Trolling is a fishing tactic . You throw out bait and drag it behind you . On the internet , the first iteration of trolling was sarcasm leaning towards absurd , and being in text those without critical thinking skills would take the bait . When the yolo generation got on facebook they did not know that facebook used the internet they got trolled were not able to recognize sarcasm and would take the bait and get confused , they thought because they made themselves the butt of the joke and were offended by their misunderstanding of sarcasm , that trolling meant be a douchebag and had something to do with the monster . It never did . Harassment is not trolling , we have a term for that , its called harassment . Editing some ones post is even further from the term trolling than harassment .