Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
I was around before then (I logged into the very first BBS in the US) and trolls were the ones in chatrooms looking for cybersex. I was on the net before the net was public. So yes, I know what the definition of trolling is. Just because someone decided he or she wanted to change the definition does not make it changed.
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Out of curiosity, which BBS was that? Ward Christensen and Randy Suess' CBBS from 1978? Starting in Feb., 1980, I ran their software modified to allow remote file access before moving on to other software for several years before moving to other software and finally settling on Maximus under OS/2 connected to FidoNet. I eventually shut my BBS down when the number of callers dropped to less than one per day. That was a fun twenty years.
As for the Internet, while I remember that posting information intended to attract responses from noobs was the original trolling which didn't last long, inflammatory posts were the next frontier and still going strong. As far as I recall, cybersex, harassment, etc. were johnny come latelies. Though possibly close to the original trolls in living up to the fishing reference.