This will be tl;dr. Just saying.

1. You Suck at Craigslist is a fun blog that reposts total-FAIL ads from, well, Craigslist. An entry from today, may have accidentally crossed the line: In the comments, it’s revealed that the author of the ad is a known quantity, a high-functioning autistic who has been the victim of an ongoing campaign by Encyclopedia Dramatica trolls.[1]

   Like many people who become troll bait[2], the person in question is an attention whore who doesn’t recognize the limitations of his talents or the magnitude of his social ineptitude; he also seems to be a genuinely unpleasant person. Unlike (probably) most of those people, this guy has a compelling reason for his behavior: he is, as I said, a high-functioning autistic. Even many of the ED trolls apparently realized it wasn’t on to pick on someone who probably shouldn’t be held entirely accountable for his unusual behavior; the wiki linked above is a spin-off from ED, maintained by the people more devoted to trolliery than human compassion.

   I feel dirty reading the entries, but I keep going. It’s fascinating to see the cruelties visited upon the man, and it’s also fascinating to see the behavior exhibited by the man himself. As a couple of articles have mentioned, he could easily pass as a master fame-whore troll[3] himself if his history as a real person with those attributes weren’t externally verified.

   That last sentence is a little confusing. Imagine watching a movie like Borat or Bruno and then discovering that the titular character was, in fact, not a character at all but a real person exhibiting his real personality without guile or exaggeration. It’s like driving across an ontological pothole.[4]

   OK, anyway. It’s definitely wrong to commit acts of trollery on unconsenting individuals.[5,6] It’s also certainly wrong to document that trollery on a public website. Further, I’m pretty sure it’s wrong for me to spend my evening reading that website; I’m afraid that, had I lived in Victorian London, I might have joyfully spent an occasional evening at the bear-bating pits. This realization is neither pleasant nor, sadly, surprising.[7]

2. In last year’s New York Times article on trolls, one of the alleged Master Trolls defended his actions by claiming he was trying to teach people a lesson, to help them mend the error of their innocent, trusting ways through a sort of tough love. I didn’t, and don’t, buy that justification.

   But check this page. This Vivian Gee person began as just another troll, but over time she pretty much broke character entirely and began giving the subject much-need (and wholly ignored) advice. It seems she really did, at least eventually, want the guy to realize why he was putting real-life people off, why he so frequently fell for trolls’ scams, and what he could do to achieve some of the happiness he desires.

   I’m fascinated by the arc of Vivian Gee. Was the hope to “fix” the guy really there from the beginning, only expressed in a hurtful, malicious manner? Or did she mature over time, grow some empathy? Were her later emails motivated more by genuine concern or by a desire to repent?

3. The subject of these trolls is a genuinely unlikable person who engages in bizarre behavior. He also appears to be an attention whore; he came to the trolls’ attention through self-promotion of his horrible webcomic and through the jaw-dropping videos he posts of himself saying and doing…unfortunate things.

   But, as I said, he’s not neurotypical. He’s autistic, high functioning but still qualified for monthly disability checks. Even many of the people who live for the lulz realize this should put him off limits.

   But that raises some interesting questions. Many trolls realize a line should be drawn, but how do we determine that line? When I say “we”, I really am including most of us; those of us who try to be (or even are) good people realize we shouldn’t mock anybody; even when we’re not making fun, though, we probably try to avoid people who are assholes, those who make us uncomfortable, or even those who are excessively annoying.

   We know there are neuro- and other conditions that predispose people toward atypical behavior, and which in some cases make unpleasantly atypical behavior unavoidable on the condition-holder’s part. We might decide to put up with the foul mouth of a person with Tourette’s, but what if the person with Tourette’s tends to blurt out horrible racist, sexist, or homophobic things? Is there, or can there be, a bright line when deciding whether we’re justified in excluding someone from our lives?

   How about this: do we, should we react differently to a person who just happens to be an asshole and someone who is congenitally an asshole? A more philosophically aware person might make some reference to p-zombies here; a pretentious dick whose dickishness may or may not be involuntary would instead make reference to making reference to p-zombies and would then try to deflect the dickishness through a convolutedly self-aware statement.[8]

[1] That’s what I gathered, anyway. I didn’t realize Encyclopedia Dramatica spawned its own trolls; I’d instead taken them to be compiling the unofficial chronicles of the /b/tards. Of course I realized that there would be overlap between the groups; I just didn’t realize that there were also EDists who act independently.

[2] Not all, of course, or even most. Just many.

[3] I tried to clarify this in the next sentence, but I feel like there needs to be a standard term for people who act like Sacha Baron Cohen or Andy Kaufman but who lack the raw talent or (alleged) piercing social insight.

[4] Driving into? Driving across? Driving through? Exactly how does one drive in relation to a pothole?

[5] I can conceive of consenting troll victims, a community of people who believe its OK to troll among themselves. It would be like playing spontaneous little ARGs.

[6] One could also consider the acts of flash mobs to be a sort of pleasant trollery; the non-participants involved would by definition be unconsenting, but I don’t think there’s any harm done. I’d give the mobbers an ethical pass.

[7] Terrible confession: I did once participate in an act of real-life trollery. There was malice aforethought and everything, although in advance my confederate and I convinced ourselves that it wasn’t really malicious but would be a buncha laughs for everyone involved. As soon as we passed the point of no return we realized how horrible our actions were, but things were irrevocably in motion already. That was 20 years ago and my stomach still turns whenever I think about it.

[8] I miss David Foster Wallace soooooo much.