What exactly is a troll / trolling?

[FlipMode]

Hello everyone! So it is a thread started by me, and the point of it is to ask a question to you lovely people on MLK forums, as you can probably tell by the thread title you clicked to get here and all.
So yeah, trolling or just calling someone a troll, what on earth is this? I mean I have asked a few people before on here and on YouTube which are the only two sites other than FaceBook I really use and each person says something different, as far as I can see there is funny trolling and then unfunny trolling which is more frowned upon in online communities or something.

So go ahead if someone can give me a real answer on this, because it has been more and more curious to me ever since I joined :D

[xLilacVixenx]

I believe it means a person who just says something off-topic and sometimes mean to get an emotional response from another person. It's really annoying.

[AdAstrα]

You don't know trolls? They live in the forest and have bushy tails...I think they eat people as well ;D

Trolling for me means lurking around a forum or website and posting some extremely random (often extremely inappropriate) things in an attempt to get a reaction out of someone. Usually these members are banned pretty much straight away by the admin, but sometimes they are a little bit more sneaky and sign up, introduce themselves properly etc. to trick people into believing that they come in peace, so to speak, which makes them less easily detected. They don't typically advertise anything or post chain letters (like spammers do), they just seek attention from other members who take their words too seriously. That's how I interpret it anyway. But I have also seen it being used as a term for acting silly or just plain weird.

[FlipMode]

You don't know trolls? They live in the forest and have bushy tails...I think they eat people as well ;D

Hey could you stop trying to provoke an emotional response from me by posting off topic things? Please?
And yeah I also heard that it was also a term to describe someone who is acting silly as well :/ I just thought that with all the different ideas on what one is that there must be an official definition of some sort too.

[xLilacVixenx]

She was just joking.

Trolling as said by Wikipedia:

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into a desired emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[2] In addition to the offending poster, the noun troll can also refer to the provocative message itself, as in "that was an excellent troll you posted". While the term troll and its associated action trolling are primarily associated with Internet discourse, media attention in recent years has made such labels highly subjective, with trolling being used to describe intentionally provocative actions outside of an online context. For example, recent media accounts have used the term troll to describe "a person who defaces internet tribute sites with the aim of causing grief to families."[3][4]

[Azdgari]

Basically it's someone who's trying to get a rise out of you. I consider a post with no merit whose only purpose is to anger someone and elicit an response to be a troll.

[Mike]

Trolling is a method of fishing where the fisherman drags a lure through the water, waiting for fish to bite. The lure is the troll, the fish is the victim member.

[SnowyCheetah]

Troll: As far as the Internet goes, a person who purposely angers people or otherwise makes them unhappy.

Trolling: As far as the Internet goes, the act of purposely angering people or making them otherwise unhappy.

Trolls love negative responses, hence the term "feeding trolls" refers to giving trolls negative responses to their actions.

[Panda-chan]

Finally, my strong suit!

TROLL - In an online community, a troll is a person who deliberately says or does something provocative in order to elicit an emotional response. The bigger the reaction of their victims, the more of a kick they get out of it. Trolls live off drama, thus "feeding the troll" is falling for their bait (whatever controversial thing they might have done) and making a big deal out of it. So a way to troll a Justin Bieber fan girl would be to post a shooped dead pic of him on a JB forum. Naturally, all hell would break loose, and the troll would be laughing like hell. IRL these people tend to be the ones that like to cause disruptions, make fun of others, and generally blow crap up.
You were right Flip, there are two categories of trolls, "lulz" trolls and "mean" trolls...

• Lulz trolls: Generally harmless, they only like to cause emotional reactions "for the lulz" (for laughs). Basically they just irritate a person so much with immature pranks that they completely lose it and start cussing them out online. People that get trolled by these trolls end up very humiliated but they either laugh it off or forget about it eventually. Example ***Mild cussing***
• Mean trolls: These types of trolls are a lot more cruel in their humor, and the pranks they play are much more complex and dangerous. They go far beyond what a lulz troll would do enough to make their victim actually emotionally wrecked (at the very least they might burst into tears). For example, this type of troll might spam up a site dedicated to the memory of a dead person with comments such as "he/she deserved to die for being _____". These sick people like to congregate in places like 4chan and ED and are easily provoked. Unlike a lulz troll which would usually just work alone, mean trolls attack in drones and remain totally anonymous. An excellent example of a victim of such trolls is Jessi Slaughter (google it, I'm not gonna link from here)

TROLLING - What sno said.

There you go, that's trolling in a nutshell (if you want additional info, pm me because trust me, I know about trolls lol. Take it from someone that is one. )

[PrincessKiara]

You don't know trolls? They live in the forest and have bushy tails...I think they eat people as well ;D

And they turn to stone when the sun shines on them.

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Anyway, thanks for making this topic, Flip. I`ve been wondering about this myself.