Don't feed the trolls

The ‘net has given rise to many varied technical, pseudo-technical, and not-technical-at-all-and-often-very-silly terms over the years that it’s been around. Aside from ‘spam’, quite possibly one of the more frequently used terms is ‘troll’.

These days, troll is more often used to describe someone who is just more or less randomly spewing offensive garbage in chatrooms or messageboards in a blatant attempt to tick people off. This type of post is described in the Jargon File’s entry for ‘troll’ as sense two:

1. n. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand – they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, “Oh, ignore him, he’s just a troll.”

However, prior to this usage, troll was primarily a verb:

1. v.,n. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase “trolling for newbies” which in turn comes from mainstream “trolling”, a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.

I’ve always preferred this usage of the term, though this style of troll has become far less common as of late. My best guess for this is that quite simply, it’s far easier just to blatantly spout off some offensive drivel without taking the time and effort to craft it in a creative enough way that more experienced readers will merely read it, recognize it for what it is, and move on, leaving the more clueless to vent their anger in the ensuing thread.

Today, I stumbled across a somewhat rare item, in a posting that actually lies somewhere between the two definitions. It leans a little more heavily towards the second definition, but the author did take the time to craft a misleading first paragraph before moving on to the actual content. I’d dock them points for a few reasons (it’s a bit too blatantly attempting to aggravate; doesn’t have the subtle wink-between-the-lines that a true definition one troll should; and its posting in a general-purpose forum — the Seattle LiveJournal community — means that there’s no specific topic for the author to work within, giving them more reign to just pick a topic intended to offend), but I do have to give them a few points for at least making some attempt to be a little creative.

As the original LiveJournal post will very likely be deleted before too much longer, here’s what triggered all this.

My lovely wife and I have a new baby girl! We just brought her home today. She was born on Christmas eve at exactly 9:24PM. She is 6 pounds and 2 ounces, and she is so perfectly beautiful!! I was hoping she would have been born on Christmas day, so she would have the same birthday as the baby Jesus, but no matter, I’m just so happy!!

Anyway.. my question is.. Does anyone know where in Seattle I can take her to be circumcized? They wouldn’t do it at the hospital… the doctors just gave me a funny look. So if anyone knows of a place in or around Seattle that specializes in female circumcision, I would appreciate the info. It doesn’t have to be a certified doctor or anything.. as long as he knows what he’s doing.

Thank you all! Merry Merry Christmas!! :)

Seen any other worthy definition one trolls around lately?