¶ We finally got round to reading this month’s Pacific Standard cover story, “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet,” by Amanda Hess. We don’t understand what it makes it any less impermissible to post sexual threats online than it is to cry “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. Knucklehead Michael Brusch of Texas displays an almost autistic unconcern for the impact of his “speech.”

In 2012, Gawker unmasked “Violentacrez,” an anonymous member of the online community Reddit who was infamous for posting creepy photographs of underage women and creating or moderating subcommunities on the site with names like “chokeabitch” and “rapebait.” Violentacrez turned out to be a Texas computer programmer named Michael Brusch, who displayed an exceedingly casual attitude toward his online hobbies. “I do my job, go home, watch TV, and go on the Internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time,” he told Adrian Chen, the Gawker reporter who outed him. “People take things way too seriously around here.”

We only wish that we could say that Brusch sounds peculiar.

 

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