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.
Refused the plea deal his co-defendant took, stating on camera nine days after conviction: “I’m ethically obligated to fight this case all the way to the end… this is about our right to criticize companies based on their own publications.” On the narrow technical claim the record bore him out: the Third Circuit noted that “no evidence was advanced at trial that the account slurper ever breached any password gate or other code-based barrier,” and Orin Kerr argued the appeal pro bono. On sentencing day he told the press pool, “I’m going to prison for arithmetic.”
From October 2014, wrote for The Daily Stormer under his own name. His first essay there, “What I Learned from My Time in Prison,” announced “new tattoos that mark the wisdom I gained from my time in prison,” the first “a 4.5 inch swastika on my chest,” and described himself as “a long-time critic of Judaism, black culture, immigration to Western nations.” A federal court later found the site “derives its name from Der Sturmer, an unofficial pro-Nazi propaganda tabloid.”
As of 2026, maintains a public presence on Nostr, the decentralized social protocol, under the self-chosen vanity key npub1weev...w409xg (profile).

On Camera

CNN, “Internet troll Andrew ‘Weev’ Auernheimer.” Embedded as a primary source: his own on-camera manner and self-presentation, within CNN’s framing. The reader can weigh the man directly rather than through this file’s characterization.

“Technopolis Now!” documentary clip (2012), filmed on bail during the AT&T prosecution and posted the week of the conviction: seven minutes of the pre-prison baseline, alongside ARPANET pioneer Leonard Kleinrock and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian. Disclosure ethics, consumer protection, distrust of corporate power – the record against which the later transformation has to be measured. Embedded as a primary source for the same reason as the CNN clip: the reader weighs it directly.

HuffPost Live full segment (November 29, 2012), nine days after the CFAA conviction, pre-sentencing, on bail under a computer ban. Twenty-seven minutes, panel including Stanford’s Jennifer Granick on the chilling effect. The refusal of the plea deal in his own words – “I’m ethically obligated to fight this case all the way to the end” – alongside the harder edges, in the same sitting. The fullest single record of the post-conviction persona, before prison.

HuffPost Live, April 2014 – days after the Third Circuit vacated his conviction on venue, with the government still asserting the right to retry him elsewhere. The last of the on-camera interviews before he left the country, and the civil-liberties register is still fully intact: “I’ll risk prison again… it’s a terrible law”; “I love this place, and if I have to sacrifice personally to maintain the freedoms of Americans I will.” He makes his case at length here – the defiance (“bring it, federal government”), a claim of mistreatment in custody (his account), the unresolved threat of re-prosecution. This is the far edge of the readable record: everything after the self-exile is the transformation the file cannot adjudicate.

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)	By his own bylined Daily Stormer writing, 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	By his own bylined writing, 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, No. 13-1816 (3d Cir. Apr. 11, 2014), slip opinion; United States v. Auernheimer (3d Cir. 2014), Justia; DOJ USAO-NJ, sentencing release, 18 Mar 2013 (Wayback); Superseding Indictment, US v. Auernheimer, D.N.J., 16 Aug 2012; ABA Journal, “3rd Circuit frees email hacker” (2014); NPR, “Tech Companies Blacklist White Supremacist Site” (interview with Auernheimer from Transnistria, 18 Aug 2017); weev, “A small experiment in mass printing” (Storify, March 2016, Wayback); The Register, “Reprieve for Weev” (2014); Mattathias Schwartz, “The Trolls Among Us,” New York Times Magazine (2008); Andrew Auernheimer, “What I Learned from My Time in Prison,” The Daily Stormer, 1 Oct 2014 (archived); Gersh v. Anglin, D. Mont., Order of Nov. 14, 2018; weev — Wikipedia; CNN, “Internet troll Andrew ‘Weev’ Auernheimer” (video); James Shaughnessy, “Weev, ATT and the difference between ‘Trolling’ and ‘Hacking’ – Clip From Technopolis Now!” (video, 2012); HuffPost Live, “Hacker Andrew ‘Weev’ Auernheimer On Conviction (Full Segment)” (video, Nov 29, 2012); LeakSourceNews, courthouse statement on sentencing day (video, Mar 18, 2013); HuffPost Live, “Bring It, Federal Government” (video, Apr 2014); weev on Nostr (npub1weev…w409xg)

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