What Is a Troll?

If you've participated in any conversation on the Internet or on the USENET system, you've probably encountered a troll. If you've ever wanted to know exactly what makes a troll troll, read further.

There are two ways that you can understand what a troll is. One definition of the term refers to a post that is laid out on an Internet forum or on a USENET newsgroup as bait. The term "troll" in this case is a reference to the style of fishing where the fisher puts bait in the water and pulls it along slowly, waiting for something to bite. Using this definition, the post itself is referred to as the troll.

The second way that you can understand a troll is as a reference to the person themselves. A forum or newsgroup troll is a person who deliberately puts offensive, confrontational, dishonest or factually incorrect material in a post in an effort to start a conflict. Trolling can get much more vicious than this, however, and it sometimes crosses the line into Internet bullying.

Dealing with the Trolls

"Don't feed the trolls" is one of the most common directives that you will hear on USENET newsgroups and on Internet forums. Basically, this is a slang way for asking the users of the forum or the newsgroup to simply ignore the types of posts that trolls crank out. Most of the time, this is actually the best way to get rid of trolls. Trolls aren't looking to participate in a conversation: they're looking to start a fight. If they don't get the conflict that they are after, they will usually move along and look for another group of people to bother.

In fact, the worst possible thing that you can do when somebody puts a troll post on a thread that you started is to reply to the troll post. Most of the time, moderators will hop in at some point and simply delete the post and remove the person who posted it from the newsgroup or from the Internet forum. This is the best way to get rid of these problems. If you reply to the post, the troll will certainly reply to your reply and it will go on and on. The reason that people ask that nobody feed the trolls is because these endless, confrontational and completely pointless conversations are simply annoying to the other people on the Internet forum or the USENET newsgroup and will cause them to go somewhere else.

Trolls are everywhere. You will inevitably find them, no matter what type of Internet interaction you participate in. If you're having a serious problem with a troll, such as one who's been threatening or bullying, you may wish to take more serious action than simply contacting the moderators of the group. If it is simply somebody trying to be a nuisance, however, the first step should be to just ignore them and the second step should be to continue ignoring them for the foreseeable future. Given enough time, they will simply go somewhere else.

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