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Is trolling an art or a psychological disorder?

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Trolling on the internet....

  • ...is an art.

  • .....is a psychological disorder.

Results are only viewable after voting.
I'm a real-life troll, not so much on interwebs because my reputation on interwebs is more important... I don't mean it that way because I expect people to figure it out early on, but they don't and I keep doing it anyways.
 
Trolling is an extremely broad form of expression, and has probably been used since at least five minutes after the first ape-men held the first conversation. As a broad form of communication, it can be compared to music. Lars Ulrich, Skrillex, and a baby smashing pans together all could be said to make a kind of music. Most of us would probably agree that Ulrich makes actual music, some of us would agree on Skrillex, and nobody but the baby's mom is likely to say that the baby makes actual music. It's the exact same with trolling. For every Jonathan Swift out there, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of copypasta and elephant-hurling retards that mistake quantity for quality. That doesn't mean that quality trolling (or even productive trolling) doesn't exist, or is a new phenomenon.
 
Humor has to be funny to the target, too. If you're just pissing on someone else to feel superior or to be amused by their pain, you're an asshole.
 
HamburgerBoy said:
Many of the great artists in history have had psychological disorders.
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So to have many of the top scientists!

I don't know that they tend towards psychopathy, but many seem a little or a lot less connected to reality than the rest of us.

I doubt there are very many artists and scientists that troll with the intent to harm people...


Brian
 
trolling is akin to boredom.

a troll is usually concocting ways to get a rise out of people.

most people picture a troll as a basement dweller which is not the case.

most of the time it's the person who is fighting a troll who has 15 wiki pages open trying to find way to prove the troll wrong and its the troll who get a laugh from it.
 
I'd say it can be an art. I'm thinking in terms of entering a heated discussion, taking a stance you don't really believe in but know a lot of people will disagree with, and arguing that fucker into the ground. You have to make sense and pound out a few good points to keep them engaged. That happens a lot in religion threads.
 
master_shake_ said:
trolling is akin to boredom.

a troll is usually concocting ways to get a rise out of people.

most people picture a troll as a basement dweller which is not the case.

most of the time it's the person who is fighting a troll who has 15 wiki pages open trying to find way to prove the troll wrong and its the troll who get a laugh from it.
Click to expand...

/because Canada?
 
SlitheryDee said:
I'd say it can be an art. I'm thinking in terms of entering a heated discussion, taking a stance you don't really believe in but know a lot of people will disagree with, and arguing that fucker into the ground. You have to make sense and pound out a few good points to keep them engaged. That happens a lot in religion threads.
Click to expand...

That must mean you're religious. If you can pretend not to be, then why are you?
 
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justoh said:
That must mean you're religious. If you can pretend not to be, then why are you?
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I only troll cyclist and pit bull threads. I am an atheist though.

There is something to be said for someone who can argue both sides of an issue though. If you know all the other guy's arguments before he even makes them, yet you can still disagree with him for reasons that he hasn't ever considered, you definitely have the upper hand in a debate. So trolling can be good mental exercise for debating.
 
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It's an art.

People post inane/stupid/wtf stories just to see the readers reaction. They take the story posted too seriously from a person they don't know in real life. They could actually build a fake character for a certain amount of time to cover themselves. Denilfloss (RIP) comes in mind, the Nowheremom story. A lot of people fell for this.
 
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