troll

Fanciful creature, said to live under bridges. Depending on who you ask, they may be miners, they may turn to stone in the sun, or whatever suits your fancy for your particular piece of fictive fantasy.

Also a name for a Internet user who asks stupid questions with the sole intention of getting a major response. For example, the 12-year-old AOL user who goes into alt.rape.surviors and posts a message with the words "Suck my dick, and get back in the kitchen and make me some pie!" is most assuredly a troll. It is best if you not repond to them. If you are lucky, they'll turn to stone when the sun comes up.

Note the analogy with Trolling in the fishing sense. You stick a tasty morsel on a hook, and drag it through a population hoping someone will bite. For all our sakes, be smarter than a fish.

T:
One big monster, he called troll.
He don't rock, and he don't roll,
Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies;
He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.

--The Roguelet's ABC

Trojan horse = T = Troll-O-Meter

troll v.,n.

1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT. 2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." 3. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for CS students. Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed. Probably so-called because it involves lurking in dark cavelike corners.

Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower category than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. See also Troll-O-Meter.

--Jargon File, autonoded by rescdsk.

Also a Michigan idiom, one that sees more use in the Upper Penensula than the Lower. Refers to those living in the Lower Penensula, because they live "below the Bridge".

Us trolls sometimes refer to those Yoopers as goats, but usually Yooper is derogatory enough.

A troll is someone who, finding that no-one likes them, decides to pretend that it's on purpose.
  - Found on slashdot.

See also trollspotter.

The trolls were mythical creatures from Norse mythology. In the tales and adventures in Norse and old English mythology you clearly see the resemblance. Trolls are both bigger than men and usually stronger, plus - they are stupid and ungovernable, greedy and cruel. Yet sometimes it is told that they know many things that men do not know, that they are benevolent, honorable, true as steel, and heavily misunderstood creatures.

However, their anger is terrible if they are crossed, and they pursue a cruel revenge. Still, if someone shows them gratitude and kindness, they are likely to show just as much gratitude and return the favor. Trolls are recognised by their supposedly greenish being, but they also come in colors from grey to black, red to brown. Big they are, yessiree. Some shapes include, from Norse tales; One head, two heads, three heads, four arms, or just a hella big stomach you can hide in (if eaten). They are unlikely to chew you if they only posess one tooth, but their stench can kill a thousand people. It is told they like cheese or meat (Christian men's blood being their favorite).

On their height; they should be bigger than any normally sized person, i.e me. Anything to about the size of a big tree (hey, they have trees on their noses!). There are tales about mini-trolls, such trolls are not as common as the regular heavy grunts. They live in the woods, the waters and deep forests. They cook stew, have caves in the mountains, and they can smell blood from afar. If you are so unlucky as to meet a troll, always have Acid or Fire arrows available in your quiver!

(yes, yes, catboxing trolls too) | (BOO!)

The Trolls

This is the story of the Trolls.

In the beginning...was darkness...and in darkness trolls are born!!! For Millions of years Norway was covered in darkness, snow and ice. When finally, the darkness lifted and most of the snow and ice had melted away, The Trolls were there!!!

They were still there when the first Norwegian came strolling along with his belongings. He found them in different colours shapes and sizes. There were big ones, tall ones, standard sized ones and mini ones, all with tails and only 8 fingers and 8 toes. At first the Norwegians were not too particular about housing; they lived in caves. But as the trolls too preferred to live inside the mountains, they had to fight the Norwegians for it. Now and then the Norwegians won....but just as often they lost.

Fairly soon the Norwegians discovered that the trolls always rule at night with a free go at any human soul who dares to wander around in the darkness. But the Humans rule by day, and every troll caught by the sunshine is turned into stone, and bursts. The remains of unfortunate trolls can be seen all over Norway.

As time went on the Norwegians turned into Vikings. Brave people, their greatest fun drinking mead, rape, pillage, and lopping peoples heads off with big axes and swords.

