Online trolls hide behind progressive platitudes
LoonWatch.com was born on April Fool’s Day 2009. At precisely 20:33:38, someone used the pseudonym “Zuhair Thomas” to register the new website with GoDaddy, an internet service provider based in Arizona. What “Zuhair” created was a platform for anonymous character assassins, who used the names of little-known fish species — “Emperor”, “Garibaldi”, “Danios”, “Darter” — to conceal their identities. Their targets were so-called “loons”: anyone who spoke out against Islamic extremism, or in favour of Muslim reform.
