The Art of Trolling

Troll (Internet): In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.

I'm sure it seems strange to be talking about trolling in the context of "Interactive Storytelling," but, if nothing else trolling, at it's heart, is all about provoking interaction. Trolling has changed quite a bit over the years--frankly, the Wikipedia page on it hardly seems related to the shape it usually takes these days (some aspects of griefing seem more closely related, but I've never known anyone who participates in the activities described as "griefing" to call it that--the term is usually still "trolling"). The text-troll is falling out of favor these days mainly because it requires a fair bit more thought and effort than it's modern counter-parts. Probably the most visible example these days being Rickrolling (which has been done to death and is consequently no longer funny).

The ultimate in text-based-trolling comes down to a few, simple yet oft difficult to achieve points:

1. Know your target: For this type of troll, to get a really good, amusing response, generally you need to know your target well enough that you can predict their response to every word you use. Sure spamming offensive words in all caps in a chatroom will get some kind of response, but it probably won't be more than getting yourself kicked from the room.

2. Less is more: The best trolls can generate the desired response with just a single word.

3. Hit-and-run: Related to the previous point, drop your troll and run. If no one bit, rethink your strategy and try again later.

3b. The long troll corollary: Especially relevant to chat and other real-time trolls, it's important to stay in character as long as possible, but be sure to let your targets do most of the talking. (ex. when trolling white supremacists, don't go on long rants about equality and civil rights, get them going on something and let them do the ranting).

4. You don't have to be contrary: Sometimes agreeing with a group/person's view point works much better than trying to incite a response purely from an opposing position. This is especially important when targeting ideologically extreme groups/people (conservative religious groups, racist groups, misandrist "feminists," etc).

Given how much work is required to achieve satisfactory results with a text-troll, trolling has largely moved into the instant-gratification realm. The pre-youtube ancestors of the Rickroll were shock sites and browser crushers. Many older trolls dislike Rickrolls and the contemporary soft-troll genre since, rather than inciting horror and disgust in the target the Rickroll plays off disappointment and is more inclined to make the target laugh than recoil in fear.

The fascinating thing about these soft-trolls is that they're highly contagious. As a result, the kind of interaction/response they generate is completely different from the traditional troll: people don't get angry when they get Rickroll'd--they replicate it, in effect becoming trolls themselves. (Though describing them as trolls would probably just serve to piss off certain people).

Anyway, getting a bit closer to being on-topic, the mechanics of trolling might be something interesting to look at as a "delivery system" for interactive content. Of course, viral marketing often attempts to harness the self-replicating power of internet memetics, but is rarely as successful as it's natural counterparts.