Inevitably, the first public social network also gave birth to the first online troll: a wag who called himself “Dr. Benway” (the name of a drug-addicted surgeon in the novels of William Burroughs) who peppered the ongoing dialogues with Grateful Dead references and droll non sequiturs like “sensuous keystrokes forbidden” and “personal attendance required: send no replica.” The identity of this mysterious pioneer of online snark was never uncovered.
