The medium of Netspeak 53
captures the resonance of the trolls of Scandinavian mythology –
thebridge-guarderswhowouldletpeoplepassonlyiftheyanswered
a question correctly. On the Internet, the bait is false information,
deliberately introduced into a conversation to see who falls for it.
People who respond, and correct the misinformation, show that
they do not belong to the group, or are newcomers to it (newbies);
old hands will simply ignore it, or – if they can be bothered –
laconically send the response ‘nice troll’ to the originator, orYHBT
(=‘you have been trolled’) to the responder. Not all chatgroups
troll; some insert clues to the existence of a troll into a message
that only the cognoscenti recognize; some are very much against
the whole process, conscious of the communicative disruption that
can result.
The maxim of quantity is also often undermined in Internet sit-
uations. At one extreme there islurking– a refusal to communicate.
Lurkersare people who access a chatgroup and read its messages
but do not contribute to the discussion. The motives include new-
bie reluctance to be involved, academic curiosity (researching some
aspect of Internet culture), or voyeurism. Some manuals refer to
lurking as ‘spying’.^39 Spammingrefers to the sending of usually un-
wanted messages of excessive size. The origin of the term lies in a
1970 Monty Pythonsketch in which a cafe waitress describes the
available dishes to two customers, and culinary variation is in-
troduced by an increasing reliance on spam – ‘Well, there’s egg
and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and
spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam;
spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam
bacon spam tomato and spam.. .’ – the whole interchange being
accompanied, as one would expect, by the chanting of the same
word from a passing group of Vikings.^40 In one of those seman-
tic shifts which makes etymology such a fascinating subject, the
(^39) Lurking is not the same asidling, which is not an active attempt to hide one’s presence
from the other members of a group – as when a participant decides to do something else
while staying connected, or simply has nothing to say. A further label identifiessmurfs
40 andsmurfettes– people who post messages to a group but without saying anything much.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus,BBC, 2nd series, episode 25 (15 December 1970).