Gawker is gone, so let's revisit one of their best pieces of journalism: The unmasking of one of the internet's nastiest trolls

Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web

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).

gawker.com

I'm not putting this up as an anti-Reddit post. I really mean this to be a Gawker appreciation thread, if you're so inclined. And I'm also interested in the particulars of this tale.

The story of Violentacrez is, in its twisted, strange way, incredible. Here's a military father and cat lover who loves trolling. Creating subreddits dedicated to Hitler and racism was part of the fun for him. His appetite knew no bounds; Chen has no problem outing his identity because the harm he does is very real. As a mod on Reddit who was good at his job, his incredibly wretched subreddits thrived because he had protection. In Chen's detailing, he was a good mod; he taught other mods how to do their jobs well; he developed connections that might have won him employment. He became a celebrity, seen as defending the worst so other people could enjoy their own indulgences.

There's a lot of issues to talk about with this story - the misuse of free speech, the over reliance of a certain other site on mods, the growth and festering of hateful subcultures, the warped norms of online culture. Part of me is most interested in what it means to be a good mod, how to contribute to a site and its users well. There's not a lot to learn from this piece about that. I kinda want to contribute things of worth to all your communities, because then I'd feel like I was useful to at least a few of you.