Trolling;The fine art of

anonymus · Feb 20, 2013

Trolling,while being highly berated by internet administrators forms an integral part of freedom of expression.It is a source of multidimensional entertainment for both the troll and the neutral observers.Only people with fragile sensibilities who are in a habit of getting offended at drop of hat are bothered by trolls.Trolling historically is like blasphemy,hated by establishment for being inflammatory but resulting in historical masterpieces of art,literature and science.

I have created this this thread as an ode to trolling,from most sophisticated to crude.

1.Dante trolls Pope Boniface VIII

The Republic of Florence was long divided when it came to Pope Boniface VIII.In 1301, Pope appointed a Charles de Valois as peacemaker for Tuscany. A local politician named Dante Alighieri figured old Boniface was up to something ugly (as per usual), so he decided to travel to Rome to talk it out. The Pope invited Dante to stay a while as his personal guest while he secretly ordered de Valois to march into Florence with an armed militia to overthrow and execute the government and install a more Pope-friendly regime.
To top it off, Boniface then slapped a huge fine on Dante, as punishment for being in Rome. The new council of Florence passed a declaration that Dante could never return to the city by punishment of death. This order wasn't repealed until 2008, about seven hundred years after this punishment would have ceased to be effective.

The trolling:

The Pope probably should have just killed him instead of being such a smartass, because Dante went on to personally vilify him in what became one of the most widely read and influential works of literature in the Western world, the Divine Comedy.
Even without the aid of a printing press, Dante's brilliant rhyming style and use of the common Italian language assured that everyone would hear his side of the story. He put everyone who ever messed with him in his whole life in an ironic literary interpretation of Hell, reserving a special spot for Pope Boniface VIII.
In the epic poem, St. Peter himself denounces his papacy as "a blood-filled sewer," and his papal throne on Earth "vacant." The burn was so delicious that some families had to build entire churches to offset the damage Dante had done to their names and businesses.

The sweetest plum in the up-yours basket is the fact that,Florence decided they weren't too good for him after all, and spent the next seven hundred years begging the city of Revenna, where he died, to return his bones to the city who screwed him. They refuse even to this day.

6 Historic Acts of Revenge That Put 'Kill Bill' to Shame | Cracked.com

Pope Boniface VIII

Character Analysis
Even though Pope Boniface VIII never physically shows up in the Inferno, he is a major figure, both in Dante’s political life and as a symbol of sin. Boniface would have served nicely as Dante’s prime antagonist had our poet been able to include him in his story. Don’t think that Dante excluded Boniface from Hell out of some outpouring of generosity. This Pope not only betrayed Dante’s beloved White Guelphs, but had Dante personally exiled. (In case you were wondering, Ciacco tells this story in prophecy form in Canto VI.) The only reason Dante didn’t include him was that at the time of Dante’s writing, Pope Boniface VIII was still alive. But such is Dante’s genius that he can flesh out a character for his readers without actually having him once show his face. However, his name makes a number of appearances. Five, to be exact.

Boniface’s role as an emblem of deceit begins with the first obscure allusion to him in Canto III. In the circle of the neutrals, Dante spies a soul he calls the one "who made the great refusal." Scholars have conjectured this character to be Pope Celestine V, the incumbent pope before Boniface (learn more). History tells us that the only reason Boniface came to office was that Celestine suddenly and unexpectedly resigned. Rumors flew that Boniface planted doubts into Celestine’s head in the months prior to his abdication. If this is true, as Dante no doubt believes, it demonstrates an insincere use of language. That’s right – a fraudulent sinner! Since Boniface’s words are uttered to gain him a position of political power, that would mean eighth circle, sixth pouch.

The last three mentions of Boniface (in a simile concerning the panderers, by the Simonist Pope Nicholas III, and by fraudulent counselor Guido da Montefeltro) in the Inferno all point to his questionable practice of selling indulgences or absolution. Hmmm, selling the Word? Simony? This one was slightly more predictable in that Pope Nicholas III actually tells us that he’s waiting for Boniface to replace him in his fiery hole. Because he couldn’t put his nemesis in Hell just yet, Dante has reserved a spot for him.

