Primrose Road

There's a really engaging article in this week's New York Times Magazine about Internet trolls.

The article suggests that trolling can serve to comment on social ills via the "hacking" of pop culture (à la culture jamming) and critique the average Internet participant's hyper-susceptibility to mere "words," or present-day grown-ups' belief that all adults act according to a schoolyard mentality. Yet, as the article makes clear, trolling is not always a form of culture jamming or a critique of pseudo-participatory Internet culture; in many cases, it seems to be intended to take those deemed "unworthy" (i.e. too-eager bloggers, message board newbies, and those susceptible to normal human error) out of the culture altogether.

Words, words, words -- there's a huge difference between social activism/critique and weeding out the weak.