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diyAudio Member
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Connecticut, The Nutmeg State
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What Is A Computer "Troll"?
The subject has come up what a computer "troll" is. Several people have posted pictures of mythical Neanderthal-like creatures in the process of doing mischief to unsuspecting people. Funk and Wagnall's describes it as: "In Scandinavian folklore, a giant; later, a friendly but often mischievous dwarf".
There is another definition of "troll", though. This is a verb. When a fishing boat moves around slowly in the process of fishing, it is "trolling". This has been changed into a slang expression meaning seeking to accomplish something by taking a shot at it repeatedly, hoping to come up with something just by chance. Sort of what a fishing boat does when it casts it's net-it doesn't know where the fish really are, but if it drags that net around enough, it's bound catch some fish eventually.
I think this where the word "troll" in the computer sense came from-not the mythical creature. With computers becoming increasingly popular, businessman and people paid by various organizations entered bulletin boards and message boards masquerading as just common people in order to further their own ends. These people jumped from board to board to chat room to board, pretending to be amateurs but really working for themselves or one who hired them.
The process of jumping from forum to forum, even from thread to thread, under a variety of false names and nicknames, is what defines a computer "troll", in my opinion. The idea is that if you keep on entering enough boards, make enough contact with enough people there, it will redound to your benefit. The benefit does not have to be financial-it can be political or philosphical as well. And indeed, there have been reports that political organizations do in fact hire to people to hit the message boards.
Central to the idea of a "troll", therefore, is the concept of repetition. Just coming in and saying your piece, and replying when appropriate, is not being a "troll", even if you do it a lot. There has to be something false-whether many different identities in one forum, or hitting a great number of other forums with the same message.
Since this sort of thing is generally not beneficial to the forums so used, the secondary meaning of "troll"-an unattractive creature up to no good-began to take over. But I think the original idea-looking for customers or converts by "casting your net" over a variey of cyber-places-is what got the term started.
What is your idea? What do you think a computer "troll" is, and where did the term originate?
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