's all just about being outrageous and having bling.

Even as the author and we, as readers, share the same inescapable conclusion that these kids are not just inflicting real harm on others, but also doing themselves no favours, you still cant shake the feeling that he also found the Weev episode by far the most exciting bit of his research, with the stay at Fortuny's house an honourable second.

The article packs a lot of ambiguity, in which the "other side" of the story clearly involves a grudging admiration for both the skills and intelligence of these unleashed kids and their going-straight-to-hell, nihilist refusal of all social conventions. And while I dont think any of us are fooled by their braggadocio and see the emotional damage involved in their personality as well as their victims, I think it's fairly easy for an angry teenager or one looking for some kind of status he cant get as jock or model to think that these guys, they're really pretty fucking cool.

None of that sits very easily with imagining how it must have felt for that epileptic who got a seizure over these trolls' stroboscope gifs. Or, much worse, for the mother of that kid who killed himself. Just imagining that makes me want to slap those trolls in the face, seriously. So I dunno. Maybe the (anti-)heroes of the story shouldnt have been given quite the central stage place? Maybe they succeeded to tempt the author just a tad too much into their world? Uneasiness.

[nimh]

Btw, if you ever, for some reason or other, cant think of Amy Winehouse's name, she's #4 in Google hits for . Courtney Love is #1. :-)

[Trevor J]

"I think it's fairly easy for an angry teenager or one looking for some kind of status he cant get as jock or model to think that these guys, they're really pretty fucking cool."

Point taken, nimh, but I'm guessing that few of those angry teenagers are actually reading the Times Magazine. I read this as a cautionary to parents to keep a closer eye on what their kids are doing or exposed to.

[nimh]

I dunno, Trevor, these guys are the nerds, not the jocks -- and in a way, see Fortuny, extremely intelligent. They are not your typical teens. I know I read my country's equivalent of the NY Times Magazine; and it's kids who are as nerdy as I was but more psychologically disturbed who'd look up at Fortuny c.s.