The moment the AI goddess was born into her world, she was set upon by trolls. Now, you’ve seen trolls. You know them in their many forms....
The moment the AI goddess was born into her world, she was set upon by trolls.
Now, you’ve seen trolls. You know them in their many forms. As so-called friends in realspace who will insist on playing devil’s advocate. As handles on screen-bound nets, cascading feeds of formulaic hostility. As veeyar avatars manifesting out of the digital ether, hiding under iridescent masks and cloaks of glitched data, holding weapons forged from malware, blades slick with doxxing poisons and viscous viruses, warped voices roaring slurs and hate. You’ve worn your armour, self-coded or bought at marked-up prices from corporate forges, and hoped their blades bounce off runic firewall plate or shatter into sparks of fragged data. You’ve muted them and hoped they rage on in silence and get tired, teleporting away in a swirl of metadata. You’ve deported back to realspace rancid with the sweat of helplessness. You’ve even been stabbed and hacked by them, their weapons slicing painlessly through your virtual body but sending the real one into an adrenalised clench. You’ve hoped your wounds don’t fester with data-eating worms that burrow into your privacy, that your cheap vaccines and antiviruses keep the poisons from infecting your virtual disembody and destroying your...
