Friday, April 07, 2017

Troll

troll2
trōl/
verb
gerund or present participle: trolling

1.
informal
make a deliberately offensive or provocative online post with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them.
"if people are obviously trolling then I'll delete your posts and do my best to ban you"
2.
fish by trailing a baited line along behind a boat.
"we trolled for mackerel"

~

Internet troll
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Trolling" redirects here. For other uses, see Troll (disambiguation).
"Do not feed the troll" redirects here. For the Wikipedia advice, see Wikipedia:Deny recognition.
It has been suggested that Shitposting be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since January 2017.

In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion,[3] often for the troll's amusement.

This sense of both the noun and the verb "troll" is associated with Internet discourse, but also has been used more widely. Media attention in recent years has equated trolling with online harassment. For example, the mass media have used "troll" to mean "a person who defaces Internet tribute sites with the aim of causing grief to families."[4][5] In addition, depictions of trolling have been included in popular fictional works, such as the HBO television program The Newsroom, in which a main character encounters harassing persons online and tries to infiltrate their circles by posting negative sexual comments.

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