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NYT Explores the World of Internet Trolls
prostoalex writes "New York Times magazine explores the history and status quo of Internet trolling. They look at the early days of Usenet trolling, current anonymous forums, and social networking pages as the latest venues for trolls: 'In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word troll to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a pseudo-naïve tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.'"
of "troll". I use the term to refer to someone pretending to be something they're not. E.g., someone who's got a short position in a stock, and pretends to be a nervous holder of a long position, or -- more close to home for me-- the RIAA PR troll who repeatedly writes a post about how he owned a 'family' owned record store which got put out of business by peer to peer file sharing, or who writes "no one hates the RIAA more than me, but.........."
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Whoever marked your comment as a troll sadly has no clue about the etymology of the word. Trolling is derived from a fishing technique, where the fish are caught with bait and hook on a line. That's certainly what the NY Times is doing (bain = article, hook = registration, fish = Yu0).
I just RTFA, and these guys are not internet trolls, they are just utter idiots.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Funny as fuck - please mod parent up!
One swallow does not a fellatrix make