Lulz. (Photo: RyanSecrest.com)

Psy's "Gangnam Style" is a cultural phenomenon. Having already nabbed the most viewed spot on YouTube, today the video hit 1 billion views [insert your cliched Mayan apocalypse joke here].

A countdown site, Billioncountdown.com, quickly circulated across the Internet this morning, showing a mesmerizing counter tracking the views until the video hit one billion.

And when it did? An awesome feat of Internet trolling was unleashed. As soon as the video hit a billion, the site immediately began redirecting to some explicit porn sites upon refresh, including Cougardating.com.

Well done, Internet. You've truly outdone yourself.

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A group claiming affiliation with Anonymous posted a bomb threat on its Twitter account Monday, saying it plans to detonate a bomb in a government building on November 5. The threat prompted disavowals from other Anon channels across the web.

The threat was linked from @FawkesSecurity, which posted the following message on several paste-up sites, as well as links to a seemingly typical Anonymous video with a masked and suited figure gesturing as a robotic voice said these words:

Dear citizens of the world, We are Anonymous.

As of today, 200 kilograms of composite Nitroglycerin and commercial explosives have effectively been concealed in a government building, situated in the United States of America. On the 5th of November, 2012, the device will detonate remotely via the transmission control protocol, leaving behind severe consequences. We would like to advise that the contraption is built inside a tamper-proof apparatus sensitive to physical intrusions or attempted disarmament, thus resulting in the desired effect, if the military grade device is found before the 5th of November. There is no intention, risks or circumstances whatsoever to cause harm to innocent people, but we can not say the same for the people who are the real terrorists, oppressors and war creators. [...]

Negative responses to the threat from the larger, Fawkes-masked and shifting sea of Anonymous have been trending on Pastebin, the most well-known programmers' paste-up site.

In one, titled "Anonymous response to false #OpV attack," the author of the message writes that FawkesSecurity has been seeking "fame by reuploading (sic) Anonymous videos [...] for almost a year" and suggests the bomb threat may be a disinformation campaign by the authorities or a "disinfo fucktard."

Another, more formal response was addressed "to the media." It said in part:

Let us be perfectly clear: Anonymous is not a terrorist organization. Anonymous does not use bombs. Anonymous does not condone violence in any way. Anonymous supports justice and universal equal rights. We support peaceful protest.

The Pastebin post addressing the media closed with another suggestion the bomb threat was disinformation intended to portray Anonymous as a terrorist group and concluded, "Either way, fuck whoever posted that threat."

The threatening message says it will detonate the bomb via "transmission control protocol," which may be a subtle signal that it is a hoax. Transmission control protocol is the TCP in TCP/IP. TCP is an application that supports secure and organized data transfer over the web.

However, the use of the term may also be the writer's attempt to suggest the bomb can be detonated by remote command, perhaps via cellphone.

The responses to FawkesSecurity's threat have sometimes referenced Project Mayhem 2012 and #OpV or #OpVendetta.

The latter operation will be a planned act of peaceful street theater in which Anons gather in London to recreate the final scene from the movie, V for Vendetta. In that scene, a mass of marchers enter Trafalgar Square in Guy Fawkes masks, then bombs go off under Big Ben in the U.K. Parliament building. Anonymous has said that it will not complete the re-enactment with explosives.

A page detailing FawkesSecurity's history since 2011 at KnowYourMeme strongly suggests it has a history of claiming responsibility for other hacks and DDoS attacks, as well as general trolling.

Anonymous Warning: 5th November 2012 - YouTube.

(Photo: CNN)

Last night, the now-notorious Reddit troll Violentacrez, whom Gawker recently exposed as a 49-year-old Texas-based programmer named Michael Brutsch, appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 for God knows what reason. In the painfully awkward two-part interview, during which Mr. Cooper thankfully gave us a commercial break to collect ourselves and tweet our thoughts, Mr. Brutsch invoked every possible excuse to justify his poor behavior, which includes creating controversial subreddits like PicsofDeadKids and Jailbait.

