Fable

▲ Hack A Conversation, Start A Fight ▼

Most conversations are collegial give and take - a bonding experience to enhance relationships. The typical internet comment board might be more rough-and-tumble and be less about relationships, but the conversations are in support of community.

Troll of the internet vandalize community. They destroy conversation and inflame conflict. The emotionality shifts abruptly from social emotions to moral emotions. From Cognition and Culture:

His arguments span all the range of conversational perversion: from childish insult to intricate accusation, from in-your-face provocation to subtle insinuation, from blatant non sequitur to elaborate sophistry. For Steve is a conversation hacker, or, as they are better known, a Troll.

Trolls pervert conversations into arguments about right and wrong, good and bad. It's an argument at best, and a mean-spirited food fight at worse:

His top priority must lie in winning a rhetorical fight by using all available means, including spoiling the debate, nagging people, ranting endlessly, etc. This motivation must come first chronologically, too: a Troll enters a debate with the clear intention of making it go awry. For example, a person who simply got carried away by a discussion and, becoming pig-headed, started resorting to provocation and insults, is not a real Troll.

In truth, we are fascinated with the archetypal conflicts. And if we are not part of the community or conversation, a troll's turn for the worse is a spectacle, perhaps worth scanning.