Line #97 Main/InternetJerk


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/7b2979df49ff5ba32958fde1f912286b.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:250:Don't take life advice from Website/{{Reddit}}.[[note]]Source: [[https://twitter.com/eenWolf @eenwolf]][[/note]]]]
3
4	->''"I can be a jerk to anyone, while I'm behind the screen, in the safety and comfort of my own home.''"
5	-->-- '''Timmy the Internet''', ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'', "[[Recap/TheAmazingWorldOfGumballS2E37TheInternet The Internet]]"
6
7	Someone, under the cover of anonymity, acts like a {{jerk\|ass}} on the Internet. Common techniques are insults and personal attacks, [[InstantHumiliationJustAddYouTube derogatory videos]], {{Catfishing}}, bigotry (like racism, sexism, or homophobia), doxxing, sexual or other harassment, and in the most extreme cases, death threats or [[WesternTerrorists plotting terrorist attacks]].
8
9	The perception of jerks on the Internet has changed over time. Since people online cannot ''physically'' confront each other, "Internet Tough Guy" used to be a synonym for [[FeetOfClay people who talk a big game but cannot follow it up]]. However, during TheNewTens, an increased recognition of the emotional harm that verbal harassment can cause, instances of cyberbullying leading to suicides, and cases of terrorists announcing their intentions online before actually carrying them out in RealLife, have all reduced the implication that an Internet jerk's words are mere show.
10
11	Often goes hand-in-hand with a SocialMediaIsBad message. May overlap with BadInfluencer, except those people are ''famous'' and do it. Sometimes overlaps with {{Troll}}, though not all trolls are on the Internet and not all Internet trolls are ''this'' bad.
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13	Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease
14	----
15	!!Examples
16	[[foldercontrol]]
17
18	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
19	* ''Manga/CromartieHighSchool'': Kiyoshi Fujimoto is an inversion of the trope. In real life, he's a violent high school student and the leader of his own gang, but when he gets home, he runs an internet message board where he speaks politely and tries to keep things civil. He then encounters a {{troll}}, Makio Tanaka, who plays the trope straight and insults Fujimoto on his own message board. The two end up literally bumping into each other by chance in Akihabara, with Fujimoto knocking Tanaka out in a single punch, completely unaware that he just beat up the troll he's still pondering how to deal with.
20	* ''Manga/EdensZero'': An in-universe, and fairly literal example, Spider/Jamilov poses as a ruthless and powerful thug in Digitalis, though he's actually just a lowly, wimpy hacker.
21	* Played for laughs in ''Anime/GirlsUndPanzer''; a first-year student posts a question on the Internet asking how to start up a tank, and for her trouble receives responses such as "Google it, noob!" and "You start by taking off your clothes."
22	* In ''Manga/{{Inuyashiki}}'' a bunch of these harass one of the two main characters' mother until she commits suicide. Unfortunately for them, said main character is a cyborg able, among other things, to shoot people through computer and cellphone screens, no matter where they are, so he looks for them and then kills them all in a cathartic troll hunt.
23	[[/folder]]
24
25	[[folder:Fan Works]]
26	* ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' Franchise/MonsterVerse fanfiction ''[[Fanfic/AbraxasHrodvitnon Abraxas]]'': In the internet Titan comments section transcripts, one of the forumners stands out for expressing disgust for the new, mysterious but currently nonviolent Titan and insisting it should be killed off ASAP before it kills anyone else. Apart from another commenter initially suggesting that [[JerkassHasAPoint he might have a point about how Monarch should be careful handling this new Titan]], it becomes apparent as the anti-Titan forumner calls Monarch "egghead retards", lashes out at others, and responds to the news about [[AdaptationalHeroism Monster X]]'s true nature [[spoiler:''after'' the monster in question saved the population of Yonaguni from a potential massacre]] by repetitively commenting that everyone's going to die, that they're an internet troll trying to rile everyone up.
