New Cracked article/interview with a professional Internet Troller. I had no idea such a job existed.
<Ace looks around> Ok fess up. Which SDMB members are getting paid to stir the shit pot and keep this site’s debates and arguments entertaining & interesting for the multitude of lurkers? I want in on the action.
please? I like money. 
This is a new level of web site sneakiness. I really had never thought of it.
Thing number seven you may learn about professional trolling: the people who hire you may be genuinely and objectively terrible, overworking and underpaying you and then forcing you to sue them to get some justice.
How dare you say such near-slanderous words! There has never been anyone at all on the SDMB even slightly accused of being paid to troll us!
Among the more famous astroturfers are Microsoft, the Republican Party and Walmart.
I included double smilies to clearly indicate I was joking, and it was obviously intended as a rhetorical question.
This board is much too calm for trolls to play their games. They’d die of boredom here.
Um am I wrong or are trolls a different species than astroturfers?
Astroturfingpromotes a message or agenda without revealing who is behind it. Giving the impression a wide group of people are promoting it.
Apparently a professional troller is used to keep a board interesting. Posting threads that get people stirred up and talking. Engaging people to keep them angry and posting. Supposedly it drives up the board’s clicks and ad profit. At least that is what I gleaned from that one article.
I’d be curious to read other sources and see if that is really a widespread practice. It seems unnecessary. Any regular poster will accidentally step into controversy occasionally. That oh crap moment, when you realize lots of people are reading that post and aren’t happy campers. It’ll be a long couple of days ahead. Sometimes it’s best to post about cute kittens and puppies. Or your favorite movie. Anything safe and innocuous.
Anyway, that give and take between posters happens spontaneously. I have trouble imagining a board so dull they need to hire somebody just to stir it up.
From 2006:
::whooshing noise::
:o you’re right. I fell hard for that one.
I am a paid shill for a vast government conspiracy.
Suddenly that OP, who joined yesterday, started one thread, with fractured English, no sense of paragraph breaks, unfamiliar with a shift key and family/girl/money troubles of the kick him to the curb/wise up/ get your head out of your ass, varieties are making a lot more sense to me now.
I always suspected as much, it’s really a pretty transparent formula they use, when you think about it.
I think the only true words in that entire Cracked article are the first four:
Pell is adopting a troll persona for the purpose of provoking outrage from readers. Which is, after all, what trolling is.