The Vikings were great sea-faring people, roaming all over the oceans. The Vikings dreaded only one thing, the Sea Troll , a seacousin on the land Troll. It was a huge monster that would crush and swallow huge ships whole! Then there was his brother, Nokken , who lives in the slimy dark bottomless pools. Or his other brother, Fossegrimen , who lives in the waterfalls. He is the musical one of the bunch, and the one who teaches the fiddle players of Folklore who to play their tunes. But to do so they must offer him a goat, the fatter the better.

As time went on some very brave monks came over from England to bring Christianity to the Vikings. But knowing their reputation, they didn't believe that they could convert them with godliness, so they brought with them a rather sinister character and planned to use him to scare Christianity into the Vikings. But the Norwegians took this sinister character to their bosom, named him Old Erik , dressed hi up as an official (tax collector?) and in this way he wonder about collecting souls. He is easily recognizable, having horns and a beard like a goat, one normal foot, and one cloven hoof. He is believed to be closely related to the trolls, maybe the master of them all. The Norwegians try to cheat and fool Old Erik as often as they can. But usually Old Eric gets what he is after.

As time went on the standard of living improved, even for he trolls. Many of them moved out of the hills and into castles, far away over the mountains, east of the sun and west of the moon. But the trolls felt kind of lonely living on their own, so they took up the habit of kidnapping princesses. They hold them as hostages, until the Ashlad, or some other prince, comes along. He cuts off the Trolls 1,2,3,6,9 or even 12 heads, rescues the princess, and in due course gets her and half the kingdom as a reward.

As time went even further on, the small trolls, living in the hills and under the ground, became envious of the Norwegians and formed their own world, a copy of the human one, complete with cattle, farms, churches, etc., etc., etc. They are called The Underground People . They are small, not very beautiful themselves, but they have very beautiful daughters, called Hulder . She is very well equipped where it counts to lure any innocent farm boy underground, where he is bewitched, and must stay as her husband forever. But just as a coin has two sides, so does a hulder. She has a tail like a cow. Once in a while a hulder falls so much in love with a boy that she is willing to marry him in a Christian church. She then loses her tail, and becomes the best wife a man can have. When the Hulder grows older (some 400-500 years) she changes and becomes a Trollkjerring . She is then able to take her head off and carry it under her arm, why she does this no one knows.

Now some of the underground people installed them selves as house Gods in the Norwegians homes, they harass the homeowners quite a bit, but look after cattle well. So if you meet a very small, strange person in a Norwegian home, you may have just met a Nisse . At Christmas the Norwegians give him a bowl of porridge, he is on Christmas known as the Julenisse .

If a troll attacks you there are several thing that you can do: 1. If you are smart you can outwit him. 2. You can use your faith and the cross against him. 3.The old silver bullet trick works as well. 4. You can also throw steel over his head so he disappears. 5. If methods 1,2,3 and4 fail your only hope is to run until daybreak, the troll will either stop chasing you or burst.

Stupid tourists often ask if they still exist. Just take a trip out into the nearest wood some dark and a stormy night, and then you will make up your mind, so Beware!

Troll is a slang term for a person who's homeless. Some say it's just because sometimes a person will seek shelter under a bridge, like the imaginary monster in the fairytales. Or maybe it's because sometimes an urban overpass provides the shelter, and maybe the upright respectable citizens start to worry that their bloated real estate values and retail profits might suddenly vanish like the unwary little billy goat.

Volunteers trying to help the homeless don't like to use this term very much, partly to avoid disrespect of the homeless, and partly because it messes up their image of themselves as nice people.

After actually being homeless for awhile, it gets easier to give up illusions about people being nice, and it gets easier to call yourself a troll, too.

But here's a true story to think about:

Picture a respectable family, just getting back from some kind of wholesome family activity somewhere. Two parents heading from their little car into their little house, and two little boys chasing a terrified little cat across the street while their father laughs. They claim to own the cat, but they don't seem to do much for it, beyond leaving a little food on their porch, and letting their sons chase it around sometimes.

