The NYT Magazine has a remarkably intelligent story on Internet trolling. I don’t know much about the author of the story, but he’s obviously been around a while. I’m pretty comfortable in considering myself as someone with a bit understanding of the social-interaction history of the Internet*, and most any story about it leaves me cold. This isn’t your usual breathless teh internets is EVIL story, though, and tho’ it’s not a terribly deep piece, it does catch some of it quite well. Worth a read.
*Sometime this summer we passed my 15 year anniversary marking near daily postings online. My first taste of the online world came via Compuserve in the mid-80s, but it didn’t become a part of my daily life until I snagged an account at GSU in 1993.