27	[[/folder]]
28
29	[[folder:Film -- Animation]]
30	* In ''WesternAnimation/RalphBreaksTheInternet'', Wreck-it Ralph becomes a viral video sensation, then he wanders into the comments section and discovers that the internet can be a pretty harsh place. However, he's [[WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph already learned to ignore]] the unwarranted hate, and he needs to focus on the task at hand, so he doesn't let it get to him.
31	[[/folder]]
32
33	[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
34	* Femke Boot, the titular VillainProtagonist in ''Film/TheColumnist'', is a newspaper writer who hits her RageBreakingPoint due to these people, most of them right-wing reactionaries who hate her liberal politics and hurl misogynistic invective at her while [[MistakenForPedophile spreading rumors that she's a pedophile]] based on an old article taken out of context. What's more, because her job in media requires her to maintain a social media presence, she can't disengage with it. It causes her to become a SerialKiller, using [[HoistByHisOwnPetard her harassers' own social media footprints]] to track down where they live and murder them.
35	-->'''Femke:''' ''You called the wrong fucking whore a fucking whore.''
36	* ''Film/JayAndSilentBobStrikeBack'': Jay responds to Internet commenters on Movie Poop Shoot (a thinly-veiled parody of Ain't It Cool News) giving negative feedback on the upcoming ''Bluntman and Chronic'' movie. Of course, Jay's act is unknowingly feeding the {{troll}}s -- at least until he and Silent Bob actually make good on their threats, heading to Hollywood to sabotage production of the movie. [[spoiler:And then, in TheStinger, they personally go to the homes and workplaces of every one of the trolls on Movie Poop Shoot and give each of them a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown.]]
37	* ''Film/{{Nerve}}'' concerns a game of dares where the "Players" performing are on-camera, but the "Watchers" setting the challenges and paying those who manage to pull them off hide behind usernames as they make the Players humiliate or endanger themselves. [[spoiler:A friend of the protagonist asks the help of a group of hackers to remove the anonymity, and the Watchers all leave the game to avoid the offline repercussions (specially as the "final showdown" had one player shooting the other, [[ShamingTheMob leading to the screen names changing to the legal names along with the message "YOU ARE AN ACCESSORY TO MURDER."]]).]]
38	* ''Film/TheSocialNetwork'': Erica accuses Mark of becoming this with his immature drunken blog rant about her.
39	[[/folder]]
40
41	[[folder:Literature]]
42	* Grace from ''Literature/TheNowhereGirls'' makes the mistake of reading "The Real Men of Prescott," a blog anonymously written by one of Lucy's rapists, where he brags about his conquests, consensual or otherwise, and makes insulting generalizations about women. The blog sends Grace down a rabbit hole of manosphere sites full of people trading date rape tips.
43	* ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'': Sugou Nobuyuki may very well be one of the worst examples in all of fiction. While most examples of this trope merely have those online acting as massive jerks which they could not get away with in real life. Sugou sees being in a virtual world as the perfect excuse to be a sadistic bastard, conducting inhumane experiments on players and making numerous attempts to sexually assault Asuna, before going for the full-on AttemptedRape. And then Kirito finds out he's just as bad in the real world as he is online when Sugou tries to kill him using a knife.
44	* ''Literature/ZenobiaJuly'': Arli's older brother Lynx obsessively posts on racist and misogynistic message boards under the name [=EliteStormTrooper666=].
45	[[/folder]]
46
47	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
48	* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': In "[[Recap/SupernaturalS14E04MintCondition Mint Condition]]", Sam discovers that the reason Stuart recanted his story is due to the amount of internet harassment he was receiving.
49	* ''Series/TigerKing'': Joe's internet TV series was full of hateful screed, up to and including overt death threats, against his SitcomArchNemesis Carole Baskin. It came back to bite him when these statements were [[spoiler:used as evidence against him in his murder-for-hire trial]].
50	[[/folder]]
51
52	[[folder:Music]]
53	* Music/DemiLovato lyric: "Haters that live on the Internet/Live in my head, should be paying rent."
54	* Music/{{Eminem}}'s frequent TakeThatCritics theme means these are an increasingly frequent punchbag for him.
