Sunday, January 08, 2006

Lynch Mob Mentality

The troll at "the" board last night really brought out a lynch mob mentality. That was very scary to me. People weren't using common sense, were angry and felt embarrassed and were really going after troll. The names, phone numbers and addresses being posted plus cries for CPS involvement, for someone local to follow up on this woman -- that's what I refer to as lynch mob.

So what? So we had a troll. So the troll messed with us. I still say some good came from it, such as talks with kids about important things. Another wonderful poster's ban was lifted from the board. YEAH.

I can't believe that people wanted to report this troll to CPS. My question is: what is her crime? How did she harm her kids? We don't even know if she was a she. However, I would highly suspect that troll really was a HS mom. The troll knew too much about HSing, she had the lingo down.

Is it really mentally unstable to be a troll? Well, I do think you need to be off to be so "inventive." But trolls are all over the internet. This was mild compared to things that have happened other places online.

I am really saddened by the way some people just turned so quickly into a lynch mob. I just kept thinking in our country we are innocent until proven guilty. People were forgetting common sense, how to use proper channels. They were being reactionary.

Oh, what a night. It's all been deleted. That's a good thing.

1 comment:

Doc said...

Most people I encounter on message boards are basically stupid. They get paranoid and assume they're SO IMPORTANT that someone will try to "hack" them. When something such as the "troll" happens, they're embarrassed that one, they don't understand the mechanics of catching a lie like that, and two, they're afraid that maybe some of their own secrets are going to come out next. Is that too harsh? lol Asking that CPS be called in, oh please, if every internet fake folk needed intervention, society would come to a stand still. This happens on EVERY message board, every chat room, every mailing list. It's just lonely bored people making a little excitement for themselves.