Trolling is what happens when someone decides normal human interaction is overrated and instead tries to provoke, annoy, or derail others on purpose.

More precisely, trolling is posting or saying things not because they’re true or useful, but because they’re likely to trigger emotional reactions . That can include:

1. Deliberately offensive or absurd claims
2. Pretending to hold extreme views just to bait responses
3. Pursuing arguments for personal entertainment rather than wider discussion
4. Repeatedly derailing conversations

The key feature isn’t just being wrong or rude. It’s intent . A troll wants a reaction. If people get angry, confused, or dragged into pointless debate, the troll considers that a win.

The term itself comes from fishing, where you “troll” by dragging bait through the water and waiting for something to bite. Internet trolls just swapped fish for human attention, which, as it turns out, is even easier to catch.

Trolling is a art. Trolling should be done softly, and should leave plausible deniability until and unless you get to a point where blowing your cover maximizes lulz. Trolling should split the room into roughly the following groups: 85% bewildered bystanders, 10% angry, and 5% who see what you’re doing and either leave you alone or join in. Those numbers are fluid but the point holds that in an ideal situation the majority of people are either too confused to say anything or are on your side.

As I’ve grown up (read: I am not a thirteen year old boy anymore) I’ve started to realize that beyond being mean-spirited bigotry is just not very lulzy. In general good trolling shines a light on how someone who is being loud about their very strong and very wrong opinions online is a complete moron. Annoying the fuck out of hate groups is also acceptable.

Edit: there’s also just being weird and fucking with people by way of a harmless prank

In conclusion trolling is a land of contrasts.

Trolling is intentionally saying shit to get a rise out of people.

Going into a general gaming community and saying “Fortnite sucks ass” isn’t, necessarily, trolling.

Going into a Fortnite community to say the same thing is trolling.

And note: Just because it pissed you off doesn’t make it trolling. A person saying something you do not personally like or agree with isn’t trolling, but this seems to be how a ton of Lemmings define it.

The only kind of trolling I am cool with is when fishing.

Eh, it’s hard to nail down.

Shitposting is like trolling, except it’s fun.

Propaganda is like trolling, except it’s serious.

I guess the defining characteristics is that trolling is fun for the troll but not for anyone else.

Trolling comes in many forms. In general, I see trolling as provocative and/or deceitful attention seeking. Some is obviously fairly benign, a gentle reminder that it’s the internet and people cannot always be trusted. The worst of it is anti-social behavior which is destructive and harmful, not only to individuals but to social groups as a whole.

My thoughts on the anti-social stuff is that it’s perplexing. I’ve seen it tear online communities apart. The perplexing part isn’t necessarily why someone would want to do that. It’s easy enough to assume it’s about having control, being able to inflict harm on others, and other similar motivations. The perplexing part, to me, is that in sufficiently large groups, there are always other users who celebrate the drama and those who seem to lack any degree of impulse control to simply not feed the troll. So, it’s pretty much a guarantee that there will be people around to feed the troll(s). Without those essentially willful supporters, most troll(s) would be neutralized as they’d have no targets, nobody there to amplify their antics, and/or insufficient reward to continue trolling.

I have no time or interest in it. I might be an asshole from time to time, but it’s never to get my kicks. I’ve written and deleted many comments where I couldn’t find a way to give a person grace in what they said. Some slip through in a momentary lapse but for the most part I’m here for a moment of companionship with my fellow passengers of life. We can all go anywhere to be bitter; I’d rather not do it here.

So as you say what people consider trolling can vary greatly. Im old school and consider trolls like trolls under the bridge. In the old chat rooms they would come to stir things up usually by bringing up controversial subjects that would get the group arguing rather than talking about the subject in general. They generally would lurk and find out what made a particular group all heated. That is trolling to me. I worked at a school though and a student was describing what they though trolling was and it was like. anything. he liked pushed my shoulder and was like. see thats a troll. like doing anything annoying or mean in any way or something. The funny thing is I was extrememly sarcastic and was the first to jump on devils advocate in discussions. This is great when you are in actual casualy debate type of convos with pretty smart people that have the energy to do it. Sucks in the internet age though. People don’t pick up on it and I often say I fear being sarcastic lest I create a new conspiracy theory or belief. None of that was mean spirited though it was more of an intellectual challenge type of thing that was great when taken in stride. I never liked mean spirited trolling and as I said I even tamp down on my sarcasm and such as much as I can. Not just because of the internet though but also because I lack the energy. That is internet related as being sarcastic with people that don’t get it is exhausting.

Couple ppl I’ve seen who say nothing positive at all, about anything; they only say negative, critical things.

Or people who sign up on a message board with a deliberately extreme username and post highly insulting essays about entire groups of ppl. Just blocked one of those yesterday, in fact.

I believe most people who engage in trolling are like this:

Trolling is interacting with people, usually disingenuously, with the goal of eliciting a specific, usually negative, reaction. It certainly is possible to troll people by telling the truth (or without saying a word) and it’s certainly possible to be aiming for a reaction that isn’t negative, but usually there’s an element of being disingenuous to piss someone off.

Trolling is inevitable. Sometimes it’s politically motivated, sometimes it’s for fun, sometimes it’s literally a game with actual points. Some trolls are obvious, some are nearly impossible to tell from the genuine article.

The impact of trolling varies based on the subject, the target, and the method. Usually I find it’s best to ignore the possibility of trolling unless it’s obvious, simply due to the fact that assuming people are trolling may interfere with genuine communication, whereas assuming people are being genuine only interferes with meaningless interactions. Some say it’s better to ignore trolls, but personally I think it’s better to focus on content rather than intent. Interact when interaction is called for, ignore when it isn’t, and don’t pull your hair out wondering whether it’s a real conversation.

Before most trolling became toxic, there was the variant of light trolling which was nice and very fun. I remember one person presenting a talk at a hacker conference about trolling, but all they did was talking about trolling as in fishing… for the whole talk. It was a nice way to waste everyone’s time.

arguing an opposing point for no other reason than to piss people off, with no intention of reaching agreement or understanding

i troll nazis

Being purposely stupid or argumentative. Usually with the intent to upset other people and/or for the instigator’s own amusement.

My definition of trolling is when someone starts an argument with the word ‘so.’

It’s being intentionally disingenuous to elicit a negative response from others.

There are several subsets of trolls, though. It’s a spectrum.