In the early days of the internet, well, I should say, in the early days of the social internet, generating engagement was not so easy. Most people treated the internet as a passive activity, like a newspaper or bulletin board. Something to read, find information, be entertained by, but not contribute to. Most sites were just beginning to implement visit counters, so they could see they were generating hits, but not very much new content. How to address this? How do we get those passive readers to touch the keys and contribute to this beautiful online collaboration engine? Deep in the SomethingAweful forums, a new online behavior was formulating. Something that would soon become known as trolling. No, not like the trolls of today who oftentimes do it to promote some political ideology or cast another asunder. No not like those others who use the term for simply cyberbullying. What I’m talking about takes brains. It takes effort. It takes craft. You’re not trying to bully someone off a platform, you’re trying to get them to add to the conversation. You’re not just trying to provoke any reaction, you’re trying to get them to be human online. Anger? Spite? Annoyance? Yes. Those are all tools in the trolls’s toolbox, but so are complements, flattery, playing dumb, and confusion. Trolling is an art. It’s more chaotic than evil. If you’ve trolled correctly, nobody will know you’ve trolled at all.