There are way too many of those, which is part of the reason several of the Facebook groups I’m part of have taken the groups private to cut down on random trolls monopolizing the conversation. representative for the 15th District in Georgia, which doesn’t exist, has fooled Christiane Amanpour and Ezra Klein, among others), or someone who parks on comment boards for newspapers and other media just to pick fights. Steven Smith,” whose parody account claiming he’s the U.S. On the Internet troll, Merriam-Webster defines that creature as “a person who intentionally antagonizes others online by posting inflammatory, irrelevant, or offensive comments or other disruptive content.” That may be someone who leaves outrageous comments on obituary sites, someone who creates a Twitter account for the sole purpose of baiting people (like “Rep. (The trolls of the happy, helpful variety seen in “Frozen” and “Trolls” are a different matter entirely.) You’d be forgiven if your first thought when hearing the word “troll” is the fishing method or the Scandinavian ogre that hangs out in caves or hills or under bridges and might have a taste for humans or billy goats. I apologize to all real bridge trolls for associating you with such an unlikeable menace. (Seriously, dude? Yes, I usually disagree with you, but you’re a jerk who likes to spread misinformation and provoke people. I’ll remind you here of the definition of a troll of the Internet variety, which is not, as one consistently insists, anyone who disagrees with me. Answering them just encourages their abusive behavior, and won’t change their minds. Besides, I said, the usual gang of trolls just ignores whatever I say and pretends I said something else that more closely fits their image of me (who is a real drip).

I told him I’d given up responding to comments for the most part, preferring to let readers discuss things among themselves (some are very adept at fact-checking the worst of them). “Wow, you got somewhat torched in the comments of your column today. Last Wednesday, a friend (I call him Snek Man) DM’d me, quite concerned with what he was seeing on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s website. He swore once that he had a letter published by me, but I was never able to track it down his intent with that claim was probably just to get me to waste my time. This, apparently, is someone who’s been banned multiple times for his abusive behavior on the comment boards but keeps coming back under a new name (Slak, Packman and others have been his pseudonyms). A typical response on last week’s column on the newspaper’s website.

Simone biles quitter meme