Well, what did you think RITE/ROTE was really about? Srs bizniz? Surely not.
Trolling (or griefing) is the act of being a deliberate nuisance, and often done for TEH LULZ. Which in turn is an ambiguous justification for just about anything done on the internet. Think of it as being similar to schadenfreude, except sometimes it’s also used to justify activism, vigilantism, bullying and terrorist threats.
The success of trolling, and achieving THE LULZ, is down to reflexivity. Sure, there many different types of trolls, and not all of them follow the hive mentality of some online cultures, but usually there is some sort of subversion of popular culture, a reference to an obscure inside joke, and the risk that the recipient will understand what you’re talking about.
In short, the internet has a culture of pranksters pranking pranksters. Or trolls trolling trolls. When someone understands the reference, they have the opportunity to reverse-troll — play dumb and follow the rules of never revealing you understand the prank, but retort with a counter-reference to keep the other person guessing. The troll who outdoes the other with the highest level of obscurity, wins.
Are you guilty of trolling? To what extent?
