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.
- Straight: Trolly McLulz joins a forum just to post insulting and incendiary commentary and overwhelmingly stupid and obviously fake postings.
- Exaggerated:
- Trolly is so over the top that he is immediately recognized as a troll.
- Trolly actually trolled moderators and admins of a website.
- Trolly has literally caused the website to collapse due to unpopularity or being the Les Collaborateurs.
- Trolly uses over 50 different Sock Puppets and constantly steals other accounts solely for the purpose of ruining the site as much as possible.
- Trolly is The Sociopath.
- Trolly is a Determinator. He only doubles down on his behaviour if you try to ignore him.
- Trolly crosses the Moral Event Horizon by way of attempting to take over the entire Internet solely for his own personal amusement.
- Alternatively, Trolly crosses the Moral Event Horizon by doxxing the entire forum and sending hundreds of less-than-stable assassins to kill them in the most hilariously violent ways possible.
- Bait the Dog
- Downplayed:
- Trolly will attempt to start conversations that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, but never does anything to start a flame war.
- The Gadfly
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk.
- Faux Affably Evil
- Justified:
- Trolly is trolling a community consisting of racists, pedophiles, spammers, other trolls, or similar Asshole Victim types, or a person or place devoted to such.
- The community itself consists of trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls trolling more trolls trolling the original trolls.
- 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.
- Trolly is in a community filled with ridiculously sensitive users that take everything in an offensive way.
- Trolly is Only in It for the Money, so he used his opportunity to cause havoc online.
- Inverted: Trolly is actually an affable and intelligent poster in a location consisting mostly of trolls.
- Subverted:
- Trolly is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who contributes meaningfully and intelligently, and uses Sincerity Mode.
- Trolly does it for fun, which makes him The Gadfly.
- Trolly was actually being serious and unintentionally started the war.
- Trolly is so stupid that he actually believes all the insane bull crap he constantly spouts.
- Double Subverted: ...only to set the stage for something far, far worse than he's done already (see the Moral Event Horizon scenarios in the Exaggerated section above).
- Parodied:
- Trolly is a mythological troll in-universe.
- 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.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- 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"
- G.I.F.T
- The place consists of trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls.
- It is an ImageBoard 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Exploited: ???
- 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 McLulz 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."
- Deconstructed:
- People realize that Trolly has nothing useful to contribute and is simply using them for his own amusement or attacking them.
- This realization, along with some truly heinous events For the Evulz (see Played for Drama below and the seventh Exaggerated example above) that escalates over time, caused people to think that Trolly is a monster. Add up with how Trolly never realizes that this is going to bring trouble and keeps doing it to be amused, the people banded up, hunted down and killed Trolly before he could spread further misery.
- Trolly drives away potential friends because of his trolling habits, leaving him alone and miserable.
- 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.
- Then someone called the people who killed Trolly out, saying that two wrongs don't make a right and by getting triggered to kill Trolly, these people have actually fallen for Trolly's trolling when they could have just not feed the troll, and now they have to live with the fact that they became just as bad as he is. With one final statement to hammer it home: "Trolly must be laughing at us in the afterlife."
- Trolly doesn't need to worry about upsetting his friends, because they themselves are trolls.
- Played for Laughs:
- Whenever the motive behind the trolling is For the Lulz.
- In a game, the player can tell the main character to troll people when he's using a computer, and the player is then allowed to read what he just wrote and eventual replies.
- Played for Drama: Trolls attack someone obviously undeserving of such a fate, such as a young child or a memorial post.
- Played for Horror:
- Through means unknown Trolly's posts are literal Mind Rape that drives people to kill themselves or commit atrocities just to try to get rid of some of the pain.
- Trolly is a whole lot more proactive than most internet jerks when he tells people to die.
- Trolly and his fellow trolls are doxxed by a murderous maniac and killed for their toxicity, in ways that cannot be taken as karmic by any sane person.
Back to Troll
Trolly McLulz: Ha ha ha ha! You should have seen your face, n00b!
