[+]
Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web
by Adrian Chen
Last Wednesday afternoon I called Michael Brutsch. He was at the office of the Texas financial services company where he works as a programmer and he was having a bad day. I had just told him, on Gchat, that I had uncovered his identity as the notorious internet troll Violentacrez (pronounced Violent-Acres).
 |
| Michael Brutsch |
Judging from his internet footprint, Brutsch, 49, has a lot to sweat over. If you are capable of being offended, Brutsch has almost certainly done something that would offend you, then did his best to rub your face in it. His speciality is distributing images of scantily-clad underage girls, but as Violentacrez he also issued an unending fountain of racism, porn, gore, misogyny, incest, and exotic abominations yet unnamed, all on the sprawling online community Reddit. At the time I called Brutsch, his latest project was moderating a new section of Reddit where users posted covert photos they had taken of women in public, usually close-ups of their asses or breasts, for a voyeuristic sexual thrill. It was called "Creepshots." Now Brutsch was the one feeling exposed and it didn't suit him very well.
I'm fascinated. Really and truly fascinated. All I can think of right now is, how can make this into an assignment for my students? I want them to read this, and write about it. Thank you for sharing it with me as I am waaayyyy too much of a Luddite (even though I teach online! LOL) to know about Reddit. I am glad to know. I have to get with it!
ReplyDeleteA bunch of my students are writing about reddit for their "internets and writing" class.
DeleteIf anyone wants to hire Michael Brutsch, his resume is online.
ReplyDeleteI got nauseous just reading the list of websites this dick ran. Is this what anonymity on the internet brings about? If so, maybe we need to rethink everything.
ReplyDeleteHe is but the tip of the iceberg, there are some real creeps out there....like the five guys who now run Encyclopedia Dramatica.
Deletehttp://josephevers.blogspot.com/2011/07/blog-post.html
My favorite quote from the article:
ReplyDeleteUnder Reddit logic, outing Violentacrez is worse than anonymously posting creepshots of innocent women, because doing so would undermine Reddit's role as a safe place for people to anonymously post creepshots of innocent women.
I am OK with that.
I find that I am okay with that, too.
A skilled computer programmer who couldn't hide his identity online? I wouldn't be hiring him. Well, aside from the creep factor of 1,000 gazillion billion.
ReplyDeleteSome of the things in the Gawker article are puzzling. For example, the article refers to Brutsch, 49 years old, as an "old man." I guess that's old to 20-year-old hackers, but he doesn't even meet AARP's extremely low membership eligibility cut-off.
ReplyDeleteNo one is more responsible for what Violentacrez has done on Reddit than its publishers. It's the publishers' game. He is merely a player. The publishers had "awarded" him a "pimp hat" badge; that's the kind of place Reddit is. They gave him a special place in their organization. They wanted him there and rewarded his behavior because it made money for them.
Sounds like Gawker editors, Reddit publishers, and college administrators have a lot in common.
Violentacrez (pronounced "violent acres") got his "position" within Reddit because he was there first and he helped the original staff out....I see the guy as a window to the gross, nasty parts of the Internet I don't want to go (the shock sites, the scat porn, etc.) Reddit has issues, mainly with underage porn and a culture on manchildren who don't understand that Conde-Nast, the owners of the site, might just finally shut the site down because of all the bullshit.
ReplyDeleteMy (least)favorite quote: "I just like riling people up in my spare time."
ReplyDeleteThe fact that I'm an introvert probably plays a role here, but this is an attitude that really disgusts me: the idea of using other people for one's own amusement. It violates the Golden Rule, of course, and also Kant's (?) dictum that people should be treated as ends in themselves, not means to an end.
I certainly value the opportunity for pseudonymity on the internet, and believe strongly in free speech, but it seems to me that with both comes not only freedom but responsibility not to take advantage of that freedom. Brutsch, to my mind, has not used his freedom responsibly.
I read this on Gawker (I know, I know) the other day and many of the commenters were giving Chen a hard time about the fact that this guy would probably lose his job. From the resume, it looks like his (most recent) employer did in fact fire him. I'm surprisingly okay with that.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed that Brutch can look at himself in the mirror.
DeleteMaybe Reddit will hire him full-time now?
Since I know most of you aren't redditors, you may not be aware that the reddit admins' response to the Gawker article was to BAN ALL LINKS TO IT from the site. Until Buzzfeed laughed at them for it, after which they repealed the decision, although moderators of subreddits are free to ban whatever they want.
ReplyDelete/r/circlejerk is making hilarous hay of it.
The reaction of the majority of redditors is to condemn Chen for doxxing, which is WAY worse than pedophilia, or as they like to call it, "ephebophilia".
Oh, and if you noticed an irony in a site that is saying they protect creepers because of freeze peaches banning a site because of something it said, you are far more intellectually sophisticated than your average reddit neckbeard.
Ephebophilia (attraction to adolescents) is different from pedophilia (attraction to pre-pubescents).
DeleteStill damned creepy. I knew there was a reason I don't bother with Reddit.