What Does Trolling Really Mean? It's Not Trivial.  What behaviors do you consider “trolling”? Insults on Twitter? Lewd messages? Posting someone’s personal information? If someone makes a death threat, is it still “just trolling?” Often, trolling is considered an annoying but ultimately inconsequential part of internet culture. But misunderstanding “trolling”—and other words like “cyberbullying” and “online harassment”—can quickly undermine the seriousness of the behavior it describes. “Trolling” has its roots in deliberately provoking angry or distressed reactions, but what we often call trolling today goes much further, causing very real damage to individual targets and our public discourse. Since the word “trolling” was originally associated with online arguments and discord, vicious online abusers have been allowed to hide behind the image of a trickster troll. While even the earliest forms of trolling weren’t harmless, it has evolved into a weapon to abuse and silence people.