On 2008-12-22, s...@pobox.com <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
> ... shouldn't people who spend all their time trolling be
> doing something else: studying, working, writing patches which
> solve the problems they perceive to exist in the troll
> subject?
I think you misunderstand the point of trolling. The author of
a troll post doesn't actually care about the "problems" (and
may not even genuinely perceive them as problems).
> Is there some online troll game running where the players earn
> points for generating responses to their posts?
Yup. It's called Usenet.
I'm sure we all have our, um, "non-productive" hobbies and
forms of entertainment. A well done troll [which, I admit, is
somewhat rare] is a bit of an art, and can be rather
entertaining to watch.
Of course there's the other, much larger, category of posters
(sometimes confused with trollers): the lazy, ignorant
whingers. Apart from being much more common, they're also much
less entertaining to everybody except the ranting flamer.
As you can see, Usenet is a rather complex eco-system with a
lot of niches...
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Grant Edwards grante Yow! What PROGRAM are they
at watching?
visi.com
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