On Trolling

Whether you do it a little or a lot, intentionally needling unknown readers on the Internet by making supposedly innocent comments is trolling. It’s possible to troll without being a habitual troll. It’s like fishing: I’m not a fisherman, but I’ve still gone fishing. If you troll people all the time then yes, you’re a troll; but you can be someone who isn’t generally a troll yet still engages in trolling once in a blue moon. It’s the difference between doing something once or twice or making a habit out of it.

Your intended targets don’t really come into it. The essence of trolling is saying something that you know will provoke people for the fun of watching themselves get in a lather, usually without your further intervention (although the true masters can keep it going with further supplementary provocation). In real life it’s hard to pull off, because only the best poker-faced trolls could watch the resulting apoplexy while keeping a straight face—or they’d have to walk away and miss the fun. Online, it’s easy.

Is being a troll a pre-existing condition, a fact about someone’s personality no matter how much they actually do it? Or is one’s “trollness” made up of a number of repeated instances of trolling, with someone becoming a habitual troll, a capital-T Troll, past a certain point? I’m of the latter view.

It’s risky to troll online communities that don’t know you well or at all: do it once, and for all they know you’re someone who does it a thousand times, and they’ll treat you as such. If they’ve known you for years, though, and know that you don’t make a habit of it, you might be able to get away with it now and then. But it’s still trolling.

Reworked from workshopping comments from October 2006.