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It’s hard to use the internet for an entire day and not encountered some sort of trolling. From Youtube comments sections to Twitter to Facebook live, trolls are all over the internet today. From the shroud of anonymity, cruel bullies have infected our internet. As we discussed in class, the impact of trolling is often no laughing matter, often leading to some sort of emotional trauma and in the most extreme cases suicide.
When I think about the cultural decline of the internet into spiteful depravity it makes me sad, so I try to put a positive spin on it by looking at good-example of trolling. The perfect trolling prank, in my mind, is funny and does no emotional or real harm. An awesome example of this is how South Park trolled its viewers during one of its recent episodes.
South Park messing with Alexa #SouthPark #Alexa pic.twitter.com/4qtJkwQJ6R
— Moritz Wittmann (@MoritzWittmann) September 14, 2017
In the episode, the characters gave Alexa all sorts of absurd commands like setting early alarms and adding random items to viewers’ shopping carts. I thought this was a hysterical effort of trolling, even though I fell victim to it with my Alexa sitting susceptible next to my tv. It’s fun. It didn’t do any permanent harm to anyone.
THe South Park Alexa prank made me think about how the changing landscape of hardware use in our day to day is changing how we can be trolled. Think about it. I was trolled when I wasn’t even using a tool I could, in theory, be contacted through. I was streaming TV on Hulu. But because I happened to have an IOT-enabled speaker, somebody was able to prank me without even speaking to me.
Source:
South Park trolled Amazon Echo owners in the best way possible