Omar L. Gallaga writes about technology culture for the Austin American-Statesman. He's worked for the American-Statesman since 1997 and edited Technopolis, the newspaper's personal tech section, and ¡ahora sí!, Austin's Spanish-language newspaper. He's currently a contributor to NPR's "All Tech Considered" segment, which airs Mondays on "All Things Considered." He's been a writer and performer with Austin's award-winning Latino Comedy Project, and is a contributing writer for Television Without Pity. He writes a comic strip, "Space Monkeys!" with his brother, Pablo, and lives in New Braunfels with his wife and three technologically savvy cats.
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2011 > October > 31 > Entry
By Omar L. Gallaga
| Monday, October 31, 2011, 09:45 AM
Illustration by Don Tate II / Austin American-Statesman
This week’s Digital Savant column is actually a lead article in the Life & Arts section of today’s American-Statesman, part of our continuing series about online identity.
In the article, I wonder whether the online trolls, bullies and griefers out there aren’t so much “out there” as they might be parts of our own personalities on the Internet. We’ve all probably said or done things online we regret and certainly being online gives us a protective layer against dealing with people as we might in “real life.”
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the story or the series. Drop a line in the comments and let us know if you’ve ever been an Internet troll (or if you’ve been the victim of online harassment or just bad vibes).
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By Julie Gomoll
November 1, 2011 9:59 AM | Link to this
For several years I ran VPchat, a company I started by licensing the popular chat software originally used by Excite. It was a small startup - just 2 of us - and I ended up providing customer support (anyone who knows me knows this was a poor decision :) The hatred and venom directed at me from chatters was astonishing.
There was an entire website devoted to assassinating the character of me and my business partner. There were forums devoted to rants explaining why I had no value as a human being. But most of the grief came via email. Chatters wished for my death in remarkably creative, horrific ways. They threatened bodily harm and sexual assault. One chatter scared me enough that I had a security alarm installed at home.
It was all BS, of course, But at the time, it was really hard to deal with and occasionally downright scary.