Adrian Chen on Exposing an Internet Troll

Reddit is a social news site made up of a series of forums dedicated to every possible interest, from Power Rangers to politics. It has a laissez-faire attitude toward offensive speech, so there’s also a lot of porn and shock content. The millions of users on Reddit are anonymous—the site has very few rules, but not revealing someone’s personal information is one of them.

About a year ago, I started reporting on a Reddit forum, Jailbait, where users posted pictures of scantily clad underage girls that they’d stolen from Facebook. It was created and run by a guy who went by Violentacrez. He also posted a lot of racist content and gore, and he was basically a Reddit celebrity. One of his former Internet friends gave me his real name, but before I could confirm it, Jailbait was shut down. Then a couple of months ago, Violentacrez started moderating a forum called CreepShots, which is dedicated to posting voyeuristic snapshots of women on the street. So I called him. His name is Michael Brutsch, and he lives in Texas.