In an interview with CNN, the disgraced Brutsch proudly showed off a gold-plated Reddit Alien bobblehead that had been sent to him in thanks for his contributions to the site. Their sexual interest in underage girls may have inspired them to hunt down their victims, but their equally compelling interest in being praised by other men is what encouraged them. The reality is that each man was, to different degrees, supported by a huge community of other men eager to see what Brutsch and Maxson posted next. Yet it’s all too easy to focus on a few spectacularly creepy figures, cheering at their public exposure and at the pushback against online bullying that their downfall presumably heralds. What Brutsch and Maxson did is appalling. Though Maxson did his worst tormenting out of public view, Vice reports that he regularly bragged on a “jailbait forum” that he was “blackmailing underage girls.” Maxson, if possible, is an even more sinister figure: a 32-year-old Canadian man who blackmailed young Amanda Todd using a topless webcam photo she had created when she was as young as 12. Many of these were lifted from their Facebook accounts and thrown in front of Jailbait’s 20,000 horny subscribers.” (That 20,000 figure doesn’t represent anything like the total number of viewers, just those who chose to sign up for updates when new “material” was posted.) Users posted snapshots of tween and teenage girls, often in bikinis and skirts. As Adrian Chen reported for Gawker, “Jailbait was the online equivalent of systematized street harassment. Michael Brutsch (Violentacrez) was, until his outing, one of the most valuable moderators on Reddit, famous for having created the “jailbait” section on the site. Yet even as the naming and shaming of Michael Brutsch and Kody Maxson gives us a small sense of hope that the tide may be turning against the bullies, their downfall raises larger questions about the countless other men who give these famous trolls their power. The exposure of Violentacrez, (“the biggest troll on the web”) and the successful hunt for the man who hounded young Amanda Todd to suicide have made it clear that motivated journalists and cyber-Samaritans can, given time, track down even the most determinedly anonymous creeps. It’s been a bad month for online bullies. Bringing an end to online bullying means understanding that cyber-predators are as much exhibitionists as they are voyeurs, says Hugo Schwyzer.
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