A New Form of Cyber Warfare

Although I haven’t done any research, my research tells me a new form of cyber warfare was invented on January 2^nd, 2012 by a flash e-mob incited by comedian Doug Stanhope. Witnessing it unfold left me feeling awestruck, a bit fearful, and incredibly entertained. Mr. Stanhope and the mob that self-assembled in his service accomplished their mission in about 12 hours. No blood was shed. Their goal? Use the web to mass-insult an individual to a degree never achieved before on as many fronts as possible.

The natural question: why? The poor bastard’s name is Troy Holm. I would link you to his Facebook page, but it has been destroyed. Troy Holm is a douche bag, let that be clear. But he isn’t just a douche bag. This particular ass hat created a blog that claimed something along the lines of “All of this material comes from my personal journals,” (I would provide the exact quote but his blog was also destroyed). What did his blog contain that made him briefly the most hated man on the internet? Verbatim comedy routines of Doug Stanhope, passed off as if they were his own thoughts from his own journals. You may be thinking, “Hey, that’s not so terrible, perhaps he was paying homage?” The depth of his douche-baggery was found in things like responses to readers’ comments where he tailored more Stanhope material to give the appearance that these were his true life stories. As if that weren’t enough to deserve ridicule, there was a huge stream of pictures of this shit sack human being with a countless number of women along with posts about cheating on his wife, tricking women into sex…etc. Coupled with the fact that these women were often obviously hammered and sometimes appearing under-age, one couldn’t help but think this guy was every father’s worst nightmare. In a string of adjectives, he is a balding, lying, plagiarizing Tucker Max with a penchant for taking photographs that beg for hilarious caption.

If there is one demographic that you wouldn’t want captioning hundreds of your photos on Facebook for the whole world to see, it’s Doug Stanhope fans. Take one look at some comedy clips on YouTube or the things his fans post on the forum JesusLovesDougStanhope.com and you’ll see why. Although some fans are satisfied with merely using shock language, many of them are quite clever and have a well formed ability to provide stinging and funny insults. This should come as no surprise given that they are willing servants to a legend that masterfully blends razor sharp social satire with dick and fart jokes that both mock this absurd world and provide an outlet from it by giving a glimpse into a perspective that has been honed presumably by laborious independent thought and mind-altering substances.

In a world of frivolous lawsuits, snail-paced judicial systems, money-hungry 3^rd parties, and douche bags no one likes, Stanhope’s fans took it upon themselves to restore social justice by ostracizing the thief. They assembled in a Facebook page entitled "Occupy Troy Holm" that has received about 1200 subscribers in less than 24 hours. Collectively, Stanhope and his fans hold few things as sacred, but his/their comedy is on that list. There will be debate on whether this mass attack was deserved, just, went too far or was even funny, but no one will question whether it was effective. This guy’s blog hadn’t been posted on since July 2010 until Stanhope caught wind of it and posted a single Facebook update: “This fuck stealing my stuff verbatim and passing it off as his own writing. Please ruin his day.” The shit-storm that was immediately unleashed ended up shutting down his blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, and who knows what else in about 12 hours. This may not be a big deal to some, but for a younger generation that increasingly relies on social networking as a means to navigate their world, this could be quite the hassle. Stanhope himself used Troy’s social media against him by observing the restaurants/bars he frequents and then posting comments on those business pages saying things like, “T[r]oy Holm says he drinks here. Keep an eye out if you dont want him to steal all your shit.” Although I’m not sympathetic to this guy, I wonder where else this form of warfare might be waged. This isn’t the first idea Stanhope has had in using terrorism to solve non-political problems (see his bit on the egg sandwich at Subway), but it’s the first execution of it I’m aware of. Although it’s easy to pass this off as a perfect storm of circumstances that led to a fluke of highly motivated fans doing the harmless bidding of the man they respect, I can’t help but wonder if this was a mere glimpse of people using modern technology to empower themselves. Perhaps next time the effect will be greater than teaching some shithead a lesson he will never forget, if anything greater than that exists.