We've all seen them, the assholes of the web, the demons sent from hell to piss everyone off. And eventually, we all become them. As the old adage goes, "if you can't beat them, join them."
Trolling is a heinous act intended to bait an unsuspecting person into a pointless and heated argument. Professional trolling will piss off the guy on the other side of screen to the point where he or she will scream and shout into their monitors while simultaneously slitting their wrists and puking out of their ass.
So here is how it's done.
1. Begin by signing up at a forum or website of your choosing. A preferable choice is a forum that is active, but not active enough to have a strong and committed member base. You don't want this to be a 1 vs. 100 battle.
2. Lurk around a bit. Find out what people's opinions are on certain subjects. No matter what they may be, get ready to say the opposite.
3. Create your introduction. Take on a personality that generally pisses off the Internet populace. A few examples include: Fags, fag-haters, 10-14 year olds, fanboys, sarcastic assholes, and idiots incapable of typing properly.
4. Depending on the personality you assume, your intro thread should either be a few words in length, or several paragraphs. Anything in between is unacceptable, as that can be mistaken for a proper post. Short intros may be along the lines of "sup," "yo dawgs," or "word to ya mothas" while long intros should most definitely go on a tangent. Start talking about your life, then mention an event that occurred recently and discuss how that event has affected your life in the long run.
5. Be sure to end all short intros in "cbf to post more" and all long intros with "sorry for the quick intro, I'd say a bit more but [insert another 2-3 paragraph story here]."
6. Find the forum's general topic/spam board. Create your first thread and title it "How old are you?" Reply to your original post, saying "13 and a half come this July" or "57 as of yesterday." Yes, the double post is necessary.
7. If you chose to be a kid, then proceed to make another thread titled "i eat fags for breakfast," promptly discussing how you beat up kids at your school that dress weird. Ignore the fact that your thread title makes no sense, accusing anyone that questions your actions of being a fag as well. Threaten to beat them up, and attempt to arrange a time and place to do so.
8. If you chose to become an old guy, now is the time to make a thread called "post pics of your daughters." Do not include any pictures in your original post. Instead, tell people about the wonderful life of being single, but that seeing a smiling kid always cheers you up and lets you look forward towards something in the future.
9. If you chose to do Step 8, proceed to make another thread right after explaining how you were arrested a few years ago for distributing illegal pornography (keep the type of porn vague) but was acquited last week due to insufficient evidence.
10. Should you have chosen the path of the prepubescant teen, find any reply to any thread, quote that person, and respond with "that's retarded." The less opinionated the original poster's point was, the better. Responding this in a "what's your favorite flavor of ice-cream" threadto someone who simply said "Vanilla!" is what you're after.
11. Wait for replies.
12. Quote any reply that is dissenting from your ideals and respond with "nah, that's stupid." For anyone that agrees (unlikely), do the same.
13. Create a thread about a topic mostly everyone, including you, shares the same opinion. For example, make a topic about how bad rape is. Make a 3-5 sentence rant about how terrible rape and rapists are and then wait for people to agree. When they do, start an argument with them, attempting to justify rapists.
14. Never reply to an argument with more than two sentences. The more they post, the less you post.
15. Find random articles on the Internet and just quote the whole damn thing, forcing people to read 1,000 words on a psychiatrist's evaluation on a rapist while you spent no more than one minute making the post.
16. If you're role-playing as a kid, simply claim to be the best at everything, even if you have no idea what the f-ck these people are talking about. Found a thread about Croquette? Claim you whoop noob's asses in school every day at it.
17. If you chose to be an old guy, relate everything back to how wonderful children and youthe are. Make your avatar an eight year old girl. Find an image of a male in a suggestive pose, and put him into your signature. The contrasting ideals will confuse people, and they'll have no idea how to deal with you.
18. Should anyone call you out or start harassing you, create a thread about how messed up your life is. Make up some heart-wrenching, but believable story. Add a few "I wish I was dead"`s and nobody will bother you again.
19. Should you be labeled as a troll, fix the error of your ways. Do the complete opposite of whatever you were doing before. People getting annoyed with your extremely short posts? Type them out, making them unbearably long (never seperate paragraphs, either). This way, when people call you out again, accuse them of being hypocrites, and then just do whatever you want to do once people take your side.
20. When your trolling ways are done, there is only one more thing left to do. Leave. Create a thread and insult everyone. Say how you were always mistreated and how everyone on the forum are assholes. Say that you've found a better, more welcoming site that's way more active as well. If possible, delete your account and all your previous posts leading up to this one.
Congrats! Your trolling is complete. The result? One pissed off forum.