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by fl0wenol
3763 days ago
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It used to be hard to discredit someone or their ideas; you had to have resources to make an idea seem grass roots or fund agent provacteurs. Now we have trolling, sock puppetry, link echo chambers, and other mechanisms that attack our tendencies of contributing in social networks that make it easy for even a single individual with nothing but disdain and time to derail or discredit if sufficiently motivated. It isn't Anonymous, but the penetration of internet and social network into everyday life that makes these tactics more effective than ever, and so anyone with a spare five minutes and a chip on their shoulder can froth the waters; they don't have to be living in their mothers' basement and have a file called "my_hidden_agenda.txt" on their Desktop. |
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Someone who knows more history than I do can probably take them a lot further back to (e.g.) public pamphlet debates in the 17th century. I wouldn't be surprised if there were Roman and Greek equivalents.
Anonymous independent-action-under-a-common-pseudonym has a long history in politics. The Angry Brigade and King Mob are two recent pre-Internet examples - from the UK in the 60s/70s.
Historically, Internet trolling is a lot more civilised than some of the things that used to go in previous centuries. Trolls may be rude to you on Twitter, and they may even dox you and cyber-stalk you. But unpopular people don't often have to face a lynch mob or a riot outside their front door.