Watch Reddit's Biggest Troll Defend Himself

Michael Brutsch, a 49-year-old man who posted on Reddit under the name Violentacrez until Gawker's Adrian Chen outed him, went on Anderson Cooper 360 to defend himself on camera for the first time.

Michael Brutsch, a 49-year-old man who posted on Reddit under the name Violentacrez until Gawker's Adrian Chen outed him, went on Anderson Cooper 360 to defend himself on camera for the first time.

Brutsch's Reddit persona became famous for creating offensive subreddits, most notably r/jailbait. It was Brutsch's masterwork, and it drew Cooper's attention a year ago. It makes sense, then, for Brutsch to attempt to atone for his Internet sins on Cooper's show once he could no longer hide behind Violentacrez.

We say sort of because Brutsch's apology is half-hearted at best. "Well, I am to some degree apologizing for what I did," he tells the interviewer. "Again, I was playing to an audience of college kids. And you know, when two years ago, when all of this was at its height, the audience was appreciative and supportive of the sort of gallows humor that I put out there."

But it was all worth it for Brutsch. He did it all for the upvotes, yeah, the upvotes. "Honestly, the biggest thrill I got was those meaningless internet points." Brutsch blamed Reddit for his behaviour, too. "Reddit encouraged and enabled this kind of behavior." He brought along the gold-plated bobble head the company sent him for the traffic generated by r/jailbait. [Update: Andy Baio points out the interview doesn't mention the gold-plated bobble head was a community-voted award for "Worst Reddit," which doesn't excuse anything. It was still an award for a jailbait subreddit.]

This is, we suspect, one of the final chapters in Brutsch's narrative. He's been outed, backlashed, backlash-to-the-backlashed, and now he's had his national television defense. Like any great cultural offender, he's lived out his purpose. He's lost his real life job, but not the Internet. Brutsch was still appearing on Reddit as of a few days ago. Meanwhile, the creeps march on.