“That was only the beginning” is a headline cliché, a promise of twists and turns that most stories don’t bear out. Lyz Lenz’s latest, for Rolling Stone, is a rare exception: a genuinely surprising tale of trolling, counter-trolling, fandom, sleuthing, and cowardice, with a cast that includes a women’s basketball team, a T-shirt store, a Boston Globe journalist, a few odious college students, and a good-hearted family that deserves, at the very least, an apology.
I don’t know at what point performing for friends and rooting for your team falls over the edge into something darker. I don’t know at what point we forget that the person on the other end of our comments is a human being. I don’t know at what point our rage becomes more important than the object of our fury. I don’t know when comments turn into a swarm, turn into a mob, turn into a cancellation. I don’t know if you fight a mob with a mob. And is the mob you agree with a good mob? Or is it still bad because it’s a mob? I don’t know how to raise a child so he doesn’t do this. I wish I did.
Stories of internet abusers and comeuppance
He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive.
“A source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors’ crimes—and then escape. This is his story.”
From High Life Hackers to National Menace: The Rise and Fall of Digital Bandits ‘ACG’
“Hackers ‘ACG’ popped champagne and bought sports cars. Then the group and its associates ushered in a bold new era of crime where anything is possible.”
The Secret Service Agent Who Collared Cybercrooks by Selling Them Fake IDs
Secret Service agent Mike Adams used the identity of a grifter named Justin Todd Moss to sell criminals fake IDs and build a case against them. The story behind the Secret Service’s long con:…
