JASON "RFJASON" FORTUNY
Behavioral Archetype
THE MAN WHO PUBLISHED THE REPLIES – In 2006 Fortuny ran what he called the “Craigslist Experiment”: he posted a fake personal ad posing as a woman seeking a dominant man, collected the replies, and then published all of them – photos, names, email addresses, phone numbers – to Encyclopedia Dramatica, inviting the internet to identify the respondents. It was trolling stripped of any protective irony: the point was the exposure, and the exposure landed on private people who had answered what they believed was a private ad. Two years later the New York Times Magazine made him a face of the trolling subculture, quoting him as something close to a movement spokesman.
Essence Indicators
- Known online as “RFJason,” a prominent troll on LiveJournal in the mid-2000s; the Craigslist Experiment grew out of that scene and was amplified through it.
- Posted a fraudulent Craigslist ad in September 2006 posing as a woman seeking a “str8 brutal dom”; published the 178 responses, with identifying details, to Encyclopedia Dramatica as “the Craigslist Experiment.”
- Featured in Mattathias Schwartz’s August 2008 New York Times Magazine piece “The Trolls Among Us,” alongside weev, as an articulate defender of trolling as a practice.
- Sued by one exposed respondent in Doe v. Fortuny (N.D. Ill.); a default judgment of $74,252.56 was entered against him in April 2009 for public disclosure of private facts and related claims.
- Defended the experiment as a demonstration of how readily strangers will send compromising material to an anonymous prompt – the troll’s standard move of reframing cruelty as public education.
Social Persona / Impression Management
Immediate impression: Articulate, unbothered, faintly professorial about his own provocations. Fortuny gave interviews; he wanted the experiment discussed.
Energy: Cool rather than manic. The cruelty was administrative – collect, collate, publish – which is part of what made it unsettling.
Impression management strategy: THE RATIONAL PROVOCATEUR. Every interview recast the harm as a finding: people are careless, the internet is not private, he merely proved it. The pose let him keep the results while disowning the intent.
Forensic Archetype Comparison
| Pattern | Match Level | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| The Doxer | EXTREME | The entire experiment was mass exposure of private identities. |
| The Rational-Cruelty Troll | HIGH | Framed the harm as a neutral demonstration, keeping the payoff while denying the malice. |
| The Movement Spokesman | HIGH | The NYT profile positioned him as trolling’s articulate public voice. |
| The Legal Casualty | HIGH | A default civil judgment; he litigated pro se and lost. |
Psychometric Assessment
Big Five (OCEAN):
| Trait | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Openness | 70/100 | Conceptual about his own provocations; treated the prank as a designed study. |
| Conscientiousness | 45/100 | Methodical in execution, careless of consequence and of his own legal exposure. |
| Extraversion | 60/100 | Sought press; comfortable as a named public troll. |
| Agreeableness | 15/100 | Very low. The willingness to expose strangers for a point is the defining datum. |
| Neuroticism | 40/100 | Low-moderate; presented as unruffled throughout. |
Dark Triad:
| Trait | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Narcissism | 65/100 | Built a public identity on a single act of engineered humiliation. |
| Machiavellianism | 70/100 | Understood exactly how to convert private trust into public spectacle. |
| Psychopathy | 55/100 | The equanimity about others’ exposure is the elevated marker. |
MBTI: INTP (“The Logician”) in its coldest register – the systematizer who runs the experiment because it can be run and calls the fallout data.
Why This Profile Matters
Fortuny is the case that separates the troll-as-inquiry from the troll-as-cruelty. Where a Diogenes or a Swift aimed the provocation at power, Fortuny aimed it at whoever answered the ad – ordinary people, exposed for the demonstration. He sits next to weev as the pair the New York Times used to define trolling for a mass audience, and next to the scholarship of Whitney Phillips, who studied exactly this kind of figure. The books need him because the argument for trolling as a virtue only holds if it can name the version that is just harm wearing a thesis.
Threat Assessment
| Category | Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Physical threat | LOW | Not a physical operator. |
| Privacy / individual threat | HIGH | The method’s whole product was the exposure of private people. |
| Legal threat | MODERATE | A civil judgment; established that the “experiment” was actionable. |
| Memetic threat | HIGH | The Craigslist Experiment became a template and a warning in equal measure. |
Flame Warrior Classification
Primary: Imposter (posed as someone else to harvest trust) Secondary: Archivist (weaponized the collected material by publishing it) Notes: ATK 8 – one action, enormous and lasting reach, NYT-canonized. DEF 3 – named, sued, and hit with a default judgment; no real cover. HP 5 – faded from public view, but the case and the template outlived the fame.
Sources: Doe v. Fortuny, Digital Media Law Project; Mattathias Schwartz, “The Trolls Among Us,” New York Times Magazine (2008); “How I Sued a Craigslist Sex Troll,” 10 Zen Monkeys; Laughing Squid, “Jason Fortuny To Pay $75K”
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