The rise of malwebolence - NYT

[xmas13]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/...l04.php?page=1

"Weev (not, of course, his real name) is part of a growing Internet subculture with a fluid morality and a disdain for pretty much everyone else online."

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minnesota, took a .22-caliber rifle down from a shelf in his parents' bedroom closet and shot himself in the head. The next morning, Mitchell's school assembled in the gym to begin mourning. His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was a "hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back."

Someone e-mailed a clipping of Mitchell's newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead.

From MyDeathSpace, Mitchell's page came to the attention of an Internet message board known as /b/ and the "trolls," as they have come to be called, who dwell there - the designated "random" board of 4chan.org, a group of message boards that draws more than 200 million page views a month. A post on /b/ consists of an image and a few lines of text. Almost everyone posts as "anonymous." The message board reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall or an obscene telephone party line.

[Libertine]

Originally Posted by xmas13

One wrote that Mitchell was a "hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back."

An hero, goddammit, not a hero, an hero.