According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary the origin of the internet ‘trolling’ most likely comes from fishing rather than bridge-guarding creatures:
Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The Origin of ‘Trolling’
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Well, I mean…yeah? I remember when the phrase was coined, it was a fishing reference; they were fishing for responses, luring in people with something offensive or stupid. How did people not know this?
“How did people not know this?”
I see what you did there, and approve. Trollers gonna troll!
I just learned this from this post, because English is not my first language, so I’m not familiar with fishing terminology. Nice to know, though!
Trawling.
I remember the origin: we used to go “trolling for noobs” back in the late 90s.
Huh. I thought that was trawling, not trolling. But you learn something new every day
Trawling is a big commercial fishing boat dragging the bottom of the ocean with a huge fishing net.
Having fished lakes in my younger days we would fish the lake in a small boat using a trolling motor which is a small, quiet electric motor with a prop used to maneuver a boat at slow speeds.
When it comes to internet trolls I ignore them, eventually they go away if they don’t get any bites.
Once the word was established as “trolling for (reactions)” “Don’t feed the Trolls” followed shortly after. Trolling is clearly fishing, but the one who does it is an ugly fiend that lives under a bridge, waiting to drag you under. I think there’s a word for this in linguistics, where a word has multiple etymologies.