Internet Trolls are evil tricksters

I found this essay on the Internet troll over at drewspeak. It's a complete analysis and commentary on the practice of trolling. If you haven't encountered the trolls, then you really haven't spent much time on message boards, or at least don't bother reading the comments sections of some of the bigger blogs. Trolls are those people who deliberately start arguments for no reason other than that they can. They purposefully go around insulting and attacking people from behind their partial Internet anonymity.
The statement "don't feed the trolls" means don't respond to their comments and attacks. By responding, you are giving them exactly what they want.
Here is a quote from the essay:

“The troll comes to the door of a new forum and sets down his bag of tricks. If he has a grudge against the people inside discussing and debating their passions with a certain degree of amicability, peacability and decorum, he does not show them. He has the cracked, stoic smile of Robin Goodfellow, a Puck with the simple desire to disrupt peace itself. He loves chaos; his bag is full of golden apples he can lob to set the masses squabbling. He has also many masks, smoke bombs, straw men, cloaks, puppets, matches, ethanol, knives, dust, sand, and magicks of the most arcane sort. He knows what he is about - causing trouble. Why? This is the troll’s darkest mystery - if any one knew his secret, he would die. For all trolls, their motive power is this: without contraries, they cannot progress.”

Read the entire essay here: The Internet Troll As The Trickster Archetype Via Boing Boing