Who are they, and how will I recognize their posting style?
Anyway you guys could post some links to some of the more notorious trolls. I would like to see how they post so I can recognize one when I encounter it.
A troll is someone who posts something deliberately outrageous just in order to provoke an extreme reaction. The name is a deliberate pun on the fishing term (you stick out your “line” and then see what you can catch) and the nasty characters under bridges (most trolls are a real nuisance, they tend not to be liked, and folks wish they would go away).
DNFTT stands for Do Not Feed The Trolls, and is a short way of telling people that, if you don’t give the trolls the responses they are looking for, they might just leave on their own.
I am a newbie here myself, so my understanding of the term comes more from USENET newsgroups then from the SDMB. It is possible that users here have elaborated on this definition in some way to fit the specific circumstances of this board. However, the definition above has to be fairly close - I have yet to be terribly confused by any discussion of them.
[cheesy French accent] You are welcome, my petit bon-bon! You seem to be nouvous to these parts. Care to visit me under the bridge? [/cheesy French accent]
Well, you can go by “style” I guess, but the most sure fire way to recognize trolls on the board is to look below their UserID to the left of their posts, if it changes from Member to BANNED, you have found one.
Well, you could be provided with a list, but no, you may not have one.
First off, trolls and idiots abound but opponents of Ignorance are few. You might even say select, in a perverse, literate, cross-grained way. But trolls? They’re as common as squished gum on a hot sidewalk, and just about as memorable.
Second, compiling a troll list wouldn’t just be boring and dreary, it could be risky. The dweebs could take it as an invitation. There’s a risk–remote, admittedly–that two of them could figure out the basics of reproduction and spawn, purely by mistake.
Tacitly invite a bunch of slack-jawed morons who’ll reflexively mate with floor lamps, appliances, wall outlets, the Barca-Lounger, UncleBeer’s green couch, the singing wall-trout and the chip dip?!
I think not. Forget the daunting clean-up chores; the idea that two of them could by pure, stupid fluke find a matching and fertile troll orifice and reproduce…!!
Trolls are also residents of the “mitt” part of Michigan, as they live under the Macinaw bridge also refered to as the “Big Mac”.(It connects the upper pennensula with the mitt)
Here’s a pretty good list that Jebus was probably very familiar with.
[ul]
[li]2SexyForMyComputer[/li][li]jayburner[/li][li]ghost[/li][li]bedboy1[/li][li]bedboy2[/li][li]bedboy3[/li][li]bedboy4[/li][li]spliffy[/li][li]rollin’ a bone and, of course[/li][li]concrete[/li][/ul]
Quite true. Having spent 10+ years in Usenet I can tell you that one of the better things about a message board of this type is that when someone’s being a troll, the moderators can step in and remove the misbehaving imp. I’ve been in unmoderated newsgroups where trolls have made it their life’s work to try to disrupt all civil discussions. I use a good filter on my newsreader but those who would bite the easiest (the newbies) are usually not aware of filtering capabilities, so you end up with a big ruckus. Upset people, yelling back and forth… which is exactly what a troll likes to see.
Think of Max von Sydow’s character, Leland Grant, in Stephen King’s Needful Things. Grant would have the townspeople plant little seeds, like trolls do, then would sit back and watch the chaos.