It's come to mean many things, but all along the lines of provocation. Boghossian et al, for example, did a *great* job at provoking Wilson and Shaw and a host of other actual scholars into responding to their science fraud. But it's important, to me anyway, to remember that trolling also encompasses behaviors like Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and Socrates' treatment of Euthyphro.
So, the options you've offered, fishing or monster, is impoverished. The village shaman is a better example. Even if shamen/witches mostly use provocation to hypnotize and control the villagers [†], we can assume that some (perhaps small) percentage of shamen/witches are doing it for the good of the tribe, not just to grab a quick bite. As I've posted before, here is my favorite defense of trolling: How to make a nuisance of yourself in [usenet] news http://web.archive.org/web/20070609085706/http://www.sm.luth.se/~torkel/eget/net.html Torkel's dead, but definitely not forgotten! [†] Perhaps mostly in self-defense, since the physically or mentally abnormal people who didn't become holy people might be executed or exiled. On 11/13/18 7:40 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > I have always wondered about "trolling". Is it the monster under the bridge > or the fisherman. Or both? -- ∄ uǝʃƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
