In the context of the Internet, a troll is a person who posts inflammatory messages intended to cause a disruption in discourse. The word is also often used to describe such messages.
Calling someone a troll makes assumptions about a writer's motives that are impossible to determine, whereas using the verb (calling a post "trolling") describes the reception of a post without making assumptions about motives. Such assumptions would generally be an example of the fundamental attribution error; i.e. inferring that behavior results from a person's nature or personality rather than examining behavior in the context of events surrounding the behavior. In other words, trolling may have more to do with context than with personality. Also, it may be possible to troll unintentionally. Regardless, both users and posts are commonly labelled as trolls when their content upsets people.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 08:11 am (UTC)