2019 was an interesting year in observing troll evolution.

out_of_the_blue went on as strong as ever until the content moderation article on vaccines, and really went the whole hog with his "people who log in again after posting anonymously is proof that I’m right about something" theory. He certainly picked a very odd place to vanish into the ether considering that he’s been framing 2019 as some big winning streak for copyright. Granted, he wasn’t wrong, with Article 17, CASE and FOSTA breathing down everyone’s necks, but then there’s also the incidents mentioned by the OP. There was a time when HADOPI was expected to be the solution to piracy in France and it’s achieved nothing outside of leading to the arrest of one pirate… ‘s husband. The post-Prenda days of copyright enforcement are going to make it much harder for trolls and plaintiffs to get away with swindling as easily as they used to.

The same could not, of course, be said of John Smith, previously having gone under the pseudonym of MyNameHere in a long list of other poorly thought out nicknames to the point where Mike was exasperated enough to point it out. To his credit, John Smith was his most successful attempt at masquerading as someone else, using the persona of a "concerned" copyright holder. Then the cracks started to show in his stories about being a powerful, connected Hollywood writer who got his mailing lists of e-book readers stolen. And who could forget his consistent rants about Section 230, and assertions that he was the alpha male on the site asserting his god-given right to mock beta cucks because women slept their way to power and privilege?

Once the facade slipped, he opted to insist that Mike is somehow a small fish in a large criminal conspiracy he’s been chasing for a long time and his obsession with Techdirt is clearly not because he hates Masnick with a deep-seated loathing that borders on yandere-level affection… which in turn outed himself as a long-time visitor of the site even though the name "John Smith" was only used from late 2018 onwards. Eventually, angered that people could put 2 and 2 together to realize that John Smith’s frequent typos matched MyNameHere’s patterns when replying furiously on his phone… he just lost it. He’s now devolved to swearing vengeance, lawsuits and rape against anyone he disagrees with, and making disparaging remarks on Mike’s family as a demonstration of how classy copyright supporters are. May 2019 was the worst (read: best) time for his frame of mind, with Strike 3 getting dealt another blow in the courts causing him to throw an epic temper tantrum. A close follow-up was his rants against Mike after Shiva Ayyadurai gave up on his appeal, and insinuating that Masnick knew who he was and that Mike would soon get what was coming to him. John Smith still shows up regularly to complain about Section 230 regardless of whether articles talk about it, like he’s picking up the slack after out_of_the_blue’s passing.

Meanwhile, the possibly real Shiva Ayyadurai, aka Hamilton, has not been a thing for a while. Not having an ongoing lawsuit and political campaign takes a lot of the sting out of his punches, if you could call whiny mosquito bites punches. This despite the impeachment vote unlikely to pass the Republican-majority Senate. You’d think that this is the sort of bait that Hamilton would crow like a raven over, but then again Hamilton has not been the particularly faithful or loyal sort.

Richard Bennett’s been hard at work trying to defray the public backlash levied at ISPs. The death of net neutrality was a hard-fought war on his side and he’s still trying to put out fires, particularly the states all telling Ajit Pai to screw off and let them regulate what his department outright refused to. His last signed in comment is dated 12th November (cleaning Reese’s pieces from Ajit Pai’s rectal cavity is a full-time job, after all) but it’s only a matter of time before his rage at Karl Bode still leading a breathing existence boils over again.

average_joe/antidirt still makes it in from time to time. No longer capable of citing court cases to fit his skewed "forever minus a day is still limited copyright" views, just throwaway one-liners about how he dislikes Masnick and wish this website was shut down. Tough tits for him.

Michael L. Slonecker is an even bigger rarity, though when he shows up, he demonstrates his evergreen dedication towards rushing to the defense of anyone with a cultlike reverence towards copyright… so it’s business as usual for antidirt’s biggest diehard fan.

Somehow Techdirt managed to pick up some anti-vaxxers along the way, likely due to the Trump presidency sputtering and failing to deliver on the Mexico border wall and Hilary Clinton’s arrest. JdL and John88518something number among the more prominent ones who have the testicles to sign in on an account, but nobody comes close to the new resident nurgle cultist who has doubled down on insisting that the smallpox vaccine should not have existed. He seems to be still keen on polluting the threads and minds in 2020. I say he’s free to bring it on.

ROGS is… pretty fucked up, not gonna lie. Hella shame because he didn’t start out too nutty, commenting on police brutality threads like a rational human being, compared to John Smith’s moniker of Whatever who would gleefully stroke one out at the suggestion of an unarmed civilian getting shot. Goodness knows what madness would drive a man to work at becoming Hamilton’s replacement of all things.

And what of other doomed trolls of the past? bob, the predecessor to John Smith’s worship of IP addresses as incontrovertible evidence? darryl, who vividly begged his Australian government to reject fair use so his countrymen could pay higher prices to watch Game of Thrones? Maybe they found true love in each other and adopted a family of solar panels.