This email was delivered to you by The Free Internet, a Business Online Group company. http://www.thefreeinternet.net --------------------------------------------------------------- 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.
Debbie
Deborah Day wrote:
Just out of interest, what exactly is a troll (in the flame sense?)
The online use of the term stems from the fishing practice known as trolling, which involves dragging a moving lure from a boat. It also has inevitably borrowed some connotation from the critter that lives under bridges and eats billy goats, though that's actually a completely unrelated word which just happens to be spelled the same.
Originally, to "troll" in a newsgroup was to make a deliberate misstatement (the lure), with the intention of trying to get overly enthusiastic posters (the fish) to jump in to correct and/or argue with you. It was, and often still is, a relatively good-natured game (by Usenet standards, anyway.) The trolls are usually not emotionally loaded, and the idea is to make them look as casual as possible.
Eventually, the term also came to be used for the decidedly *not* good-natured practice of making deliberately inflammatory statements (whether believed by the poster or not) in an attempt to stir people up and start a fight. This is more specifically known as "flamebaiting". Flamebaiters normally come in two persuasions: the ones who don't actually believe what they're saying (or don't care whether it's true or not) are generally just looking for attention; if you reply, you're giving them what they want. The ones who post bizarre, paranoid rants and *do* believe them are frequently emotionally unbalanced, if not actually mentally ill. There's not much you can do for that lot, but it's fairly pointless to try to hold a rational conversation with them, because they literally can't do it. Hence, in general, the best thing to do with a chronic flamebaiter is to ignore it.
- Lisa
-- Lisa Williams: lisa@eroicafans.org or lcw@dallas.net Lisa's Video Frame Capture Library: http://framecaplib.com/ From Eroica With Love: http://eroicafans.org/
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
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Deborah Day -
Iain Coleman -
Lisa Williams