For about ten years now I have been an avid user and fan of newsgroups. For those of you who don’t know, newsgroups are the original message boards and forums. They are internet forums in their rawest form: decentralized, unregulated, and unmoderated (there are a few exceptions, however). There are hundreds of thousands of newsgroups, although only several thousand of them see regular postings.
While I typically spend most of my time on various political groups, one of my favorite newsgroup pastimes is finding a great troll post. A good troll is a rare work of art. Many try but few succeed. I myself have created a few successful trolls over the years, however I am neither creative nor patient enough to make a regular habit of it.
Over the years I have come across a sizable amount of entertaining trolls; some of which I would like to share with you today. If you consider yourself an emotionally sensitive person or don’t find entertainment in other people’s gullibility, this article is probably not for you.
We have all heard of the person who, after building up trusting relationships within a community, fakes his or her own death and sits back and enjoys the weeping. This particular troll does the opposite. Instead of faking his own death, the troll poses as a dead person and nonchalantly acts as if he had no idea that anyone thought he was dead and had simply been away for a while. What made this troll work was that the deceased was well known among the newsgroup regulars but only one or two of them actually knew him in person. What worked against this troll was that he had already been plaguing this newsgroup for days beforehand, so it was more difficult to catch the regulars off their guard. Most of the fun came to an end when someone who had attended the dead man’s funeral spoke up.
You can read the whole thread here.
Another newsgroup that’s usually ripe for a good troll is alt.suicide.holiday. The group is typically filled with posters moaning about life and talking about killing themselves, although it is questionable as to how many actually go through with it. One enterprising troll decided to pose as a member of a suicide prevention organization. The troll claimed that the posters’ IP addressed had been collected and that their families will soon be informed of their suicidal postings. Watch how several of the posters halfway freak out. With posters with names like NothingToLose, Suicidal Failure, and catchingthebus, the troll was practically guaranteed to succeed.
You can read the whole thread here.
One of my personal favorites was a post to several gardening newsgroup. The troll claimed to have become a vegan and wanted to encouraged like-minded people to come visit her online journal, which she claimed had become somewhat of a community. Unbeknownst to the readers, the link did not lead to her journal, but a vile picture of three very old homosexual men having gay sex. Several poor readers had their eyes burst into flames before someone posted a warning. A more diligent newsgroup regular would have noticed something amiss if he or she had simply noticed that the message had been crossposted to alt.space.monkey.invaders and alt.spacebastards.
You can read the whole thread here.
The last thing I would like to share today is the Anagram Troll. The Anagram Troll is notorious around Usenet for posting absurd, barely on-topic messages to hundreds of newsgroups at a time. Most of these messages are lame, but often one is posted that is quite humorous for its obvious absurdity. Many of the replies to the post are also fun to read as well. Posts with subject lines such as “A gay [blank] raped me” and “[blank] comes into your bed” seem to be a common theme. The Anagram Troll frequently changes his handle, so his posts can be difficult to locate.
An example of his posts can be found here.
The above trolls are just a select few of the myriad of trolling examples where one can be entertained at the expense of another’s gullibility or emotional instability. Quality trolling is an excellent way to release one’s inner creativity and I highly encourage it at every possible opportunity.
