by Steve Harris on August 1, 2008

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-naÃ¯ve” 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.” — NYT article: Malwebolence

When it becomes taboo to talk about certain topics, much less tie them together in the kind of truth that saves groups from themselves, the only people who speak the truth are some outsiders (other outsiders are just loser posers). Trolls — using anonymity, hacker technique for obscurity, and some basic psychological knowledge — are information terrorists for the truth.

Tags: activism, trolling, trolls

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