Throughout the interview, Mr. Brutsch referred to his Reddit username Violentacrez in the third person, echoing other statements he's made about Violentacrez being a character he played and attempting to distance himself from taking personal responsibility for his actions. He also admitted that his sole purpose for creating racist and misogynistic subreddits was to get a rise out of people (he bragged he has a "gift" for it) in order to accumulate "meaningless internet points."

Shortly after the interview aired, Mr. Brutsch again took to Reddit under his clean handle "mbrutsch" and admitted that appearing on CNN was a "huge mistake, which I will not repeat." He also agreed with users who alleged that Reddit's statement given to CNN is actually riddled with factual inaccuracies. "It was suprising that the admins straight up lied about banning VA multiple times," one user wrote. "Didn't surprise me at all," replied Mr. Brutsch.

Still, it was rather shocking to witness Mr. Brutsch's willingness to completely throw Reddit, a platform he has essentially dedicated his life to for the past five years, under the bus in order to save his own neck. Though he was once a Reddit power user, tapped by administrators to wrangle the darkest subreddits and keep illegal content from cropping up on them, he has continually called Reddit admins out for lying and for not having his back.

"Reddit encouraged and enabled this kind of behavior," he said last night on CNN. Even Redditors whose inconsistent "free speech" logic (keep Jailbait, but block Gawker links) put them in allegiance with Mr. Brutsch probably won't appreciate hearing him blame his trolling on Reddit, both as a platform and community.

We've reached out to Reddit general manager Erik Martin to ask for comment on Mr. Brutsch's accusation and will update when we hear back. But it's true that Reddit administrators have been supportive of Mr. Brutsch's behavior in the past. Mr. Brutsch also brought along to the interview a gold-plated bobblehead that Reddit administrators gave to him for creating Jailbait, a subreddit where users posted sexualized photos of minors. The Atlantic Wire points out that the statue was given to Mr. Brutsch as a token for creating "Worst Reddit," which still seems like a knowing nod and thumbs up to his behavior on the site.

This reporter is a frequent user of Reddit, in both her personal and professional life, and a fan of the platform as a fount of information. At its best, it can be an open forum for thoughtful conversation, hilarious asides and friendly knowledge sharing. But this incident has shed new light on the dark underbelly of a platform that just recently hosted a Q&A with the President of the United States.

It may seem like cognitive dissonance for Reddit to host forums like RapingWomen alongside TwoXChromosomes, but the site is also a microcosm of the Internet at large: full of some of the most wonderful people, but also some of the worst. Still, the laissez-faire attitude of Reddit admins towards the sexist and misogynistic content is concerning at best and borderline-disgusting at worst. As Anil Dash put it, "Reddit does many good things, but is also a horrendously sexist culture."

Of course, this realization is nothing new--the MensRights subreddit has been around for ages, and the internet as a whole has long been a complicated place for women to exist. But the Violentacrez scandal, coupled with that of Creepshots and Predditors, has put the conversation about Reddit's attitudes towards its female users at the forefront.

At least one woman we know, an active Redditor who has attended meetups and accrued a fair amount of "meaningless Internet points," has shut down her account in response to the recent news. "[Violentacrez] is the catalyst, yes, but the general culture of casual racism and misogyny as well," she tweeted.

Through its handling of the Violentacrez crisis, as well as last year's Jailbait scandal, Reddit has emphasized time and time again that it wants to be a platform that embraces free speech, right up to the line of illegality (but never crossing it). This will turn off some users, and perhaps cultivate a culture rife with racism and misogyny, under the banner of free speech. It is not, however, somehow immune to the criticism these types of decisions will evoke from Redditors and the media alike.

