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True that! Keith Henson's legendary alt.religion.scientology loopback trolling story, with hilarious deposition transcript, in which he patiently explains how 127.0.0.1 works to astonished Scientology lawyers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791891

>Just be glad you didn't have to explain an in joke about ftp sites, the local loopback address, and a troll, in a deposition, under oath, to Scientology lawyers, like Keith Henson did.

[...]

>Henson: (patiently) It's at 127.0.0.1. This is a loop back address. This is a troll.

>Lieberman: what's a troll?

>Henson: it comes from the fishing where you troll a bait along in the water and a fish will jump and bite the thing, and the idea of it is that the internet is a very humorous place and it's especially good to troll people who don't have any sense of humor at all, and this is a troll because an ftp site of 127.0.0.1 doesn't go anywhere. It loops right back around into your own machine.

>Lieberman [not getting it]: So the idea here was to make the church think that this person had an ftp site and to take action against him and, in fact, he didn't have it; is that your point?

>Henson: Oh, it's really humorous, and I picked up on it and instantly added something to extend the troll. Extending the trolls like this is an art form of the highest order.

>Lieberman (acidly): I see. So this is part of your art form where you say, "don't you expect the 'ho to blow a gasket?"

[...it just gets even funnier from there...]

Early internet wisdom was "don't feed the trolls" - I never realized trolling was from fishing.
I dunno if it even is because isn't that spelt trawling? just looked it up and they're both correct fishing terms sigh
Trolling is typically done on lakes with fishing lines cast from the back of a boat. A trolling motor sets the boat speed. Trawling usually takes place at sea, with larger boats and wide nets.

https://www.trollingmotors.net/

Trawling is done by dragging nets along the seabed causing massive damage with huge inefficient polluting fuel-guzzling 1000 horsepower diesel engines.

Trolling is as the other guy says where you putter along with minimum effort and a tiny engine pulling a couple of baited lines through the water, seeing if you pass through a patch where anyone bites.

Trawling is far more analogous to the AI scrapers, hammering the absolute shit out of the ecosystem and throwing almost everything they scoop up away with no regard for the consequences.