55	** In 2003's "Can I Bitch", he sneers at Canibus, who (in the song) has been sending him increasingly unhinged [[LoonyFan Stan-type messages]], for being a 'nerdy internet computer hip-hop head'.
56	** In "On Fire" he trashes an unnamed person [[note]]generally assumed to be Em's one-sided enemy, [[Creator/NickCannon Nick Cannon]], who had written an unhinged blog post calling him a jealous racist[[/note]] for shitting on him on a blog.
57	** In "Calm Down" he raps a brief passage [[ActingForTwo as]] an internet music reviewer, in a [[CopycatMockery stupid whiny voice]]:
58	--->Fucking internet bloggers: "''I sit in front of my computer all day and comment on everything, I'm an expert on everything, [[AccentuateTheNegative everything sucks]]!! — play the next song!''"
59	--->Guess if I hopped out your freaking laptop, you idiot prick, with [[Music/TheNotoriousBIG Biggie]], and kicked the living shit out you, I'd be 'dead wrong'[[note]]ContinuityNod to an Eminem/Biggie posthumous single, "Dead Wrong".[[/note]]
60	** Most of the album ''Kamikaze'' is dedicated to people who were making fun of him on Twitter. The skit, in particular, dramatises Eminem driving over to the house of "some Platform/{{Yahoo}} motherfucker" who complained about him [[StockRhymes rhyming "rhymes" with "chimes"]][[note]] This was never a real comment on Yahoo! Answers, but was likely inspired by [[https://djbooth.net/features/2017-12-21-2017-eminem-revival-worst-lines a professional listicle]] which opens by mocking the rhymes/chimes line[[/note]]. Eminem is proud that he'd ''actually'' rhymed two entire lines via his typical word-warping pronunciation technique [[note]]Such a breeze when I pen rhymes / I just got that air about me like wind chimes[[/note]], and equally proud of himself for figuring out this guy's address.
61	* ''Music/{{MILGRAM}}'': Futa Kajiyama's questionable hobby is rallying people on the internet to harass those he considers to be bad people, as revealed in his first music video, "Bring It On". He's horrified to find out that his actions drove a middle-school girl to suicide, but he points out that he wasn't the only one who ganged up on her.
62	[[/folder]]
63
64	[[folder:Video Games]]
65	* ''VideoGame/CantrII'': Ingame, the anonymous radio system basically breeds this type. Declare into the Internet equivalent, of a game on the Internet, that everyone is in serious trouble now because Sgt Hardpants is alive and well, and then go back to sleep, content in being a couch warrior, twice over.
66	* ''VideoGame/YandereSimulator'': Hoshiko Mizudori runs a hate blog.
67	* ''VideoGame/Persona5'': Many of the comments on the "Phan-Site" tend to get pretty toxic. After Okumura's death, for a few days people celebrate his passing, but then immediately turn on the Thieves, calling for them to be tracked down and executed. It gets so bad that the site creator, Mishima, has to delete certain comments. [[spoiler: It's a growing side-effect of the GreaterScopeVillain's MoreThanMindControl expanding.]]
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:Web Comics]]
71	* ''Webcomic/DailyJoJo:'' Inverted. Wan Jo and Eunjo bond while playing an MMORPG. Wan Jo is normally a stuck-up jerk in person but becomes a lot warmer and more genuine in the game.
72	* ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'': Gabe and Tycho pioneered the concept as early as 2004 with their "[[https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies Greater Internet F***wad Theory]]", or G.I.F.T for short.
73	[[/folder]]
74
75	[[folder:Web Original]]
76	* The ''Literature/NavySealCopypasta'' is a parody of the Internet Jerk described below. The "story" essentially involves a loser on an internet forum getting mad at the person he's arguing with and then trying ''[[LargeHam way]]'' [[{{Narm}} too hard]] to make himself seem scary to get back at the guy.
77	[[/folder]]
78
79	[[folder:Web Video]]
80	* ''WebVideo/{{AFK}}'': This behavior sadly translates across into the world which the gamers find themselves in, as the more sociopathic ones are only too happy to kill and rob others there as well.