Have you noticed that Dante tends to look for clerics in Hell? And to take special note of their suffering? (Check out Canto VII for an example.) Pope Boniface, then, in spearheading the Church, might indeed function as a symbol for everything corrupt within Catholicism. Simony, indulgences, barratry. Name your sin. Remember that the whole sticky situation in Florence – the Guelph vs. Ghibelline, White vs. Black fight – arose because of disagreements about the integrity of the Pope.

Pope Boniface VIII in Inferno

2. Galileo Trolls the Pope

Everyone knows the Galileo story as another instance of the Catholic church flexing its muscles and putting science in the corner. But the actual story is far more complex, and at the center of it lies a pretty spectacular troll.
You see, back in Galileo's day, there were three competing models of the universe. Two of them were your basic theology-approved geocentric theories, while the third, called the Copernican model, held that the Earth and the rest of the planets orbited the sun. Scientists of the time pretty much stuck to the "everything revolves around the Earth" school, because they didn't want to get stoned to death. Also, there were a couple of Mr.-Stay-Puft-sized holes in the Copernican theory, most notably the lack of observable stellar parallax, which is how astronomers determine the relative distance of celestial bodies.

Basically, all the best evidence of the day pointed to geocentrism. Galileo himself was never able to offer conclusive proof of the Copernican theory, and he got key details, like the shape of planetary orbits, completely wrong.
So, Galileo was instructed to teach the Copernican model only as one of many possible theories. After a few chats with Pope Urban VIII about the relevant science (because that was a thing people used to have to do), Galileo told His Eminence that he was going to write a book presenting the theories as objectively as possible and in layman's terms. What he did instead was spray out Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems like a hateful jet of burningly contrary diarrhea into the face of the man who could have his fingernails pulled out for coughing in church.

The Dialogue was standard-issue pop science. It was written as a discussion between three characters, although Galileo makes it painfully clear which character he believes is correct and which characters he believes are nose-picking shitheads. To top it off, he used arguments the Pope had made to him in private conversation and had them spoken by the character Simplicio, who was depicted as a 17th century Pauly Shore. He might as well have called the character Idioticci and included illustrations of him in a papal hat. You may recognize this as a world-class piece of troll bait.
And as a result, the "moderators" (the Inquisition) stepped in and banned Galileo from the "forum" (public life). Yeah, trolling doesn't always work out the way you want it to.

3.Alan Sokal Trolls Post modern Academia With a Bull$hit Paper

The 1990s saw the rise of postmodern academics that insisted that "science," as we know it, was based more on prejudice than actual objective discovery. Most scientists didn't know what to make of this argument, because they were under the impression that they'd been doing math problems and pouring things into beakers, not trying to fulfill some latent patriarchal and/or racial agenda.
Enter quantum physicist Alan Sokal.

By 1996, he was sick of postmodernism and decided to troll the community in hopes of exposing their bullShit (which to be honest has been the mission statement of every troll in history, albeit with varying degrees of applicability). Sokal submitted a bloated, meandering nonsense pile of an article to a postmodern academic journal, seeing if they would publish his paper simply because it supported the postmodern viewpoint of science being an ideological hammer made of sexist white supremacy . And they totally published it.
In the paper, Sokal makes several inside jokes to fellow mathematicians and creates an absurd argument that quantum gravity and its formulations support liberalism. Hell, the quote he begins the paper with literally says he is playing a trick on the journal:

"Transgressing disciplinary boundaries ... [is] a subversive undertaking since it is likely to violate the sanctuaries of accepted ways of perceiving. Among the most fortified boundaries have been those between the natural sciences and the humanities."
And it goes on and on like that. When the article was published, Sokal gave an interview to a different journal in which he divulged that the entire paper was a hoax, causing an immediate **** cyclone (or, since we're talking science here, a **** Coke-bottle tornado that you made in science class). The postmodernists tried to contain the damage, but the story quickly went mainstream, and they were mocked into disgrace.