The cat's eyes are an almost golden color, as is the fur, still beautiful despite obvious neglect. Under the luxurious fur, it's a gaunt little body with a festering wound on one side of its neck. Seems the respectable people can't be bothered to take it to a veterinarian. Over time, its condition is deteriorating as the infection in the wound grows worse. The expression in the eyes has always been weary, and almost always afraid, but now it's often blank and distant, as if the cat somehow knows the end is coming.

Gradually things begin to change. The infection starts to slowly decline. The cat's eyes have a little more focus. And one day, the fur around the wound has been trimmed short, the wound stitched up by a real veterinarian. What happened? Did the respectable people locate a conscience somewhere? No, they had nothing to do with it.

There's a human being who's even more invisible than the half-stray cat. He passes through the neighborhood looking for discarded empty bottles and cans, because he survives partly on the nickel each he can get for returning them. For months he has set aside part of this money, using some of it to buy antibiotics for the infection, and finally saved up enough to pay a veterinarian to properly treat the cat's wound. This man lacks a home, but he is capable of compassion, determination, and a truer nobility of spirit than many respectably wealthy people.

Maybe the respectable people in the nice little house honestly believe they don't have enough money to care for the cat. Their neglect is still a failure to fulfill the moral responsibility of claiming to own any other living being.

Of course this kind of story doesn't prove anything about the great economic questions and social problems that lead to homelessness. But maybe it's enough to make you wonder, sometimes, who the monsters really are.

The man who helped the cat was not me. Just someone I happened to meet once.

TO TROLL

To loiter or saunter about.

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

“Trolling? What is trolling?”
“I have no idea. I think it's a type of fishing.”

1. (v.) [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To make a post, comment, or remark designed to attract predictable and/or angry responses; or, the post itself. The well-constructed troll is a post, comment, or remark that induces many angry or predictable responses, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it, which often includes participation.

2. (n.) An individual who chronically, or even casually trolls in sense 1; regularly, or even casually, posts, or makes remarks or comments meant for little other purpose than to do any of the following:

1. Annoy, manipulate, or enrage others.
2. Disrupt, divert, or end a conversation, argument, or something of that nature.
3. Gain personal satisfaction or amusement.
4. Distribute bad, misleading, or malicious advice.

3. (n.) The comment(s), post(s), or remark(s) that are intended to bait others into “biting”.

Etymology: From the phrase “trolling for suckers” which in turn comes from “trolling”, a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. This draws many parallels with trolling: a troll posts 'bait' where they are likely to get a 'bite'.

Note: Some people claim that the troll (in sense 1) is a smaller category than flamebait, and that a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. Others maintain that this merely constitutes a 'sophisticated' troll.

This definition is from my understanding of the word as a troll raised primarily on IRC. For more, I would suggest reading any well-known and controversial forum. If you want to deal with them, read: Note to self: Ignore the troll.

In Homestuck, trolls were an alien race whose interaction with the human characters became one of the main focuses of the story. Originally introduced as antagonists who (as their name suggests) "trolled" the characters over the internet, they were slowly introduced as more prominent characters, and, a year after Homestuck started, the backstory of their race and culture was shared, which was fascinating to fans.

