Media attention in recent years has equated trolling with online harassment.
In this context, both the noun and the verb forms of 'troll' are frequently associated with Internet discourse. The behavior is typically for the troll's amusement, or to achieve a specific result such as disrupting a rival's online activities or purposefully causing confusion or harm to other people.
In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, an online video game) or in real life, with the intent of provoking others into displaying emotional responses, or manipulating others' perception, thus acting as a bully or a provocateur. For other uses, see Troll (disambiguation).Ī revision of a Wikipedia article shows a troll vandalizing an article on Wikipedia by replacing content with an insult. For the method of fishing, see Trolling (fishing).