Prolific Internet troll is outed

The Internet is full of trolls, people who hide behind assumed identities to post outrageous and inflammatory comments from the racist to the profane. And now a guy considered one of the worst has been outed. But was it right?

Michael Brutsch is a Texas man who was a celebrity of sorts on Reddit forums websites for his prolific, often offensive posts. He gained notoriety as Violentacrez.

“A lot of them were racist, a lot of them were anti-woman, but the things that were kind of the most outrageous and kind of the worst ones were the ‘Jailbait’, which took these photos that unsuspecting teenagers had uploaded to Facebook and put them in front of 20,000 creeps to get off on,” says writer Adrien Chen in an interview with KIRO Radio’s Ross and Burbank Show.

After learning of Brutsch’s writing and influence, Chen decided to write an expose about Violentacrez for the website Gawker.

“He wasn’t actually that careful about keeping his identity under wraps to a lot of people he knew on the Internet. One of his online friends or former online friends got kind of fed up with some of the stuff he was doing and tipped me off, sent me some screen shots, sent me some information that pointed out who he was,” Chen says.

The Gawker writer spoke with Brutsch for about an hour by phone. The Texas man pleaded with him to protect his identity, fearing it would ruin his life, but Chen says he never expressed any remorse. After mulling it over, Chen decided to go with his story because of the posts featuring underage girls.

“I would be protecting him [if I didn’t identify him], I would be part of his thing because he built a whole brand. He was famous on Reddit for being offensive under his handle and I would be kind of acting as his PR guy if I was just to say ‘here’s a horrible guy’ and not actually say who he was,” Chen explains.

Brutsch’s worst fears were realized. He writes on Reddit he was fired from his job as as a programmer at an Arlington, Tex., company that offers payday loans and operates pawn shops, according to his online resume.

In a lengthy response to Chen’s article, Brutsch insists he did nothing illegal and the ‘Jailbait’ forum was just one of hundreds he created and moderated.

“The fact that none of these innocent women were publicly identified, and those who asked for their pictures to be removed had them removed, does not factor into his equation,” Brutsch writes.

There’s been a huge backlash against Chen and his story. A number of Reddit forums have banned Gawker content. Chen reports the popular subreddit website TodayILearned, which features over two million subscribers, was among them.

“As you may be aware, a recent article published by the Gawker network has disclosed the personal details of a long-standing user of this site,” wrote a TodayILearned moderator, “an egregious violation of the Reddit rules, and an attack on the privacy of a member of the Reddit community.”

But Chen stands by his story and won’t apologize.

“He was hurting young women,” he says. “All I did was find out his name, talk to him on the phone and then wrote down what he said.”

Was Chen wrong to identify Brutsch? What do you think?