> For the most part, high-profile "targets" from the troll's perspective are already known to the public anyway.
According to Dunbar's number, the average human can maintain meaningful social relations with around 150 people. If you have more than 150 followers on Twitter, you therefore must have followers who are not known to you personally, viz. "the public". That makes most of us "known to the public" in some way.
Calls to action matter. History has plenty of examples of situations in which somebody manages to provoke a group of people into attacking some individual by selectively or misleadingly disclosing information about that person, even if that information is untrue or nonsensical. My favourite example is the case of a mob attacking the home of a British paediatrician after someone confused the word "paediatrician" with "paedophile"[1] (yes, this actually happened).
This could happen to anyone, and the information being released doesn't even need to be true. Are you sure you've never done anything publicly that couldn't be twisted against you by a sufficiently malevolent person? And if you haven't, what would stop them from just making something up?
Furthermore mobs are much easier to rile up than to disperse. I'd suspect the problem is even worse online where the mob is distributed and whose only coordination is around mutually inciting each other.
Literary evidence from Shakespeare, when a mob wishes to avenge Caeser's death, from Julius Caeser, Act 3 Scene 3:
Third Citizen
Your name, sir, truly.
CINNA THE POET
Truly, my name is Cinna.
First Citizen
Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.
CINNA THE POET
I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
Fourth Citizen
Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
According to Dunbar's number, the average human can maintain meaningful social relations with around 150 people. If you have more than 150 followers on Twitter, you therefore must have followers who are not known to you personally, viz. "the public". That makes most of us "known to the public" in some way.
Calls to action matter. History has plenty of examples of situations in which somebody manages to provoke a group of people into attacking some individual by selectively or misleadingly disclosing information about that person, even if that information is untrue or nonsensical. My favourite example is the case of a mob attacking the home of a British paediatrician after someone confused the word "paediatrician" with "paedophile"[1] (yes, this actually happened).
This could happen to anyone, and the information being released doesn't even need to be true. Are you sure you've never done anything publicly that couldn't be twisted against you by a sufficiently malevolent person? And if you haven't, what would stop them from just making something up?
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.so...