The Rise of the Anti-Troll

"Lol faggot".
It's a pretty tough world out there for the average Internet dweller trying to be heard, after all, manifestations of this kind of stuff appear all the time in the online world. Imagine if you were a spring chicken to this kind of stuff, and were instantly hated for doing something innocent?

Fortunately or unfortunately, most people are familiar with dealing with trolls to some extent. We all come to the Internet a little wary, and just put it down to it being a thing. A thing that you shrug off and put it down to its own nature.
Nice try. Catch. Whatevs.

What I've noticed lately is that the anti-troll is emerging, and it's a force to be reckoned with. The anti-troll is a champion for all that is good, and uses the powers of the Internet to get people back who deserve it (park the term 'deserve' for now, I'll come back to it).

A troll getting what's coming to them

You don't know what I'm talking about? Check out these examples:

• Infamous Singaporean blogger XiaXue delivered an epic smackdown of some outspoken Facebook trolls. The post, called The Faces of Haters is a great read and an indicator of how times are changing. No longer are the haters faceless. With anonymity slowly fading away, even the most amateur cyber-sleuth can deduce, name and shame. The reaction brought news and media attention.
• It's not restricted to online. Another great example is PennyArcade Versus Ocean Marketing. If you don't have the time to read the article, the long and short of it is, mid-tier marketer shits on young guy, young guy escalates to a bastion of glorified geekery, mid-tier marketer's life and career = destroyed.
• And the latest actually brought a tear to my eye (I may be a little fragile from long nights in Barcelona), a ruthless copy-cat site called FunnyJunk (I feel dirty linking that) bit off more than it could chew when it decided to file a lawsuit against The Oatmeal. An Internet superhero and all-round nice guy to boot. As if his letter calling them out isn't amusing enough, Matt Inman (creator of The Oatmeal) decided to crowd-fund $20k to flout their stupidity, and donate the proceeds to charity. At last count with 10 days to go, Inman has raised over $170k, taking the Internet and using it's powers for good.

Remember that thing we parked? People who deserve it? Some of these people mentioned in the examples have suffered some very fiery wrath, and observed the full force of the Internet at their doorsteps, and sometimes, you can't help but feel a little pity.

But only a little.

There are a lot of Internet bad guys out there and they need to be quelled. Anti-trolls are heroes, and have the courage to stand up to these guys and give them a taste of their own medicine, I'm not saying it's a perfect method for justice, but until one comes about I'll be standing up and applauding stories such as these and secretly doing a fist-pump from behind my keyboard.

Internet justice - fuck yeah!

So having said that. I'm just going to place this here, they're a regular that crops up in my blog comments every now and then with posts such as these:

I'm pretty good at dealing with shit. You're on notice you prick. You'll slip up one day and will receive a smackdown to rival all smackdowns. You've been warned.

Buenos dias!