…who doesn’t think the mood in the city is now totally, breathtakingly surreal – a hundred times more so than usual? It’s really here, that moment so many have been waiting for, whether with trepidation or joy, and it’s starting to sink in: This is it. Police cars, sirens whirring, are everywhere, taxis are at a premium, everyone seems to be trying to speak English, and there’s a general mood of contained hysteria. It’s the moment of truth. They asked for it, they got it. Let the cards fall where they may.

This is one of the oddest, most disturbing stories I’ve read about Internet depravity. Parts of it are simply unbelievable.

“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll….

Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: “You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had.”

…The willingness of trolling “victims” to be hurt by words, he argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it.

Their oxygen is your reaction. Without it, they’re rendered impotent. Enough said.

While you’re over at the NYT, be sure to read this shocker, which I’m sure gave Michelle Malkin a dizzy high. And when I say a shocker….