Thread by @page88

Last 3 days over here:

Like Tucker Carlson, he is determined to teach me to appreciate the kindness of Trumpites.

When a focused harassment campaign is underway, death & rape threats can seem ubiquitous, and they feel real.

Human trolls themselves also believe their fury & will to murder are real, even if they seem out of character.

Whether we're being trolled or being enlisted as trolls, it's worth understanding the dynamics of these campaigns.

They can begin with human superspreaders or robots, or both.

Here's just one theater of a troll campaign. Twitter.

Breitbart, the Gateway Pundit, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, the American Conservative, Fox News and maybe 6-8 smaller outlets pick up the memes—and spread them also.

But underground botnets and trolls whose adrenaline has been spiked by these outlets are also working less visibly. They swarm a target with language a few notches more violent.

If you want to see how online abuse is incited and egged on by outlets that seem respectable, here's an example. @jonathans_tobin in @JewishNewsUSA no doubt was legitimately incensed by an article, but he also incited abuse:

"Well-deserved abuse."

Tobin also says he believes the article he's commenting on "went viral." Not quite true.

I can't flatter myself that the content of the article "hit a nerve" and was viral because its argument was so powerful, if divisive.

But the human trolls also shouldn't be fooled into believing they're thinking for themselves.

They're getting gassed by memes, and then passing them onto others, infecting others, and so on.

As usual, almost no one read the actual article. Content is not the point! They picked up a meme from Ben Shapiro or Megyn Kelly or Facebook, and passed it on. The memes were: "disgusting" (Daily Mail) "loathsome" (Tucker C) "cunt" (everyone). So not exactly reasoned debate.

Memes are the cultural counterpart to genes. They proceed by spontaneous mutation & natural selection.

Yes, some organizations are deliberately pumping them out: in this case, Russia-fueled Swedish separatists (!) were among the instigators.

But most human trolls are not starting anything. They're being used by bad actors in these campaigns.

Anyway, whether you're being troll or tempted to troll someone else, I hope this helps to see these campaigns for what they are: A machine-spawned convulsion that only looks like human culture and politics.

P.S. Here's from the Swedish separatists. What are the chances a Swede cares passionately about whether I bake cookies for or just say thank you to a neighbor in the US? More likely this is just an internet...uppfart.

The campaigns also coalesce around certain scripts, in this case this one-liner charmer: "cunt."