81	* ''WebVideo/DigimanzTheAdventureToo'': Davis learned that the [[ForumSpeak Internet Tough Guy]] {{Troll}}s the [[ForumSpeak G.I.F.T.]] creates can often leak into the real world by inspiring people to be cruel even without the safety of internet anonymity, and the best way to fight this is to be more understanding of other human beings.
82	* ''WebVideo/JimBrowning'': One of the scammers featured in "Making life hell for [=TomTom=] scammers" threatens to "beat the crap" out of one of the scambaiters helping Jim out with chat flooding the scammers.
83	* ''WebVideo/SwordArtOnlineAbridged'': This version of Kirito is an insufferable [[ForumSpeak Internet Tough Guy]] to compensate for how crappy his life is outside of VR, and part of his CharacterDevelopment over the first season is finding enough value in the friends he made in ''SAO'' to be willing to give up his ideal existence in the game to keep them safe.
84	* ''Radio/TrueCapitalist'': Whenever a troll makes fun of UsefulNotes/{{Texas}}, Ghost never fails to tell them that they'd get their asses kicked if they said that while in the state. He also frequently claims that he's in the process of seeking punitive damages for their trolling. Naturally, nobody believes a word of it.
85	* ''WebVideo/{{Vinesauce}}'': V-Dub's an inflammatory dudebro who claims to be a former marine and called Outlaw's mom a dick.
86	[[/folder]]
87
88	[[folder:Western Animation]]
89	* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'':
90	** Timmy is a literal example; he is the entire internet and he is one of the biggest {{Jerkass}}es in the series.
91	** "The Voice" begins with Gumball and Darwin {{troll}}ing and starting {{flame war}}s with their classmates on Elmore Plus, then blocking them before they can respond (such as arguing with the Eggheads about whether or not nachos are a fruit). Gumball sums it up:
92	--->'''Gumball:''' I love Elmore Plus! It's like real life, but with none of the consequences!
93	** The Eggheads, Colin and Felix. Aside from the aforementioned flame war with Gumball and Darwin, they utter this line in "The Promise" after making fun of Carrie (who is waiting in line behind them for the new ''[[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda The Legend of Zelmore]]'' game):
94	--->'''Colin:''' This is what happens when you spend all your time flaming people on web forums.\
95	'''Felix:''' You don't get girlfriends.
96	* ''WesternAnimation/TheBoysDiabolical'': Comes up in the short "[[Recap/TheBoysDiabolicalS1E04BoydIn3D Boyd in 3D]]", where Boyd's relationship with Cherry after she takes on a CatGirl appearance eventually leads to commenters harassing him by comparing it to {{bestiality\|IsDepraved}}.
97	* ''WesternAnimation/OurCartoonPresident'': Mark Zuckerberg's polite face-to-face, but once made [[Platform/{{Facebook}} an entire website]] for cruelly judging people's looks.
98	* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': Gerald Broflovski is secretly the Internet troll, skankhunt42. When he's off the computer, he's such a DirtyCoward that he'd throw his five-year-old son under the bus to avoid getting into trouble with his wife.
99	* ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'': Well, Henry Masterson/Headmaster ''acts'' like one at least. And he has the machine to back it up.
100	* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'':
101	** In one episode, Peter, Cleveland, Quagmire, and Joe decide to make a [=YouTube=] channel. Then came the fateful moment when they checked the comment section.
102	--->'''Peter:''' Boy, they just went ''right'' after Cleveland, didn't they?
103	--->'''Quagmire:''' [''disgusted''] Geez, that word looks even harsher when it's in all-caps.
104	** Another episode has Quagmire get humiliated at a baseball game, with the video of his humiliation being uploaded online. The news report afterwards mentions that "Comments ranged from sympathy to racial slurs directed at others who chose to comment".
105	** In one episode, Meg unknowingly becomes a model for a foot fetish website, and when the photographer shows her comments from people who liked her photos, he had to scroll past a bunch of anti-muslim rants to find them, even though nothing on the website had anything to do with Islam or the Middle East.
106	[[/folder]]

Context Main / InternetJerk