The Art of Trolling

As a fairly frequent member to a certain forum (shouting out to the TORnsibs!), there is one thing that annoys me more than anything. Well, maybe not more than anything. But it annoys me a lot. Trolls. They post and disrupt the goings-on in this family-friendly and peaceful forum, and I wonder why they feel like it's necessary to post.

On occasion, the posts are amusing. There was one post a couple of years ago that will take me too long to find a link to right now, but some idiot posted with a subject line similar to:

Y R THER ONLY GIRLS HEAR IF LOTR IS A BOYS MOVIE

The content of the post was just as obnoxious. However, the sibs (a nickname for regulars on the boards, or TORnadoes) responded beautifully, with everything from sarcastic comments about Aragorn barbie dolls to a memorable picture of a male sib jokingly dressed in a pink suit, announcing that "he was no man."  Good times. :)

Anyway, for the most part, the posts don't end up being that entertaining. Usually, they will get no replies, whoever finds it first will report it, and an admin will come in and clean up, occasionally banning that user from the forum. (thank you again, admins!) Sometimes the reporting post will turn into an amusing pun thread. Sometimes, you get the occasional response from another regular, "Darn! Why do I miss all the juicy posts?" Mostly, nobody pays too much attention.

Well, recently, I found myself on TheArtOfTrolling (content-appropriateness warning for work people if you go to that site), which has some amusing posts. Here are a few of the more appropriate ones that made me laugh (click to enlarge):

Amazing ASCII art. Ten points to Gryffindor.  

Who says trolling is exclusively an online thing?

Fascist goldfish. Need I say more?

Ah, Yahoo! Answers. Upon seeing this upload, I immediately decided that this was my new favorite method of trolling, and tried to make a troll post on Yahoo!, using my account that I could log onto through facebook. I decided that it wasn't very funny, though, and that I could do far better, so I deleted it, and created a second account that wouldn't be connected with my facebook page, and searched for stupid questions to answer trollishly and maliciously. 

I got a little caught up in the music section, however, and then the classical music section, and then I found several questions that I knew the answers to. So I answered them, and then realized that I got points for having my answers chosen as the best answer!!!! And if I got enough points, I could get to level two!!!!!!! I was so excited about this!! So I immediately proceeded to answer as many questions about classical music as possible, and until I used up all of my answers for the day. 

The next day, I got on to troll again, and then realized that I was having too much fun answering the questions with this account, so I answered some more questions about classical music, realizing that the urge to make it to Level Two was far more powerful than the urge to answer somebody's stupid idiot question sarcastically.

So, I decided that I don't have what it takes to be a troll. I've also decided that to be a real troll, you can't really sympathize with the forums/places you're trolling, because then you just end up feeling guilty about it. (or maybe I'm just overly sensitive)

For a real-life troll, btw, look up Remi Gaillard. If you haven't seen him already, he is a youtube necessity. My favorite is his snail video (the link I embedded in his name), but he has many great ones, including a slew of must-see elevator posts. 

I did learn that there are most certainly such things as good trolls. They just happen to be overrun by the bad ones. It's like books. You get a million trash books, but you can't look at Twilight and say that all books are poor quality.  You also have to keep a straight internet face the entire time, which I just can't do. I don't have that ability. 

Anybody else seen any memorable trolls out there?