Saturday, June 10, 2006

Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users: Tech pundit John Dvorak has long been known for his inflammatory opinions. Many have suspected that these opinions are just a way to drive up traffic to his column. Now, we have it straight from the horse's mouth: Dave Winer has Dvorak on video describing his methodology for trolling the Mac community to pump up his stats. (Via Slashdot, my emphasis.) As far as I can remember back to newsgroups in the mid-80s, trolling on the internet is a fishing metaphor for posting with the intent to create a dispute or to make the marks appear foolish. The fishing metaphor blended with the obnoxious fairy-tale creatures who harass travelers and extort tribute. In the quote above, we find troll(ing) <target> troll(ing) <place> instead of the standard usage for the fishing verb troll(ing) for <target> I can see how 2 fits with the normal usage troll(ing) <place> for <target> But 1 doesn't fit. Maybe it was formed by making a verb troll from the mythical troll meaning the action of behaving like a troll towards the target. 6:54:08 PM