Trolling This Post Would Be In Incredibly Poor Taste

Today’s edition of Speak-Up on Kotaku features a heartfelt plea from commenter GeshGav to keep the term ‘Troll’ from being rendered impotent due to overuse. At least I think that’s what he’s saying.

Comments are one of those seemingly necessary evils of the blog business. Almost every news-blog has a comments section heaving with observations ranging from the self-indulgent whinnies of the perpetual complainers to the intelligently-constructed musings of the commenter-elite.

It would appear that recently, a phenomenon has swept across all websites; where the same phrase is brought up time after time.

Troll.

Originally, those who consistently fostered hatred or posted only to engender heated debate were marked with this brand. Now it would seem the simple act of stating a preference can result in being called a Troll. I haven’t had the misfortune to be named one myself, although I assume some incredibly witty individual will rectify that in the replies to this post; it’s a shame to see the word being diluted.

Much like other strong words in our various lexicons we should be reserving the word ‘Troll’ for the real assholes out there, accepting the different opinions of others with perhaps a muttered curse rather than a typed allegation of Trollery.

We’ve got a good community of folks here, we should act like it more often.

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