I've been on the internet since 1995, FWIW. My understanding of "trolling" at the time just meant deliberately saying stupid or obviously false stuff to get a rise out of people. It wasn't malicious, just a form of sport and when you realised you were on the receiving end often played along as a form of meta-trolling.
When I see "trolling" used to describe death threats or mocking someone's dead relatives on social media it just doesn't sit right with me. I guess language evolves but we already had perfectly good words like "harassment" and "bullying" to describe these activities. It really takes away from the light-hearted fun and games that the word used to embody.
Maybe for the general population. For those of us deep into the early Internet, it wasn't all that anonymous and a lot of people absolutely took it personally. In many ways, due to the significantly smaller group of people, it was a lot worse if you found yourself on the wrong side of things.
It just didn't make the news or get talked about in school because regular folks had no idea what was going on.
True in the sense that a kid can't choose to go to another school the next day.
But online they can at least choose to not visit that group anymore.
But not in the sense that we weren't familiar with each other. We knew each other and there were power structures on IRC too where you looked up to certain people. So bullying could be pretty harsh coming from certain players.
Still though, you could just leave the channel. Today kids are using group chats with their neighbor and school chums. So it's a bit more difficult.
Back in my day it was rare to be on IRC with someone from your own town because internet was rare.
Depends. IME on IRC people usually were pseudonymous, not anonymous, and built reputations around their handles - reputations which sometimes were as important (or for us youngsters more important) than meatspace one.
When I see "trolling" used to describe death threats or mocking someone's dead relatives on social media it just doesn't sit right with me. I guess language evolves but we already had perfectly good words like "harassment" and "bullying" to describe these activities. It really takes away from the light-hearted fun and games that the word used to embody.