Troll/Playing With

Basic Trope: Someone who tries to offend and upset people on the Internet and/or get them into arguments with each other or re-ignite old Flame Wars. Motives can vary from hatred for one of the parties involved to laughing at the response to enjoying the suffering of the parties involved.

• Played Straight: Trolly McLulz begins to post insulting and incendiary commentary, or alternately posts overwhelmingly stupid or obviously fake postings, or becomes the Garbage Post Kid.
• Exaggerated: Trolly *is* a mythological troll In-Universe.
  • Trolly is assigned the attributes of an mythological troll, though he does not have them or lives in a universe (such as Real Life) where such does not exist.
  • Trolly is so over the top that he is immediately recognized as a troll.
• Inverted: Trolly is actually a sincere and intelligent poster in a location consisting entirely of trolls.
• Justified: Trolly is trolling a community consisting of racists, pedophiles, spammers, or similar Asshole Victim types, or a person or place devoted to such.
  • The community itself consists of trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.
  • Trolly is posting on a certain Image Board, where trolling is both normal and expected behavior.
  • Trolly's posts and actions aren't directly harmful or insulting as much as silly and irrelevant, and is actually participating in his own strange and funny way, overlapping with Resident Freak.
• Subverted: Trolly contributes meaningfully and intelligently, and uses Sincerity Mode.
• Double Subverted: ...only to set the stage for something far, far worse than he's done already.
• Deconstructed: People realize that Trolly has nothing useful to contribute and is simply using them for his own amusement or attacking them.
• Reconstructed: Then they realize that although he's only using the board/fandom/community for his own purposes, he actually does have a legitimate point.
• Lampshaded: "Don't feed the troll" and similar messages, flagging a post as being a troll and suggesting it be ignored to deprive the troll of attention.
• Parodied: A moderator or longtime trusted user on a community pretends to be a troll for April Fool's or something similar.
  • Trolly is so over the top or so cliched that he becomes Self-Parody.
  • In-Universe, Internet trolls show up in Real Life in the universe acting the same way they do on the internet.
• Averted: The community or place is something of actual interest to Trolly or the people are his friends. While he trolls elsewhere (and may eventually there given the motivation) he behaves and is a sincere contributor and/or a real friend there.
  • Trolly doesn't post on the forum.
• Enforced: The topic is "Best Troll Comment Ever"
  • GIFT
  • The place consists of trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.
  • It is an Image Board or comment section where trolling is accepted behavior
  • Trolly and possibly others have decided that somewhere or someone is so deserving of an attack, for whatever reason, that they must troll there.
• Invoked: Trolly makes his first post.
  • Someone questions whether that new user is a troll.
  • In-Universe, someone mentions that someone is a troll or that they got some bad comments/posts.
• Defied: Trolly decides not to troll.
  • The mods and admins have strict rules against trolling and ban any trolls on sight.
• Discussed: "I think that guy that just logged in as Trolly Mc Lulz is up to no good."
  • Trolly discussing plans to troll somewhere.
  • An article or other commentary analyzing trolling and/or giving means to engage in it or combat it.
• Conversed: "Did anyone remember that time Trolly Mc Lulz hacked the board to redirect to Goatse?" "I did, I was the admin on staff at the time."
• Played For Laughs: The Sims 3, where people with "evil" or a grumpy-type trait have trolling as an option whenever they interact with a computer.
• Played For Drama: Trolls attack someone obviously undeserving of such a fate, such as a young child or a memorial post.