I miss those days when I was proud to be a troll, when it meant tricking people into thinking in ways that they normally wouldn't. People used to love trolls! Of course, it didn't just mean that. There were also troll raids when friends would get together and make silly comments on every thread they could find, crashing the party but having fun with it. The incendiary ones used to be called flamers, but I think that term is too trollish to use against trolls these days.
I was never the type to participate in the troll raid style, just the kind to nudge a conversation in a certain direction, more like taking a position in a debate that I didn't necessarily agree with to make it more interesting. I'm thinking of threads on forums where people would actually vote for their favorite trolls. But you would have had to be there to know what I mean.
I think I remember the term flamers being retired as people began to misinterpret it as a negative term for homosexual individuals (based off of flamboyant). This would've been around a decade ago, maybe a bit more, so it could just be a false memory.
Yes, I think that's definitely it. That's what I meant by being too trollish. It's too much like something a troll would say. But I never even realized the anti-gay term was based on flamboyant, although it makes perfect sense. Thanks for pointing that out.
