The Rise of the Troll
This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present, surface delightful treasures, and examine the American idea.
Trolls are not just pranksters on the margins. They are in replies, DMs, comments, and email inboxes, sharpening their knives for humiliation, baiting those with whom they disagree, and blurring the line between a joke and a threat.
The Atlantic has examined trolling as an internet behavior for decades.