Trolls?
 

I've heard people talking about them on the site and I'd like to know what the term means. Can anyone help me?

A troll is someone who's here out of malice or boredom, usually boredom, who gets kicks out of being annoying or mean.

I conqur. (Excuse my spelling). I'd also like to know since people been calling other people trolls, and I'm not sure if someone recently called me one, so I didn't say anything, so I wasn't sure if I should defend myself or not.

Oh, thank you. I don't think anyone calld me that, I just saw someone else get called that and I got curious.

Protesting usually won't help. Just try to remember to keep your overall post quality decent (I say TRY because everyone has bad days) and you should be okay. :)

I believe the term comes from the *chans.

Trolling existed before the chans.

From wikipedia:

The contemporary use of the term first appeared on Usenet groups in the late 1980s. It is thought to be a truncation of the phrase trolling for suckers, itself derived from the fishing technique known as trolling.[3] The word likely gained currency because of its apt second meaning, drawn from the trolls portrayed in Scandinavian folklore and children's tales; they are often ugly, obnoxious creatures bent on mischief and wickedness.

What do you mean? Am I posting too much, that it looks like spam?

Trolls aren't the same as spammers really. Spammers just post adverts, links, etc. to an annoying degree. Trolls are more malicious. They try to get people riled up and/or try to generate in-fighting and drama for amusement. It's also similar to how teenagers that are immature or drunken men will harass and heckle people to look good in front of their buddies. In that vein, many trolls will copy and paste the results of their trolling to forums and other websites (such as Something Awful, Encyclopedia Dramatica, or 4 chan) to gain popularity.

For example, this yuppie guy I didn't even know randomly messaged me on myspace the other day with the words "i hope u die you pathetic excuse of a failure in society." and "take ur Edgar Allen Poe books dip them in kerosene light them on fire and stick them in your ass to burn your insides and end your life." in an attempt to get a rise out of me.

Like 4chan cares about trolling gothic.net. We just trolled the shit out of Oprah.

Didn't say they cared about gothic.net. Was just referring to the fact that they do troll.

P.S. Didn't see the Oprah bit, but I did really like what anonymous did with Scientology.

Don't argue with them and don't respond in kind. You can banish them with the ignore selection.
Can anyone read this?

They got her to say "over 9000 penises" on her show, fun was had by all

An explanation of Trolling

A More in-depth explanation.

Note: Watch out for the pop-up ad at the bottom right hand corner of the screen on my second link. I've never seen that before and ED might have been hacked. It looks suspiciously like a pop up which gave me a virus a few weeks ago, so don't click it, and don't try to close it.

But it has a half naked lady on it D:
WE MUST CLICK IT