When I first saw this book on Amazon.com, it was hard to control myself. The name is an obvious rip-off of Asimov's 'I, Robot' - and yet the rest of the title did seem of worth. I sent off for it and have just finished reading it.
This was a difficult book for me to review. The author starts off explaining his own experiences in AOL chatrooms which, if they were not annoying to other users, were certainly bordering on trolling. Of course, he didn't call it that, but that's exactly what it was, at least to some degree. The whole Pighed persona seemed more like insight into troll behavior rather than any sort of early comparison to a virtual world. The bad news is that anyone who has been around in cyberspace long enough sort of knows that, but the audience of the book might think that the behavior of Pighed in the AOL context was socially acceptable. In that way, I thought it irresponsible and even a nice way of defending annoying behavior on the Internet.
But I read the rest of the book anyway.
Anyone who has read my own thoughts on Your2ndPlace.com would probably understand, after reading Meadows' book, that he and I don't agree on some things - but here's the funny thing. I found it to be a good book for people, other than the unashamed announcement of the author's roots in trolldom.