As Ken at Popehat wrote in his excellent piece on Reddit, Gawker and anonymity:

Creepers and pedophiles and bigots make up only a tiny minority of Redditors; people angry that they are being criticized make up only a slightly larger minority. Comments from Reddit administrators in the wake of the child pornography outcry has made clear that Reddit wants to be a free speech site that permits everything that the law does not prohibit. That's fine. I'd defend Reddit's freedom to publish what the law allows. But Redditors need not be taken seriously to the extent they believe they have a protected right to be free of criticism and ridicule and inquiry. You can argue all you want that forums like — oh, say, the /r/BeatingWomen subreddit — should be free to thrive without criticism. Moderators can indulge your feelings by banning critics. Moderators can decide to ban links to Gawker on the theory that if you take pictures of children in public and post them for the sexual pleasure of misfit neckbeards, you have a right to privacy that should prevent anyone from identifying you. But Reddit administrators and moderators and Redditors can't stop everyone else from calling out their conduct and their oddly inconsistent philosophy. Private individuals decrying, ridiculing, and even using their skills to identify Redditors are using a classic "more speech" remedy to speech they don't like. It's a feature, not a bug, of free speech.

Of course, individuals on Reddit are also responsible for their own actions. No matter how much Mr. Brutsch claims Reddit "encouraged and enabled his behavior," it was still just a platform full of--as he says--"college kids," and it was ultimately his decision to dutifully play into their twisted tastes. Now, he's paying the price for that: he's lost his job and his health insurance and has ultimately become the face of Internet trolldom. Reddit's reputation will recover from this poor publicity fiasco, but the rep of its most notorious troll probably won't.

Tip o' the hat to ya, Reddit. (Photo: CMT)

Shimmery fairydust composite Taylor Swift, who floats instead of walks and subsists entirely on a nutritional diet of rainbows, has decided not to let the trolls ruin a good contest.

Back in August, Reddit and 4chan galvanized for the all-important cause of gaming a VH1 competition that would send Ms. Swift to perform at a school that received the highest amount of votes. Soon, a hoard of trolls began liking Ms. Swift on Facebook and voting to send her to the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston.

(Get it? Sending a musician to a school for kids who can't hear music? "Lulz.")

Though Horace Mann garnered enough votes to situate it comfortably as a finalist, Ms. Swift and co. decided to axe it from the running due to the mean-spirited reason behind its vote gathering. Instead, they teamed up with the contest's sponsors and VH1 to send a monetary gift of $50,000. All Horace Mann students will also get a ticket to the next Boston-area Taylor Swift show.

Jeremiah Ford, Horace Mann's principal, was delighted with the outcome. "Are we the winner? Absolutely," he told Boston.com

In the case of the flaxen-haired unicorn whisperer vs. the trolls, it appears nobility has triumphed. Besides, Internet, why you gotta be so mean?

(Image: West McGowan)

A study conducted at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism seems to indicate that if friends say you're hot in comments on a Facebook or Tumblr pic, others may agree.

Professor Kevin Wise and doctoral student Seoyeon Hong showed 100 students several photos of one person. They discovered something interesting about how people reacted to the images:

They found that photos with "social cues," which are photos that show the subject's personality, work better than static headshots. Positive comments from friends also made the photos more appealing to the students than those with negative remarks.

The survey is reassuring, because it seems to indicate people take in more than physical appearance when checking others out online. People develop an impression based as much on your pursuits and social ties as your looks. In her write-up about the study, Ms. Hong also included a good guide to best practices in dealing with noxious profile pests like "funny" cousins or friendly but still secretly bitter exes:

No matter what the profile owner does to tailor their Facebook page, comments left on their page from other users should be monitored as well. Positive comments are very helpful, but negative remarks can be very damaging, even if they are silly or sarcastic.

That's Ms. Hong's measured way of saying that if your fourth grade boyfriend trolls your Facebook photos and teases you about your haircut, others will be more likely to agree that yeah, that's a pretty ugly mullet.