As the Columbia Journalism Review describes in a post on the project, Climate Desk not only found and interviewed their comment troll — a 57-year-old insurance executive named Hoyt Connell — as part of a video series called “The Secret Life of Trolls,” but also profiled a scientist who spends much of her time engaging with trolls on the topic of climate change. In the final instalment, the scientist and the troll met each other via Google Hangout.

The CJR post criticizes the Climate Desk series because “it doesn’t shine as much light under the bridge as it could have,” since it doesn’t go into detail about why Connell latched onto climate change as a topic, or what drives him to comment so aggressively (fittingly enough, Connell comments on the CJR post himself to try and clear some of this up). But what impressed me was how normal this mega-troll seemed once he was interviewed.

Comment trolls are people too

I found the same thing — and I think others did too — when Gawker Media outed a notorious Reddit troll named Violentacrez last year, after attention was drawn to several offensive sub-Reddits he created. Although clearly much of his behavior on the site crossed a line, the interview showed him to be a more-or-less normal, and in some ways even sympathetic (or possibly just pathetic) character. Not that this justified his conduct, but it helped to explain some of it.

We’ve written before about how the value of comments transcends the occasional troll, and how the best way to maintain a civil dialogue is to engage with readers directly, a point blogging pioneer Anil Dash also made in a post a couple of years ago. And writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic have shown that commenters can be much more than just a noisy distraction — in some cases, they can actually become collaborators. The Climate Desk series is a good reminder that trolls are people too.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr / Jeremy King

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For the unfamiliar, IV is the dark empire of Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft executive who gamed the patent system by amassing tens of thousands of often-flimsy patents and then threatening to sue everyone in sight. IV and other trolls have reportedly drained $500 billion from the economy and created widespread disenchantment with America’s patent policies.

While IV has been at this for years, its activities are often undetected thanks to a clever use of a reported 1,300 shell companies. This means that the start-ups and tech companies who receive “pay-up-or-else” letters for using things like emoticons are confronted by patent owners with futuristic names like “iZ2″ or “Mobile Transformations” — only to discover that the patent owner is little more than a group of lawyers with a PO Box in Texas. All the while, the puppet master remains well hidden.

Now, however, a boutique analytics firm called IP Checkups is creating the “IV Thicket Case Files“, a blog and database that will serve as a taxonomy of IV’s trolling. The idea, says the company, is to keep tabs on IV and to provide a warning mechanism that will help start-ups determine if they are likely to be mugged by one of IV’s progeny.

More broadly, IP Checkups’ project could reframe public perception of IV’s activities. So far, Myhrvold has gulled the media with tales of IV’s marvelous inventions. This could change once it becomes easier to see the extent of the dirty work carried out by the shells and, just possibly, galvanize the federal government to drive an anti-trust stake into IV’s heart.

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