What is an Internet Troll? Details on Internet Trolls and Trolling
Written by Pavan Kumar on June 9, 2009
So, have you ever heard of internet trolls? I guess most of you have not heard of this term, but I am sure you have come across an internet troll many times. If you are a blogger, mostly you have got strange comments which are no way linked with the topic of your post, all such comments are the results of trolls.
Wikipedia says this while defining an Internet troll:
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
Now, you know what exactly means by troll. If you observe blog comments by trolls, they don’t include a hyperlink neither in their url field nor in the comment they post. Their intention is just to get their comment approved and put on some heat about what they are trying to discuss, once the discussion is on, start abusing other users with provoking words.
If you have observed popular internet forums, these internet trolling people simply start a controversial topic and sometimes, they start getting very good response and their threads will be filled up with numerous replies. If you start worrying about the discussed contoversial topics, internet trolls enjoy them and keep boosting the topic to get more and more response. Check out the following video [NSFW] to know exactly how trolls work.
So, now you know what exactly these trolls do. Trolls in many cases use unique identities or otherwise fake logins in order to bypass registrations. If you want to know the best way to get rid of them, its by ignoring. Ignoring trolls is popularly known as Do Not Feed The Trolls [DNFTT]. Let us see more how they take advantage of people who are bothered about the their words. Check out this video below till the end to see the effect of trolling on both the one who hits and the one being hit.
Though the internet trolling is the word popular these days, but the trollers are said to have existed since a long long time since the beginning of civilization. The following Boing Boing TV video shows the history of Internet trolls, which say trolling was even present during the period of Egyptian pyramids.
Now you know quite ins and outs of trolling. There is a popular saying, if you want to catch a thief, think like him. Same is with trollers – if you want to know more about internet trolls, think like/be one. Here is a video with which you can know how trolls do behave and work for fun.
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