Define troll...

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Silly you!! You never bothered to think of where the internet word 'troll' got it's origins. It's not a new concept, not at all.

When I first heard it regarding the internet, I immediately thought of the fishing term 'trolling'....fishermen drag a baited line through the water, looking for 'bites'. Get the similarity?? People DID use it in real life before now!!


LOL that people think it's 'new'...really it's hilarious.

From wiki:

The verb troll originates from Old French troller, a hunting term. The noun troll comes from the Old Norse word for a mythological monster.[7]

In modern English usage, the verb troll is a fishing technique of slowly dragging a lure or baited hook from a moving boat.[8]

The word evokes the trolls of Scandinavian folklore and children's tales, where they are often creatures bent on mischief and wickedness.

The contemporary use of the term is alleged to have appeared on the Internet in the late 1980s,[9] but the earliest known example is from 1992.[10]

Early non-Internet related use of trolling for actions deliberately performed to provoke a reaction can be found in the military; by 1972 the term trolling for MiGs was documented in use by US Navy pilots in Vietnam.[11]

Trolls are those people that prey on people and cause hate for the lulz.

TROLLLLLLolololololololololol

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XD

It's never had a good definition. I first heard the term about ten years ago to describe what had previous been called "flamers". Flamers fell into two groups. The ones who would post ugly opinions just to get people to react, and those who would be a lot more subtle about it, leading someone down the garden path while everyone "sophisticated" enough would spot the joke and watch someone humiliated.

In my mind, the word "troll" came in to differentiate the two types of flamers and a troll was someone who was prepared to put in some hard work to build to a reaction (or just to humiliate without ever showing the pay-off).

Unfortunately, we seem to have regressed again with today's fad of simplifying language and now troll covers not just the two original types of flamer but also people who post stories in the hope of amusing others (they're not trolls or flamers, but humorists, satyrists, or surrealists. Often they'll do it anonymously. They don't want attention, they don't want to hurt anyone. They just want to make people laugh).

I have also seen attention-seeking in general described as trolling, plus having a genuine opinion (that just happens to disagree with the OP or another replier).

I'd prefer troll to mean people who have a deficit of power or control in their own lives and who try to extract it anonymously on the internet. I'd like it not to be seen as something positive.

However, where do you draw the line? Is a political columnist who deliberately tries to antagonise a politician from the safety of his newspaper column a troll? Maybe "trolling" is a spectrum of things.

Where you have one word which means multiple things, my urge has always been to create more words and to differentiate. This is against the prevailing tide of what is happening, though. There are probably twenty or thirty thousand words in this language which mean something with a negative connotation and they're all being replaced with just "fake" and "gay".

I'm convinced the peak of our language was about 1912 and we have deteriorated steadily for the last century. If you read postcards or letters of ordinary common people who left school at 12 and lived in poor towns, they are more literate than our politicians, teachers, and philosophers are today. It's extraordinary. I'm not blaming this on any generation, by the way. It's just an ongoing thing.

To me a troll is someone who is always deliberately malicious/hateful in a non-joking way. Someone who posts fake stories that nobody enjoys, just to try and get some undeserved attention from it. They just enjoy riling people up and making others angry for no reason.

This is a very good Thread but I'm not gonna lie-

I don't think Trolls exist.

Yeah sure there's "You Mad" "Problem?" and Cool Face but let me ask you this-

If those phrases are evidence for why Trolls exist then why isn't "My...what Big Eyes you have!" evidence for Werewolves existing?

We can all be Trolls depending on our viewpoints and the audience we are blathering to.

a trollster is fun and mean a troll is just mean a real troll lives under a bridge on a chain lol

The word 'troll' is in the dictionary. It has many differing definitions depending on it's usage. I agree with other posts that this word carries a negative connotation, so should be used sparingly; where proof exists that the poster has intentionally posted a question, comment or story as a fact, where factual evidence does not exist in order to invoke a reaction in their favour.
I like the transitive verb definition (1) according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary: to cause to move round and round.

By this definition, would a person who posts a religious argument, with their only proof(s) for it's validity, one or more concept(s) found in holy scripture, be a troll?

The word "troll" is on Wikipedia (both the mythical creature and the internet troll). The definition is someone who creates pointless drama on the net. But on this site, from what I've seen it also refers to someone who posts fake stories.

1.The first would be right
2.The other kind of troll is one who makes fake posts for attention or to upset people...

The funniest people in the internet.

I think the fact that it's an easy accusation led people to get confused as to what it means.

If your youtube video wasn't made with the purpose of pissing off the person you did, then that's a side effect, not trolling. How much you enjoyed it is irrelevant; that's like saying, "i was cleaning the murk out of the pond with a net, and a trout jumped in! I'm a fisherman!"

Also, it doesn't always mean antagonizing. It just means manipulating people into entertaining you. If you logged onto a fisherman's forum and convinced them to hunt for a nonexistent whale, you successfully trolled.

Most importantly though: who gives a shit. Is trolling really a word we should care in the least about?

Troll. Noun, vb. ( TURR- Roll)
Definition: CLASSIFIED. *trollface*

To me a troll is basically the class clown, but in the online world. Some think they're funny, others are annoyed by their posts.

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This face is basically depicting a troll after trolling.