ANDREW "WEEV" AUERNHEIMER
Behavioral Archetype
THE TROLL WHO STOPPED KIDDING – For most of the figures in this file, trolling is a method: provocation as argument, disruption as critique, the lulz as its own dispassionate reward. Auernheimer is the case that tests the thesis to destruction. He began as the archetypal internet troll – the New York Times Magazine used him, in 2008, as the face of the whole subculture – and then followed the method past the point where “for the lulz” is the whole of it. His profile matters precisely because it marks the boundary: the place where the troll’s disclaimer (“I don’t mean it”) stops being true.
Essence Indicators
- Canonized as the archetypal troll in Mattathias Schwartz’s 2008 New York Times Magazine piece “The Trolls Among Us,” the article that introduced the word “troll” to a mainstream audience alongside Jason Fortuny and Encyclopedia Dramatica.
- Associated with the GNAA, a long-running trolling group known for hijacking comment sections and website defacements, at the time of the AT&T breach.
- Member of Goatse Security, the group that in 2010 exploited a public AT&T web script to harvest roughly 114,000 email addresses of Apple iPad owners – senators, CEOs, and a cabinet member among them – and passed the list to a journalist.
- Convicted in 2012 under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the identity-fraud statute; sentenced March 2013 to 41 months. Served roughly 13 months before the Third Circuit vacated the conviction in April 2014 – not on the merits of the CFAA charge, but on venue: he had never set foot in the New Jersey district where he was tried, and the servers sat in Texas and Georgia.
- Since the mid-2010s, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League as a neo-Nazi and white supremacist, and identified by the SPLC as the technical operator and a writer for the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer.
Social Persona / Impression Management
Immediate impression: Voluble, quick, deliberately unnerving. The 2008 persona was the trickster who wanted you to know he was smarter than the room and less restrained than anyone in it – the troll as performance, calibrated to be quoted.
Energy: Escalatory. Where a Ken M works by never breaking character and a dril works by absurd non-sequitur, Auernheimer worked by raising the stakes until a target flinched, then treating the flinch as proof.
Impression management strategy: WEAPONIZED DENIABILITY, until it wasn’t. The early move was the troll’s classic shield – everything is a joke, offense is the mark’s failure to get it. The later career discarded the shield: the material stopped claiming to be ironic. The profile documents the transition, because the transition is the point.
Forensic Archetype Comparison
| Pattern | Match Level | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| The Pure Troll (provocation for its own sake) | HIGH (early) | The NYT-era persona; GNAA-style disruption; the lulz as stated reward. |
| The Disclosure Provocateur | HIGH | The AT&T breach was framed as security disclosure; the courts and critics split on whether it was research or theft. |
| The Ideologue | EXTREME (later) | Per SPLC/ADL, the trolling method turned into sustained propaganda for a named extremist project. |
| The Legal Houdini | HIGH | A federal conviction vacated on venue – a genuine mark in CFAA case law, whatever one thinks of the man. |
Psychometric Assessment
Big Five (OCEAN):
| Trait | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Openness | 80/100 | Technically inventive; the AT&T exploit was a clever read of a careless public endpoint. |
| Conscientiousness | 30/100 | Low. Operated in the open, courted the prosecution that followed, made himself the story. |
| Extraversion | 85/100 | High. Sought the microphone; the persona was built to be interviewed. |
| Agreeableness | 10/100 | Very low, by design and later by conviction. Hostility was the product. |
| Neuroticism | 55/100 | Moderate. The combativeness reads as chosen posture more than distress. |
Dark Triad:
| Trait | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Narcissism | 80/100 | High. Built a public identity on being the most transgressive person in any conversation. |
| Machiavellianism | 65/100 | High. Understood attention as a resource and courts, press, and platforms as terrain. |
| Psychopathy | 60/100 | Elevated. The documented targeting of individuals, and the later propaganda, show low regard for the harm inflicted. |
MBTI: ENTP (“The Debater”) gone rancid – the archetype that argues any side for the friction of it, here past the point where argument was the game and into belief. The type explains the early troll; it does not excuse the later ideologue.
Why This Profile Matters
The books argue that trolling is a legitimate and ancient method – Socrates, Diogenes, Swift, the whole line of provocation-as-inquiry. Auernheimer is the necessary counter-case, the one the argument has to survive. He shows that the method has no built-in conscience: the same techniques that make a moot or a Lowtax an architect of a subculture can be pointed at people, and then at a movement, by someone who means it. The troll’s oldest defense – I’m not serious – is exactly the thing his later career retired. Any honest account of trolling as a virtue has to reckon with the figure who took the same tools and dropped the disclaimer.
Threat Assessment
| Category | Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Physical threat | LOW | Not a physical operator. |
| Legal / institutional threat | HIGH | The AT&T case reshaped CFAA venue doctrine; the breach itself exposed a cabinet-level target list. |
| Memetic threat | EXTREME | Per SPLC/ADL, turned trolling craft into durable extremist propaganda and infrastructure. |
| Civilizational threat | ELEVATED | The cautionary weight of the file: proof that the method is neutral and the operator is not. |
Flame Warrior Classification
Primary: Godzilla (the troll a community never fully recovers from) Secondary: Ferrous Cranus (impervious to reason – by the later period, by choice) Notes: ATK 9 – enormous reach: NYT canonization, a 114,000-address breach reaching cabinet level, and a case that moved federal law. DEF 3 – imprisoned, self-exiled, and among the most publicly identified figures in this file; his one great defensive win (the vacatur) was on a technicality, not exoneration. HP 8 – survived prison, walked on venue, and remained operational; durability is not the same as vindication, and this file does not confuse the two.
Sources: United States v. Auernheimer (3d Cir. 2014), Justia; The Register, “Reprieve for Weev” (2014); Mattathias Schwartz, “The Trolls Among Us,” New York Times Magazine (2008); SPLC Extremist Files: Andrew “weev” Auernheimer; weev — Wikipedia
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