trolls’ simultaneously symbiotic and exploitative relationship to mainstream culture,

trolling is, or at least can be, an extremely effective rhetorical strategy.

Similarly, cultural aberration is only intelligible in the context of an existing social system.

trickster] is not the declarative speaker of traditional prophecy, but an erasing angel who cancels what humans have so carefully built, then cancels himself.”

Trolls believe that nothing should be taken seriously, and therefore regard public displays of sentimentality, political conviction, and/or ideological rigidity as a call to trolling arms.

that trolls’ behaviors provide an implicit, and sometimes outright explicit, critique of existing media and cultural systems—

snapping its audience to attention, either by activating emotional investment or by forwarding a claim so outrageous that one cannot help but engage in a dialogue.

dirt is best understood as matter out of place, and is intelligible only in relation to existing systems of cleanliness:

Like a spiteful housecat whose sole interest seems to be property damage, trolls take perverse joy in ruining complete strangers’ days.