I got “convinced” to leave a board for musicians where there was an unwritten rule that the old pros (or those pretending to be) got to rank on everybody. I started calling out said pros and the moderators were not at all happy about it.
Your life isn’t.
Banned for trolling? No.
Er, um, there is no adult version of playing on the phone, only child play.
People who find amusement in annoying others, need to be reminded of two things;
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The muscles you use are the ones that get stronger. (Including the asshole muscle!)
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Everything you’re ever going to be, you’re currently in the process of ‘becoming’. (Some people are determined to play at being ‘assholes’, without actually turning into one. Yeah, that’s not how it works!)
Sort of. I participated in a counter attack against Something Awful, back when I was posting at SAAN. They had been harassing us for about a week, and finally we went and hit them back. But I don’t know if you’d call that trolling, really, would you? (I don’t remember if we were banned or not, just that they left us alone after that)
Oh, they ban everyone. I got banned because I told some noob to stop being a dick, or something like that. The people who ran that place were a bunch of choads.
I was too (this was a board for a game which I have been playing in its various iterations for years-Heroes of Might and Magic). I didn’t even get to put in a first post, I signed in the next day and bam-I see the “You have been banned from this forum” message. 
I carefully examined the rules for any sock puppet rule, and saw none (I might have tried to re-register with the same email addy-I subsequently recalled that I had already registered once a couple of years earlier). I then remembered that I had used an obscenity for my password-figured nobody would ever see it or know it, right? Guess I was wrong, as an admin must have taken a gander at it and assumed I was just there to stir up trouble. <shrug>
I have never trolled because I am fundamentally a nice person. But just outside the fundamentals, there is a part of me that does find enjoyment in watching people foolishly feed trolls. I do feel like whatever suffering they’re going through as a result is basically their own fault. Because they’re feeding the troll.
So, it is suffering, and so I feel compassion, and I’d never do things that could predictably make them feel that way without a (morally) good reason. But I kind of can totally see what’s funny about it. And the universe in which Evil Frylock trolls instead of philosophizing is… well… closer than I would normally like to acknowledge.
As to whether I’d be a skillful troll? No, I would not be a skillful troll. So it’s a good thing I don’t do it.
I was raised by trolls, by the way. My dad, his dad, and his uncles all seem to think part of their job as patriarchs is to mess with the heads of the kids of the family.
Stupid stuff like “Chocolate is actually frozen orange juice,” “Different strokes is a sequel to Hee Haw,” “You were built, not concieved,” and “You cannot get married before the age of 43 without our written consent.” They’d insist and argue.
I was banned from the anti-vax forums at Mothering for attempting to argue that vaccines are a good idea. Not all trolling is always bad.
That was kind of my situation on the music board. I was criticizing a long honored tradition in instrumental music, which is that your teacher is a master and must never be questioned in any way.
They have some weird rules there, IMO, such as the whole “don’t sign your post” thing. (Seriously, they make a HUGE deal over that.) It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of people get banned for behavior that is completely normal on most boards.
To answer the OP: nope. I’m not really one to stir up trouble in general.
I don’t intentionally troll. I did get “de starred” on io9 for making a negative comment about the site. It was objective and not insulting, but I guess they don’t like criticism.
That doesn’t sound like trolling actually.
But by the mothering boards “logic” it is.
Not for trolling, but I did get banned by a local board. I flat out stated that I thought the bar that was one of the sponsors stank. That did not sit well with the moderators, all of whom are friends of that bar’s owner. It was no big loss to me, believe me.
I don’t think SA cares too much if they get raided, after all, you have to pay them five dollars for the permission to troll them.
I’ve had TOS warnings, but never a ban. I think everyone understands that even when I get a little over the top, I am sincere and on topic.
No no no no no. That’s not how you troll parenting boards. You troll parenting boards by slowly becoming the most obnoxiously new age parent you possibly can. “Well, I could never feed my child corn sugar. I make all their fruit snacks from scratch using vegetarian gelatin, agave crystals and fruit jam made from my personal raspberry and blueberry bushes. Yes, I have to get up at 4 if I want their lunches ready but since I would never force them through the indignity of schooling away from home, we can make it work. Other parents may not have time for it, but I wouldn’t feel like a real mom if I didn’t sacrifice a little.”
Obviously, that’s painfully unsubtle but you get the idea.
Arguing a pro-vax position on a mothering board may not count as trolling in the sense that the rest of the world understands it, but having seen those mothering boards I wouldn’t be surprised if the “Reason for Banning” that LavenderBlue was given was written down as “Trolling” - with the Mommyboarders classifying “Anything that doesn’t toe the hippy-dippy-anti-vax-earth-mother line” as such.
I love this! Great way to think about it.
My dad was like this, too. My brother and I loved it. He once told my brother that he was such an ugly baby, my parents kept him in a box on the front lawn, and people walking by thought it was a talking raccoon. My brother asked what they did when he got older, and my dad responded, “We got a bigger box.”
To segue into my on-topic response, I’ve never trolled online forums. I’ve only recently cracked the “one-third of a post a day average” bar, so I doubt I’d be very effective at it anyway. But when I started tutoring, I discovered how much fun it is to troll small children. Silly stuff, like telling them that I was 80 years old or actually a famous rock star from Mars. Made me appreciate my dad even more 