What is 'trolling'?

Fnord.

 

I clearly wasn't talking about you.

 

I sincerely thought it was a nice try.

 

stealing that

 

Perhaps it is understandable to take such needling in a negative way if it comes from a poster who seems to have a problem with you. And perhaps you should give some thought to other situations in which that might be the case.

 

The word "troll" is about as meaningful as the word "hater."

 

Talk about trollin' ...

 

There is no faster way to get someone to be a troll than to accuse them of being a troll.

"Oh, you think I'm a 'troll' because I didn't enjoy this story your friend wrote? I'll show you trolling."

 

From a look at the current seascape, I guess that the idea is to chum the waters a bit before baiting the trolling line.

 

Conversion (law) - Wikipedia

 

First of all, I really like ya, Songbird, but that's bull. Trolling is one of the most prevalent elements of social media today.

What trolling comes down to here is that we're mostly unknown quantities to each other. We like to think we know each other, but we're sitting behind anonymous identies and anonymous personas. (And that's fine with me. I've generally rolled my eyes when people use their real name, like, what's he/she trying to prove?)

What I'm saying is this. What you think might be a throwaway line if delivered to your friends over some beers can often come off as arrogance or one-upmanship or condescension to someone who doesn't know you. We don't have the frame of reference to know when someone is kidding here.

You may be the funniest guy in your little circle with 40 consecutive tongue-in-cheek one-liners. To strangers, it probably comes off differently.