Aristotle, “On Trolling”
<i>for there is no art in what they do.</i><p>I couldn't disagree more. There is common trolling and there is sublime trolling. The ability to sow the perfect amount of strife to create real change is a thing of beauty.  This goes beyond the tactics of information warfare -- for which trolling has its uses -- and reveals truth to those in ignorance. For most true knowledge cannot be learned by the advice of elders alone, but must be learned through the long and winding path. Many of life's truths are best revealed through fiction.<p>This essay reads like it fears trolls and their threats to social order. But the way of discord and strife is also true. Did Eris not troll Olympus most excellently with her golden apple?  Did she not reveal that divine folly was no less than mortal folly?  This is the awesome power that is trolling in a skilled hand.