Since there has been an internet there have always been trolls it seems. When I was little my older brother use to go on the first chat rooms and try to get under people skin (he grew out of it). I have never felt the need to hassle perfect strangers online (or in person for that matter), and I always figured that most trolls were young teens with little better to do with their time and happily ignored them.

But the past year or so has turned this theory on its head. My workplace put in really strict internet filters about a year ago and my lunch break surfing has been limited to a handful of news sites. Overtime I started to notice that the registered users who post in comments section of news articles are some of the most terrifying and awful people you will ever meet. I presume these people are all adults but there post far out strip any juvenile behavior you would find at any gaming forum that targets a supposedly less mature audiance.

So it is apparent to me that trolling has nothing to do with age. So here is my question what compels people to troll? and what kind of people are they?

Trolls crave one thing:

attention

In my experience, a dissenting opinion or a willingness to call "bullshit".

Attention is a means to an end, or possibly a side product (depending on the tactic).

Trolling comments is extremely unproductive. Comments have powerless rage by the bucketload and generate drama by themselves just fine. A dedicated comments troll doesn't make much of an impact.

When using a pure rage tactic, a troll needs to be at least as high on the totem pole as his target(s). Forums? Will do. Article? Great. Just posting "your all suck dick" in the comment section won't do. Comments are good for trickery and FUD, but it's not something you'd notice at first glance, and, let's face it, most people don't have the talent for it.

So no. People who "ironically" post stupid crap in the comments are just stupid, and the % of stupid people online has been unchanging for 19 years.

There are two kinds of trolls, I think: the people who believe what they are saying and are speaking in a space hostile to their opinion with the intention to aggravate, and those who do not believe what they say but find it funny to annoy. In terms of the former, there are obviously those who act like that without the intention of aggravating so much as the intention to be some kind of force against what they perceive to be stupid or uninformed opinions, and I wouldn't think of them as trolls so much as tactless or just plain blunt (and possibly not that smart, depending on what they have to say). Difficult to tell the difference in practice, but I reckon at least some of those commenters you talk about, Zookie, would fall into that category.

I don't know, the internet has a weird effect on people. Anonymity, distance and lack of consequence can turn some pretty nasty. Oh god the ironic troll. I can't tell you how much I loathe them.

hohoho what a load of bullshit. But you knew that already.

The problem is that so many people mix up trolling - a deliberate and desperate attempt to attract attention by posting abhorrent things and deliberately trigger a flamewar - with raging, or even simply by holding a minority opinion.

What makes a troll?

Come here and sit down a little. You see, there are times when a papa troll loves mama troll very much, and he invites her into the little bit darker, but softer part of the cave [...]

Certain (types of) people + the safety of anonymity = assholes. Maybe the worst ones weren't loved enough when they were children, I don't know. But the keyword is anonymity. Some people just plain think they are free to do anything they want if their identity cannot be revealed.

According to wikipedia:
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[3] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[4] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[5] The noun troll may refer to the provocative message itself, as in: "That was an excellent troll you posted."

LINK: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet[/url])
- Can never get it to work :P

Link troll!

(just kidding)

I hate trying to get it to work :P

Going by what I get accused of on here, (and I am not comparing *any* of my deeds to the magnitude of theirs), Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Jesus Christ, John Lennon, Henry David Thoreau, Socrates, and many, many others would be considered trolls.

Sure there are those that intentionally push peoples buttons for entertainment, and I think we are all guilty of that from time to time, but MOST people online define trolls as what most would call dissenters.

Aren't you guys too busy playing crappy ancient games with awful graphics that are nowhere near as good as any game on the Xbox 360 to be talking about stuff like trolling?

Some people just want to watch the world burn