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The astroturfing involved first one person, then multiple people, who showed up to promote a company that had been reported by forum members to be taking money and not delivering products. It got messy. As far as what's to gain, sales and/or reputation for the company in question.
That's called "astroturfing" because it's an artificial imitation of "grassroots" activity. You see it a lot in fake "community" groups that just happen to be promoting some organization/company/politician's viewpoint, "informational" websites that are secretly owned by whoever's side they're pushing, bogus blogs that look legitimate but are really selling some product or agenda, etc. One notable example from my own experience was a "grassroots" group that was opposed to a river cleanup, which turned out to have been fabricated by ... wait for it ... the company that dumped the toxic waste in the river in the first place. "We're happy with the river the way it is" turned out to mean "because we don't want to pay to clean up our mess." Online, it goes back at least to the Windows vs. OS/2 days, when people who were later found to be Microsoft employees started spamming up the OS/2 Usenet groups with posts trashing OS/2.
There's also what you might call "reverse astroturfing" where the goal is not to promote your own sponsor but to bring the opposition into disrepute. The classic example is hiring a bunch of ... I suppose the PC term would be "hygiene-challenged individuals of no permanent address" ... to hand out your opponent's campaign literature and be as obnoxious about it as possible. The more modern version involves chain emails and robo-calls.
Both forms show up on forums. Due to their fundamental dishonesty, starting with lying about who they are or represent, they are a Bad Thing if they move into your forum.
Trolls, of course, are people who clearly don't get enough attention at home, and would rather be hated than ignored. Nope, doesn't make sense to me either. They're a chronic problem, and as their goal is to disrupt the forum, and they will keep on trying until they succeed, the only real solution is the ban stick.
And yes, that fellow was a troll. Legitimate users do not show up in a forum, insult everyone in it, and then when they get negative reactions, say that just proves their point that the forum members and their interests/topics are deserving of insults. Trolls, on the other hand, operate exactly that way, and they also try to set forum members against each other by playing on the natural trust of those with less exposure to that sort of behavior.
As you might guess, I spend time in places more attractive to trolls than a forum full of mild-mannered bookworms *pointedly ignores the RIAA flamewar going on a few sections up* and I've developed a certain sensitivity to their patterns of operation. Aside from his choice of targets (politics, video games, and the eternal Mac/Win battle are all more common) he almost was a textbook case.
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