24 Oct
2015
24 Oct
'15
10:02 p.m.
On Sat, Oct 24, 2015, janet via Callers wrote:
Troll has an original meaning as a mean mythical creature, who,
somewhere along the lines became associated with living under a
bridge. In today's society a troll came to mean someone who reads
computer forums, usually with malicious intentions. But even that has
shifted so people refer to trolling the Internet as reading forums or
posts without any intent to post at all.
Digressing a bit: dunno where you got this information, and because
language shifts, you may well be correct about the current meaning of
"troll". However, speaking as someone who's been online for more than a
quarter-century, you are dead-wrong about the historical genesis.
If you look in a dictionary, you'll see that "troll" is also a fishing
term. Originally, trolling online meant that you were fishing for
reactions, often maliciously but not necessarily. Therefore troll as a
noun was a back-formation, someone who made a practice of trolling.
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