While Cecil’s staff is dedicated and thorough, they’ve missed what is probably the most important meaning of “trolls” in this context. in the gay community, a troll is an older (and obviously undesirable) male. frequently it also adds the meaning of an older male who is ‘cruising’.
Oh, wow.
So, your handle means “No trolls please.”
All this time I thought you were on a low carbohydrate diet. (Not rolls please)
Ah, I sense the beginnings of a Great Debate–“Bread vs. rolls”. Count one vote here for “rolls”. You don’t have to slice them and get bread crumbs all over the counter.
I assume the OP is referring to the Mailbag report, What is a troll?
Hmmm.
As I consider this, it may not be necessary for this to develop into a “Great Debate”.
What we need to do is determine which was developed first. The roll, or sliced bread.
You see, if roll technology is a later developement than slice technology, it would follow that the general consensus is that sliced bread is superior to rolls.
You see, while there is no agreement on what is “the best thing since sliced bread”, if rolls were superior, it would be necessary to restructure the statement, as “the best thing since rolls”.
Since this has not happened, then we know one of two things is true. Either rolls predate the slicing of bread, or they are inferior. Of course both could be true, but both cannot be false.
So we can concievably clear up this controversy once and for all by simply determining which came first.
As Duck Duck Goose has already supplied the link, I won’t, I just wanted to point out that there is another kind of internet Troll, the Wannabe, i.e. one who (on a special interest board, for instance) fakes interest in a subject, posting the most ludicrously inane questions in a bid to get more experienced practitioners to post answers.
I subscribe to a cartoonists site, and some of the best cartoonists in the world also take part. We had one guy in particular who took great delight in digging up the oldest copy of the most obscure cartoon book then asking questions about it. Questions to which he already knew the answer.
He was so annoying that eventually no-one responded to him, which raised his ire to a new level and we all started getting weird e-mails.
His password was cancelled.
Kid_Gilligan:
I see several problems with your position. First of all, we are discussing whether the “not rolls please” position is a reasonable one to have; thus, what is relevant is not what the overall preference of society is, but whether rolls have some property that makes them undesirable. Secondly, it is well known that the initial customers of sliced bread, able to quickly make sandwiches without the bother of slicing the bread, were frequently to remark “now we’re really on a roll”, clearly indicating that rolls predated sliced bread by enough of a margin for the state of being supported by a roll to be a element of an idiom. As for the question itself, I think that a person prone to eating grain based foods without the benefit of suitably horizontal surface would be quite right is declining any offer of rolls. Furthermore, there is the question of why, if rolls are so superior, there is no market for roll related merchandise such as roll makers or roll toasters.
crumbs.
Some people can really make a wholemeal of this, (gives a rye grin).
It really goes against the (multi) grain.
Can I be be left uninformed about any new additions to this bread thread please?
I have an actual comment on the Mailbag Answer! :eek:
One troll. There is one recorded incident of a troll living underneath a bridge. This is balanced against numerous sightings of trolls living in dark woods and inside mountains; see, for example, Peer Gynt. I trust we won’t be seeing this error again.
Truth to tell, though, trolls aren’t the most pleasant of creatures. They’re bad-tempered, mean, clumsy, and dumb as a box of rocks. They also smell bad. All in all, not a bad metaphor for people who live to stir up trouble on the Internet, even though it’s not the origin of the term. Wouldn’t it be nice if Internet trolls, like their folkloric namesakes, would burst or turn to stone when touched by sunlight?