Tuesday's Word: Troll

In Internet terminology, a troll is a person who enters an established community such as an online discussion forum and intentionally tries to cause disruption, often in the form of posting messages that are inflammatory, insulting, incorrect, inaccurate, absurd, or off-topic, with the intent of provoking a reaction from others. Trolls can also be existing members of such a community that rarely post and often contribute no useful information to the thread, but instead make argumentative posts in an attempt to discredit another person, more often than not based on what they thought was said rather than what was actually said by the other person, concentrating almost exclusively on facts irrelevant to the point of the conversation, with the intent of provoking a reaction from others. The key element under attack by a troll is the forum or groups hegemony. Hegemony refers to the recognized and agreed upon power structure of the said group or community. To this extent, a troll does not necessarily have to make malicious or incorrect comments. For example, a liberal minded person who approaches a forum frequented by right-wing neo-nazis, may be considered a troll, even if no lies or attacks are made.
A person who retaliates (using what ever means) as a result of a misunderstanding (or as a way of rebelling against the over zealous application of rules) is not a troll. A troll is a person who approaches a board with the specific intention of destroying a forum's hegemony, either with no particular motive or provocation in mind, other than to be purely destructive or if the motive or provocation is against the ethos of the board. For example, a neo-nazi approaching a jewish forum with the intention of attacking the members, purely because the neo-nazi knows the forum to contain Jewish members, may be considered a troll. A Jewish member of the said forum, who becomes angry with the neo-nazi and breaks the rules in gaining revenge against the neo-nazi, and who is subsequently banned and who then begins to rebel, is not a troll.
The general element that determines whether a malicious user is a troll or not, is the level of indignant emotions present in the person, coupled with the persons history with the forum or group. An indignant user who has had a previous normal relationship with the group is not a troll, even if the user uses methods of attack that are characteristic of a troll attack.
The term Troll is often used as an insult in online communications, resulting in it being largely misapplied.
Wikipedia

Blog readers, trolls often hide their identies under such names as Sassy, Jimbo, Rudy, Rhesus, Looks, and Tim Murphy. There are others, but who besides their parole officers would care? Here is one gem sent by "Jimbo:"

Jimbo said...
Fair warning.David Rice, calling me "Miss" does not insult me. The fact that you think it does is rather sad.I suggest you stop bad mouthing me (Rhesus Pieces, Jimbo, Look down on them). You can ask "Pinny" what happened to the last blogger that did. I'll just tell you that he no longer has his blog.Don't even talk about me, or we'll settle this on your blog and on the blogs of anyone who dares to show on yours. We could also settle this face to face.If you want to talk about me make your comments to me at this email address:itsjimbo@verizon.net