Yes, anything flagged as Korea-related is not showing up on the main blog. It’s related to work. I haven’t stopped writing about Korea, but those interested will mostly already be on the RSS feed anyway. Maybe I should make a note, though?

Kevin,

Thanks. Actually, the article I mentioned looks at trolling and maleness. I didn’t make the connection with violence too deeply, though I have now updated it — since it’s not published, I can do that — because your point is actually crucial and fits a missing piece of the puzzle as I laid it out. That is, the link with male violence makes a lot of sense.

The connections I made were focused more between inclinations to interpret the Net as a machine, vs. inclination to interpret it as a technological thing to be mastered. Mastery of peers and mastery of tools are both noticeable traits, traits that advertise fitness and create desirability in a mate. So the sick jollies that trolls get manipulating people into reacting is probably analogous to the sense of satisfaction a silverback gets making the other gorillas flee in fear, or that the high school thug gets scaring people into silence.

I suspect, indeed, the troll is a niche parasite. Where you and I can display our fitness in other ways — mastery of the English language, for example, marked with publications and intelligent posts — or mastery of musical instruments, or skillful teaching, the guys who end up trolling are the guys who have no skills worth mentioning, but have a burning need to display fitness on some level. They’re the (less-damaging, but just as pathetic) internet equivalent of guys who beat their wives to assert their strength and manliness.

Anyway, I’ll link the article from my blog when it goes live in about 8 days…

Fascinating insights.

Your post is tantalizing because, near the beginning, it touches on the role of maleness in trolling, then moves on to more general issue; I hope you write another post that deals more explicitly with the maleness issue.

Quick conjecture: I imagine that the relationship between maleness and troll behavior is similar to that between maleness and violence.

Interesting to think of cultures in terms of “high trust” and “low trust.” I’m gonna start using that metric in my travels.

Thanks,

Kevin

Just for now though, a quick note to say that for some reason this post isn’t showing in your regular blog and I had to go down to your black section and click on the link in “Recent Blog Posts” to get to it. I only found out about it at all (and so knew that there was a link to be found) because of your RSS Feed, so unless you fix it up then being just visiting normally won’t ever notice the post.

Jeez, even my “quick notes” seem long-winded. Time for bed for me…

(Mixed, but generally positive, review coming soon. Probably this afternoon.)

if they’re good, you’ll hear more about that from me.