Trolling is Funny

I like watching trolls on the internet.  For example, David Thorne is my absolute favorite troller in the planet.  I read his blog whenever I am down, and laugh for hours at his funny posts.  The first one I read was this: Missing Missy, a story about a distressed lady who cannot get a proper poster for her missing cat.

In this particular trolling, however, when I am particularly somber, I will think of poor Shannon who is so stressed about her cat, and David who does little to make it better.  In fact, he tells her vivid situations in which the cat could be in terrible danger or pain.

So yeah, we laugh at Shannon's expense.  But is it really much of an expense?  To David, he just wanted to get some laughs out of a favor he was doing for his workmate.  I mean, he was making the posters.

 Judith Donath, who researched the identities and purposes of trolls in a psychological manner, states in her book Identity and Deception in a Virtual Community that:

The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group's common interests and concerns; the newsgroups members, if they are cognizant of trolls and other identity deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real from trolling postings, and upon judging a poster a troll, make the offending poster leave the group. Their success at the former depends on how well they – and the troll – understand identity cues; their success at the latter depends on whether the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently diminished or outweighed by the costs imposed by the group. Trolls can be costly in several ways. A troll can disrupt the discussion on a newsgroup, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the newsgroup community.

This section here makes trolls seem like sadistic people, though.  Their enjoyment is derived by the pain of others.  But, in reality, that really is what trolls come down to be.  They mess with people to get a certain reaction from them.  For their enjoyment.

So is David Thorne really just someone who wants to cause pain for his own delight?  Well it could be seen that way, but no one can truly delve into the mind of a troller and know what he is thinking.