Search Results for: Internet

Filmmaker Kyrre Lien Traveled the World Interviewing Internet Trolls in Person

Photo by Ysingrinus (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Three years ago, filmmaker Kyrre Lien became curious about what drives people to make hateful comments online. He pored over 200 online profiles and traveled the world to interview internet trolls in person to uncover why they say the things they do. Kyrre’s look into the bowels of humanity is at once absurd and terrifying — proof that hate and those with “illogical beliefs” may be living right next door. Watch Kyrre’s troll documentary at The Guardian.

Norwegian filmmaker Kyrre Lien began researching online commenters on Christmas Day 2014. “I became fascinated by how much hate and ignorance people were writing in the comments section of a news site,” he says, “so I began looking at people’s profiles, trying to work out who they were. Many seemed quite normal. They had families and looked like nice people, but the comments they were writing in a public space were so extreme. There was a disconnect.” And so began Lien’s three-year journey into the lives of some of the internet’s most prolific online commenters, now the subject of a documentary, The Internet Warriors.

Lien’s research took him across the world – from the fjords of Norway to the US desert – meeting people of extreme, “often illogical” beliefs: the racists, the homophobes, the slut-shamers. Lien initially researched 200 potential subjects. Half said no when he approached them. It was then a process of elimination: “To find out what their motives were, who they were, and why they held the views they did. In a way,” he says, “I became an investigator.”

Kjell Frode Tislevoll used to spend hours debating online. “Like when I commented on an article: ‘What we need in Oslo is a sidewalk for those with dark skin and a sidewalk for those with white skin. That way, we won’t be attacked or mugged.” He got 20 likes. Eventually he decided to apply a filter on Facebook, so he’d no longer see posts about immigration.

But things are changing for Tislevoll. Last year, a refugee reception centre was built in his home town, and he slowly found he was becoming “less sceptical of immigrants”. It coincided with the arrival of a Muslim man at work. “He’s OK,” he says, “so my issues with immigration are going away. If I met my former self in a discussion forum now, I’d probably get into an argument with him.”

Read the story

Internet Warriors: Inside the Dark World of Online ‘Trolls’

Longreads Pick

Three years ago, filmmaker Kyrre Lien became curious about what drives people to make hateful comments online. He pored over 200 online profiles and traveled the world to interview internet trolls in person to uncover why they say the things they do. The results are fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Mar 10, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,575 words)

How to Use the Internet on the Summit of Everest

Longreads Pick

A writer travels to Mt. Everest’s base camp to see how technology is changing the world’s highest peak.

Source: Motherboard
Published: Jul 31, 2016
Length: 21 minutes (5,429 words)

The Secret Rules of the Internet

Longreads Pick

A look behind the scenes of the messy, complicated world of web content moderation — and its effects on free speech online.

Source: The Verge
Published: Apr 13, 2016
Length: 39 minutes (9,862 words)

Meet the Internet’s Pimple-Popping Dermatologist

Longreads Pick

A Southern California dermatologist finds internet fame and a devoted following after she starts sharing videos of “extractions.”

Published: Mar 9, 2016
Length: 12 minutes (3,134 words)

How Esurance Lost Its Mascot to the Internet

Longreads Pick

“There is,” as Crockett writes, “an age-old decree that exists on the Internet called Rule 34: ‘If it exists, there is porn of it.'” This is the story of Esurance’s cartoon mascot Erin, who was ultimately nixed by the company after her image became masturbation fodder for the internet masses.

Source: Priceonomics
Published: Dec 18, 2015
Length: 9 minutes (2,328 words)

Escape From the Internet!

Longreads Pick

A lifestyle-blogging couple builds a cult following with their website, Young House Love, and then struggles to walk away from internet fame.

Published: Jan 17, 2016
Length: 13 minutes (3,276 words)

Tomorrow’s Internet Turns 20

Longreads Pick

Revisiting the predictions of an American Online exec in 1995.

Source: The Awl
Published: Oct 29, 2015
Length: 9 minutes (2,303 words)

Why the Church of Scientology Can’t Beat the Internet

Over at The Kernel, Jesse Hicks has put together a fascinating account of the Church of Scientology’s relationship with the Internet. So, how has a notoriously secretive and hierarchical organization dealt with the world’s most “open and radically nonhierarchical platform for communication”? Not well. Scientology’s antagonistic relationship to the Internet dates back to the web’s early days: when an early ’90s message board became a gathering place for Scientology critics, the Church launched a full-scale war on the site. Things have not improved in the intervening two decades. Why?

Mark Ebner, another journalist who’s often written about the church, offers an even blunter assessment. “We (journos, apostates and critics alike) saw the Internet undoing of Scientology coming around ’96,” he emails. The Internet amplified the reach of critics and brought them together; it helped potential defectors find critical information otherwise suppressed by the church. (Tory Christman remembers the software sent to members in 1998: described as a Web page builder, it also covertly blocked users from viewing anti-Scientology websites.) “The Internet pulled back the curtain to find Hubbard bare, and caught the Office of Special Affairs with their pants down,” Ebner writes. “Years later, Anonymous came to Cyber Town and strafed Scientology while they weren’t looking.”

Read the story

More on Scientology from the Longreads Archive

The Church of Scientology vs. the Internet

Longreads Pick

Inside the Church of Scientology’s long-running war against the Internet.

Source: The Kernel
Published: Sep 21, 2015
Length: 15 minutes (3,853 words)