http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?hp
August 3, 2008
Magazine Preview
Malwebolence
By MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ
This article will appear in this Sunday's Times Magazine.
One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him,
Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minn., took a .22-caliber
rifle down from a shelf in his parents’ bedroom closet and shot himself in the
head. The next morning, Mitchell’s school assembled in the gym to begin mourning.
His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with
remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was “an hero to take that shot, to leave us
all behind. God do we wish we could take it back. . . . ” Someone e-mailed a
clipping of Mitchell’s newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that
links to the MySpace pages of the dead. From MyDeathSpace, Mitchell’s page came to
the attention of an Internet message board known as /b/ and the “trolls,” as they
have come to be called, who dwell there.
--
William L Katzenberger, Jr.
Media Specialist
Dodge Park Elementary School
3401 Hubbard Road
Landover, MD 20785
william.katzenberger@comcast.net
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