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* CYBERSPACE *
* A biweekly column on net culture appearing *
* in the Toronto Sunday Sun *
* *
* Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer *
* Free for online distribution *
* All Rights Reserved *
* Direct comments and questions to: *
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TROLLIN' keeps those Newbies Rollin'
The USENET news system has produced a phenomenon known as
trolling. Trolling on USENET is roughly the equivalent of its
rod-and-reel namesake. You tease your prey (unsuspecting
readers of a newsgroup) with a fake post, and delight when they
take the bait.
Outrage is invariably what the troller seeks from his prey, yet
outrage is not the bait. Subtlety is the key. Subtlety
transmogrifies trolling from being a waste of bandwidth to a
clever art form.
Bad trolls are either incredibly easy to detect (e.g., messages
like "I'm the Devil!!!" on alt.christnet) or are simply
indistinguishable from any other rant. That kind of trolling is
a waste.
A lot of bad trolls come out of university .edu accounts.
Sometimes a student will forget to log out of a terminal in the
computing centre and some joker will jump on the terminal and
cross-post an insulting message to the four corners of the net
under the less-than-vigilant student's account name.
A good troll mimics the form and style of an intellectual
affront, yet provides one or more sly tip offs of its bogus
nature. Those who are paying attention and find these "escape
hatches" are rewarded with the same sense of intellectual
superiority one gets by completing a crossword puzzle not
published in a TV guide.
Occasionally a good troll will generate a particularly
hilarious bit of user outrage. Kook hunters who roam USENET
keep an eye open for nominees for what is known on
alt.usenet.kooks as the Hook, Line, and Sinker Award. The
latest catch can be viewed at
www.wetware.com/mlegare/winnersh.html.
For obvious reasons, April 1 is prime troll season. A fantastic
archive of hoax posts, some dating back to the mid-'80s, can be
found at http://sunsite.unc.edu/dbarberi/april-fools.html/.
I occasionally try my hand at trolling in alt.conspiracy. A
couple of mine, "Flying Truck Tires of Death" and "The Toronto
Cabal FAQ" can be found at www.interlog.com/eye/Misc/Cabal/.
Even better, Val "val@io.org" Dodge's must-read, cabal-busting
masterpiece can be found at the very same site.
Trolls can backfire, however. Once, to mock the tobacco
industry, I claimed to be the president of a pro-smoking lobby
group called Child Puffing Rights (I thought the acronym CPR
was an obvious escape hatch). After a few ungracious emails
from people who saw no humor in my jest, I quietly withdrew my
membership, so to speak.
A nudge down on the tasteless scale, a B.C. fellow by the name
of Robert Trent once claimed in rec.pets.cats to have killed
his girlfriend's cat. If the alt.bigfoot FAQ
(www.io.com/~wilf/bigfoot/) is to be believed, a distraught
American user of rec.pets.cats actually called long distance to
report the fellow to the RCMP and even couriered print outs.
Soon after, a Mountie contacted Trent and determined not only
was there no cat but, as one might have suspected, there was no
girlfriend. Just one weird little guy with a sick sense of
humor.
Be careful what you troll for. It might bite back.
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