Trolling: Writing for the Lulz

Common advice on the web advises internet-users against "feeding” (or interacting with) internet trolls, and for (sometimes) good reason. However, this exhibit seeks to understand this peculiar internet-born version of everyday writing. Simply put, trolling is a form of dialogic practical joking wherein the writer (or "troll") seeks to decieve the unsuspecting public into taking their writing as genuine or serious -- no matter how absurd or outrageous the content. This written form of deceitful playacting is motivated by one thing, and one thing primarily: laughing at others’ expense (often stylized as “the lulz”). 

While trolling as a rhetorical tactic perhaps pre-dates the internet, the actual term "trolling" is fairly recent. This writing, which is often (but not always) multimodal and metatextual engages in a sort of “game” with the public: the troll assumes a purposefully-absurd persona and spends as long as they possibly can committing to an overly-elaborate fiction. This dedication to an absurd persona usually results in three different outcomes: 

1. The public is fooled, and takes the troll's words and actions as wholly serious, resulting in a "successful" trolling where the public expresses outrage and offense;
   
   
2. The public is not fooled, resulting in a "failed" trolling where the public does not express outrage and offense or; 
   
   
3. The public recognizes the troll and begins playing along with them -- thereby becoming trolls themselves. 

As a form of everyday writing, trolling remains a fascinating and underexplored form beacause of it's two-sided rhetorical aims. When you're an internet troll, it doesn't matter if you actually believe what you are saying... all that matters is that you fool strangers into thinking that you do. In this way, trolling isn't exactly the same thing as lying, because if a troll is particularly skilled, they may not need to tell a single lie in order to convince an unsuspecting stranger into seeing their words and actions as genuine. 

This exhibit will use two different instances of public trolling to explore this phenomenon: the "Storm Area 51" Facebook event, and the #JusticeForBradsWife hashtag campaign.