Lord Raffles
New member
A troll who had seen many forums and users and several chat rooms was asked what traits amongst the users he had found everywhere; and he answered: internet users are inclined to laziness. Some will feel that he might have said with greater justice: they are all timorous. They hide behind customs and opinions. At bottom, every user knows very well that he is in this cyberspace just once, as something unique, and that no accident, however strange, will throw together a second time into a unity such a curious and diffuse plurality: he knows it, but hides it like a bad conscience why? From fear of his neighbour who insists on convention and veils himself with it.
But what is it that compels the individual internet user to fear his neighbour, to think and act herd-fashion, and not to be glad of himself? A sense of shame, perhaps, in a few rare cases. In the vast majority it is the desire for comfort, inertia - in short, that inclination to laziness of which the troll spoke. He is right: internet users are even lazier than they are timorous, and what they fear most is the troubles with which any unconditional honesty and nudity would burden them. Only trolls hate this slovenly life in borrowed manners and loosely fitting opinions and unveil the secret, everybody's bad conscience, the principle that every internet user is a unique wonder; they dare to show us the average internet user as he is, down to the last typo, himself and himself alone even more, that in this rigorous consistency of his uniqueness he is beautiful and worth contemplating, as novel and incredible as every work of nature, and by no means dull. When a great thinker despises internet users, it is their laziness that he despises: for it is un account of this that they have the appearance of factory products and seem indifferent and unworthy of companionship or instruction. The internet user who does not wish to belong to the mass must merely cease being comfortable with himself; let him follow his conscience which shouts at him: "Be yourself! What you are at present doing, opining, and desiring, that is not really you."...
No one who has true friends can know what true solitude means, even if the whole of cyberspace around him should consist of adversaries. Alas, I can see that you do not know what it means to be alone. Wherever there have been powerful MMORPGs, Moderators, Chat rooms, or public opinions - in short, wherever there was any kind of tyranny, it has hated the lonely troll; for trolling opens up a refuge for internet users where no tyranny can reach: the cave of inwardness, the labyrinth of the breast; and that annoys all tyrants. That is where the lonely hide; but there too they encounter their greatest danger. . . .
But what is it that compels the individual internet user to fear his neighbour, to think and act herd-fashion, and not to be glad of himself? A sense of shame, perhaps, in a few rare cases. In the vast majority it is the desire for comfort, inertia - in short, that inclination to laziness of which the troll spoke. He is right: internet users are even lazier than they are timorous, and what they fear most is the troubles with which any unconditional honesty and nudity would burden them. Only trolls hate this slovenly life in borrowed manners and loosely fitting opinions and unveil the secret, everybody's bad conscience, the principle that every internet user is a unique wonder; they dare to show us the average internet user as he is, down to the last typo, himself and himself alone even more, that in this rigorous consistency of his uniqueness he is beautiful and worth contemplating, as novel and incredible as every work of nature, and by no means dull. When a great thinker despises internet users, it is their laziness that he despises: for it is un account of this that they have the appearance of factory products and seem indifferent and unworthy of companionship or instruction. The internet user who does not wish to belong to the mass must merely cease being comfortable with himself; let him follow his conscience which shouts at him: "Be yourself! What you are at present doing, opining, and desiring, that is not really you."...
No one who has true friends can know what true solitude means, even if the whole of cyberspace around him should consist of adversaries. Alas, I can see that you do not know what it means to be alone. Wherever there have been powerful MMORPGs, Moderators, Chat rooms, or public opinions - in short, wherever there was any kind of tyranny, it has hated the lonely troll; for trolling opens up a refuge for internet users where no tyranny can reach: the cave of inwardness, the labyrinth of the breast; and that annoys all tyrants. That is where the lonely hide; but there too they encounter their greatest danger. . . .
