On Tue, 22 May 2001, Deborah Day wrote:
Just out of interest, what exactly is a troll (in the flame sense?) I only know the sixties things with hair that recently made a comeback as things to go on the end of pencils but obviously there is another more specific meaning here.
A troll is someone who posts deliberately provocative/argumentative messages in order to yank people's chains. It's a selfish and childish sport. The principal exponent of the art of trolling is a chap called Terry Austin. If you go to groups.google.com and do a search on his name, you will find many examples of his work. In particular, see this link
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=terry+austin&hl=en&lr=&safe=of...
for a discussion of his methods and motives.
Trolling is done knowingly to annoy people for the troll's private amusement. The more responses a troll provokes, the greater their warm glow of inner pleasure. This makes trolls distinct from other sources of online annoyance, who are generally more sincere. Some examples of people who are not trolls, though they are sometimes mistaken for trolls:
Kooks: these people sincerely believe themselves to be lone geniuses standing tall against the establishment. They typically insist that they have disproved relativity. Vertner Vergon is an example:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=vergon&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&...
Ideologues: political or religious, they continually bang on with their own pet philosophy, impervious to counterarguments based on logic, history or morality. Many are big fans of Ayn Rand. "Quonster", who advocates a return to feudalism, is a good example:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=ayn+rand&start=10&hl=en&lr=&am...
The clinically insane: people suffering from mental illness, such as schizophrenia, which imbues their writings with a fundamental and unshakeable irrationality. While some such people do fire off screeds of vitriol, others are much more polite. Mike Corley, for example, is convinced that TV newsreaders are conspiring with MI5 against him -- but he generally comes across as a decent bloke:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author:mike+author:corley&start=40&...
Iain