This is a post for The Weblog

After reading and somewhat participating in the comments pendant (new favorite word!) to this post, I have once again been exercised by the question that really defines our times: why don't blogs have better trolls?  Ought J, aka K, aka low-rent empirical positivist, aka several other things, even be considered a troll?

I think that trolling can't really be done well on blogs or web-based message boards, at least not nearly as well as on Usenet.  IMO, while Usenet-based trollings can be within one group, the prototypical troll depends on cross-posting between groups, one of which is trolled and the other of which is the troller, or at least the home group of the troller, because trollings are essentially ironic: the trolled audience doesn't know what's going on (or maybe they do know, but just! can't! help! responding!), and not just the troller, but also his audience, knows not only that a trolling is occurring, but also that the trolled audience is completely taken in.  It's just not as fun otherwise.  In fact it's kind of pathetic if you're the only one trolling a group; with cross-posting, or trolling within a group where some people take up the troll and others are taken in, there's some semblance of a social dynamic.

The thing that disqualifies J/K/etc from being a troll, more than anything else, is that he seems to be compelled to come back, to the point of using proxies to get around IP bans.  That's the kind of behavior you want to elicit in the victims of a trolling: no matter how absurd, demonstrably false, or ignorant your behavior is, they just have to respond again.  The word comes from the fishing method, not the guy who lives under the bridge; you hook the victims.  Not to mention he keeps hanging around the same site, where everyone knows him (he does change his name, admittedly, but style will out).  You can't troll in those circumstances!  But mostly it's the fact that he seems genuinely convinced of his position.  He's not trolling, he's trying to get in an argument, or possibly just be a jerk, and that disqualifies him—trolling is a performance, like the more implausible claims of a bullshitter.

It would be interesting to find out when the word for the person who commits trolls started its inexorable change from "troller" to "troll".  It would be terrible if "troll" came to mean "some jerk who hangs around", and lost all the creativity and, dare I say it, art were lost.

I think the best chances you would have for trolling on blogs or the like would be to target one with a fairly large commentership (such that the influx of, say, five to ten new commenters wouldn't be remarkable), and to organize it at another site (so it's not just you and whoever happens to find out).  Also, you would have to pick your topic pretty carefully—if I were going to troll Atrios, it wouldn't be about politics; instead, I'd make an error about some piece of common, or at least not-too-esoteric, knowledge and hope natural pedantry would lead someone to point it out.  Though it's not reall necessary to avoid the stated topic, I guess.

I asked the good folks of alt.religion.kibology to tell me about some smashing trollings and here are some: How to get herpes, The UN controls UNsenet, Carmaggeddon is evil, even prime numbers (also), Why don't I weigh less when I expire?/"Inert" means "highly corrosive".  Most of these seem to involve Beable van Polasm, when I wanted Ted Frank.

Comments

[ogged]

Chun.

[ben wolfson]

Oh, I forgot about him. I could never figure that guy out anyway.

[Chopper]

Man, I'd forgotten the A.T. invasion of R.P.C.!

That was some funny, funny shit.

[Adam Kotsko]

How do you know that we weren't thinking of a different slang convention, based on the mythical creature rather than the fishing technique?

[ben wolfson]

I looked into your souls.

[Matt McIrvin]

That horse has left the barn; the word "troll" has become irrevocably debased, through influence from the name of the mythical creature, and also because, since stupid flamebaiters are a thousand times as common as witty merry pranks, people had more need for a convenient single-syllable term for the former. I'm resigned to it.

Anyway, the a.r.k use of "troll" as an imaginative cross-newsgroup hoax is already a modification of its original Usenet meaning on alt.folklore.urban, which had nothing to do with crossposting, and was a post in which an old-timer on the newsgroup brings up a topic that was beaten to death ages ago in order to watch the newbies volunteer what they think is helpful information.

[ben wolfson]

Really? Fuck.