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by SmellyGeekBoy 2597 days ago
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.