Biologically, the troll race has some major differences with humans. Despite outward similarities of appearance, the trolls are insectoid and nocturnal, and are hatched from eggs laid by the mother grub, a gigantic insect that lives in their planets breeding caverns. Like many insects, most of the larvae (called "wigglers") perish quickly unless they find an animal-like guardian (called a "lusus") to protect them. The culture of the trolls is brutal and callous, with the weak offspring being killed either by chance or by their government. Because of this, the surviving trolls are super-strong with great endurance. The story shows them, for example, being able to continue functioning even after being impaled or having a limb removed. They also have a system of blood caste, with different types of blood pigmentation ranging from red to purple, with the color of a troll's blood reflecting their lifespan and social status. The social status of blood caste is ruthlessly and violently enforced. Despite of, or perhaps because of, the troll's brutal and racist society, the trolls that survive to adolescent form strong social bonds. Their social and interpersonal relationships have more dimensions than humans, since procreation (apparently) involves finding two partners, one marked by romantic love and the other requiring something that can best be described as "romantic hatred", and with friendship and mediation both being seen as a type of romantic emotion. Also, since they lack direct biological parents, and all trolls in a generation are siblings, they lack any concept of incest, and find the human prohibition against it strange. Also, since they display gender only as an aesthetic, and pick sexual partners without regard to gender, they have no concepts of homosexuality or heterosexuality, and also find it strange that humans even have words for the concepts.

(The fact that trolls have four quadrants of romance has much to do with their popularity among Homestuck's teenage fanbase: the possibilities of shipping all the different characters in all the different combinations is one of the main attractions oh Homestuck, for many fans.

These basic facts about the biology and social dynamics of an alien species were described, both indirectly and directly, across several hundred pages of the webcomic, which took several years in real time. So these basic facts, and the later realizations made from them, were revealed in a roundabout fashion, and slowly became part of the comics larger narrative.

What is interesting to me is that despite most of the focus on Homestuck being on its multimedia and "meta" nature, in several places, it is a science-fiction story. Although they are presented at times in a humorous or odd fashion, the trolls are actually designed with a coherent idea of an alien race with a different biology, and then expands on how differences in reproduction and lifecycle could effect the psychology of an entire society. In this way, the alien trolls in Homestuck are more realistic than, say, the array of humans with rubber foreheads on Star Trek

Troll (?), n. [Icel. troll. Cf. Droll, Trull.] Scand. Myth.

A supernatural being, often represented as of diminutive size, but sometimes as a giant, and fabled to inhabit caves, hills, and like places; a witch.

Troll flower. Bot. Same as Globeflower (a).

 

© Webster 1913.

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Troll (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Trolled (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Trolling.] [OE. trollen to roll, F. troler, Of. troller to drag about, to ramble; probably of Teutonic origin; cf. G. trollen to roll, ramble, sich trollen to be gone; or perhaps for trotler, fr. F. trotter to trot (cf. Trot.). Cf. Trawl.]

1.

To move circularly or volubly; to roll; to turn.

To dress and troll the tongue, and roll the eye.
Milton.

2.

To send about; to circulate, as a vessel in drinking.

Then doth she troll to the bowl.
Gammer Gurton's Needle.

Troll the brown bowl.
Sir W. Scott.

3.

To sing the parts of in succession, as of a round, a catch, and the like; also, to sing loudly or freely.

Will you troll the catch ?
Shak.

His sonnets charmed the attentive crowd,
By wide-mouthed mortal trolled aloud.
Hudibras.

4.

To angle for with a trolling line, or with a hook drawn along the surface of the water; hence, to allure.

5.

To fish in; to seek to catch fish from.

With patient angle trolls the finny deep.
Goldsmith.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Troll, v. i.

1.

To roll; to run about; to move around; as, to troll in a coach and six.

2.

To move rapidly; to wag.

F. Beaumont.

3.

To take part in trolling a song.

4.

To fish with a rod whose line runs on a reel; also, to fish by drawing the hook through the water.

Their young men . . . trolled along the brooks that abounded in fish.
Bancroft.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Troll, n.

1.

The act of moving round; routine; repetition.

Burke.

2.

A song the parts of which are sung in succession; a catch; a round.

Thence the catch and troll, while "Laughter, holding both his sides," sheds tears to song and ballad pathetic on the woes of married life.
Prof. Wilson.

3.

A trolley.

Troll plate Mach., a rotative disk with spiral ribs or grooves, by which several pieces, as the jaws of a chuck, can be brought together or spread radially.

 

© Webster 1913.