Rev. Hitler
Red Whacker is hot!!
LORD RAFFLES was a mere internet persona whose views of troll practice were cynical and manipulative. The individuals he befriended online through his trickery mattered only to the extent that they would give a momentum to his egocentric and drama-thirsty lusts. Messanger/Paul remembered a conversation with Raffles on the secret of his success as a troll: "it is so easy to befriend an individual on the internet and then betray them, because at the heart of it you're not likely to care about them in the long run... All that matters to me is drama". Raffles saw trolling on the internet in terms of a struggle of personality: "Mastery always means the transmission of a stronger will to a weaker one". His views of what made a good troll were narrowly exclusive, rejecting any human material that did not qualify. "Those that give out their RL details and make genuine relationships with other trolls", he continued in the conversation. "are chaff". This made Raffles have a profound contempt for most of the people that use the internet mingled with a deep hatred for anyone defined as the enemy at any given moment. Raffle's language in MSN conversations were always peppered with expressions that always reflected the absolute quality of those obsessive animosities: "eradicate", "annihiliate", "destroy". Anyone who crossed him became an outcast; like Paul/Messenger, he had a long and vengeful memory. In Raffles relationship with trolling, people were simply there to be seduced and mastered, or excluded and eliminated in the service of his egocentric quest for drama that was centered around him.
These were views and attitudes that Raffles carried with him as he developed his persona. The mature troll displayed greater decorum and self-conscious gravitas, though his outbursts of betrayal persisted. The betrayal came to be used as a tool against anyone on his MSN list, turned on and off deliberately for the effect they would have in his trolling; human relationships meant nothing to him on the internet. He exhibited a profound trick for fooling people into thinking he was their friend, which manifested itself in numerous means, both absurd and perverted. The ability to make the person on the other side of the computer be his friend was one of the techniques Raffles developed to reinforce his egocentric pretensions that he was a Troll Messiah, destined to internet greatness.
The gap between the messianic-internet-Hitler pretensions of the troll and the humdrum nature of the personality grew wider with time. The Raffles who could boast no end of his more often than funny "conquests", was incomprehensibly different from the small-minded Raffles whose favorite game was Civilization II (even in 2007). The ordinary Raffles was fussy and fastidious, his cultural tastes limited. Though Raffles saw himself as a cultured individual endowed with great intellectual gifts, his posts were nothing more than turgid egocentric ramblings. The egocentric nature of Raffles in an MSN conversation could often become absurd. He came to the conviction that he was the instrument of history to secure the position as internet "super villain", thus causing a chain reaction of other nihilistic trolls that would bring about an end to the internet and thus attain the ultimate "victory".
Raffles was anything but normal. He was not, as far as can be judged, mentally unbalanced in any clinical sense, however tempting it has been to assume that the monstrous acts of nihilism and madness he committed on former internet friends go hand-in-hand. Raffles was a man with an exceptional personality and an extraordinary energy for stirring trouble. He was driven by a profound commitment to a single cause, whereby anyone getting hurt in the process meant very little; opportunistic and underestimated by many individuals and groups, who failed to see that a personality so unobtrusive and inviting when at rest disguised a hard core of ambition, ruthlessness and amoral disregard for others when engaged in the work of trolling.
These were views and attitudes that Raffles carried with him as he developed his persona. The mature troll displayed greater decorum and self-conscious gravitas, though his outbursts of betrayal persisted. The betrayal came to be used as a tool against anyone on his MSN list, turned on and off deliberately for the effect they would have in his trolling; human relationships meant nothing to him on the internet. He exhibited a profound trick for fooling people into thinking he was their friend, which manifested itself in numerous means, both absurd and perverted. The ability to make the person on the other side of the computer be his friend was one of the techniques Raffles developed to reinforce his egocentric pretensions that he was a Troll Messiah, destined to internet greatness.
The gap between the messianic-internet-Hitler pretensions of the troll and the humdrum nature of the personality grew wider with time. The Raffles who could boast no end of his more often than funny "conquests", was incomprehensibly different from the small-minded Raffles whose favorite game was Civilization II (even in 2007). The ordinary Raffles was fussy and fastidious, his cultural tastes limited. Though Raffles saw himself as a cultured individual endowed with great intellectual gifts, his posts were nothing more than turgid egocentric ramblings. The egocentric nature of Raffles in an MSN conversation could often become absurd. He came to the conviction that he was the instrument of history to secure the position as internet "super villain", thus causing a chain reaction of other nihilistic trolls that would bring about an end to the internet and thus attain the ultimate "victory".
Raffles was anything but normal. He was not, as far as can be judged, mentally unbalanced in any clinical sense, however tempting it has been to assume that the monstrous acts of nihilism and madness he committed on former internet friends go hand-in-hand. Raffles was a man with an exceptional personality and an extraordinary energy for stirring trouble. He was driven by a profound commitment to a single cause, whereby anyone getting hurt in the process meant very little; opportunistic and underestimated by many individuals and groups, who failed to see that a personality so unobtrusive and inviting when at rest disguised a hard core of ambition, ruthlessness and amoral disregard for others when engaged in the work of trolling.