4.Johann Beringer Gets Trolled by Fake Fossils

In the early 18th century, giant-*** dinosaur bones and other fossils were being dug up all over the place, but people had no idea where the hell they came from. Religion still had a firm grip on the scientific community, so the notion that the fossils could belong to a species of animal that had since become extinct was rejected by many, and even considered blasphemous, since God would never allow any of his creations to simply die out. Some people even argued that God had buried the bones himself to test their faith, because rationality occasionally hangs by a very fine thread.

A particularly vocal supporter of this theory was Johann Beringer, the head of the natural history department of the University of Wurzburg in Germany. He was firmly convinced that all fossils were "hidden by the Author of Nature for his own pleasure," although a fair elaboration of what that "pleasure" might have been was never fully provided. And honestly, we don't understand why someone so devoutly religious would be so firmly adherent to the idea that God threw a bunch of bones down to Earth just to screw with people, because it sure makes the Almighty sound like a giant douchemungus.
Anyway, two colleagues of Beringer, J. Ignatz Roderick and Georg von Eckhart, decided they actually would carve strange fake fossils and bury them to screw with Beringer. Instead of calling bullshit the second he saw the obvious (we cannot stress that word enough) forgeries, Beringer couldn't believe his luck. Figuring he had won the fossil lottery (that's a thing, right?), he scooped them up and tossed them into his fossil sack (that's a thing, right?) to carry them home for further analysis. Heartened by this (a phrase here meaning "laughing their scientific dicks off"), Roderick and Eckhart made even more fossils for Beringer to find. These new ones were engraved with Syrian, Hebrew, and Babylonian inscriptions, including one engraved with the word "Jehovah," the Hebrew name for God.

Astonishingly, Beringer ate the whole thing up. He published a book cataloging his amazing finds in which he actually wrote that the fossils were "so exactly fitted to the dimensions of the stones, that one would swear that they are the work of a very meticulous sculptor." Even when Roderick and Eckhart tried to tell him they'd tricked him (their sides having been sufficiently split by joyous guffaws), he refused to believe them. Instead, Beringer accused them of trying to shake his faith and block the publication of his work.
It wasn't until after publishing his Lithographiae Wirceburgensis, when Beringer found yet another miraculous fossil with his own goddamn name on it, that he finally accepted that he'd been bamboozled. He spent the next few years in a legal battle with Roderick and Eckhart (who, in their defense, had tried to tell him), while simultaneously trying to buy up all the copies of his book to save his reputation. Bizarrely, it was Eckhart and Roderick who were disgraced for perpetrating the hoax, while Beringer kept his job and wrote several more books despite being a demonstrably terrible scientist.

5.Sir Richard Owen Trolls His Rival's Death

Sure, Sir Richard Owen once got into a bitter flame war with Charles Darwin that seriously devalued the discussion of evolution as a legitimate theory and brought about his own professional ruin. But that's not what makes him one of the greatest trolls science has ever seen.
Sir Richard Owen was a scientist who pioneered the field of paleontology by plagiarizing the work of a colleague named Gideon Mantell, then used his clout to crush Mantell, leaving the man to die poor, crippled, and unrecognized. And after Mantell was dead, Owen only stepped up his campaign.

First, Mantell's obituary was written by Owen himself (under a pseudonym) and predictably boiled down to "Ha ha, look at this dead asshole." Then, Mantell's spine was placed in a museum for scientific study. He had badly broken his back years earlier in a carriage accident, and his lower vertebrae had twisted and fused back into place in a manner that can only be described as "tit-blastingly wrong." And who should be in charge of the museum that took control of Mantell's mutant spinal column? None other than Sir Richard "I **** on your grave" Owen, who immediately seized this opportunity to skip the rope of dickitry across Mantell's already belittled legacy.
After stealing Mantell's life's work and diminishing his career to the level of "sparse Wikipedia entry," Owen took the spine and had it pickled in a jar to demonstrate "the severest degree of deformity," where it was placed on display alongside other "monstrosities," presumably on a shelf labeled "TROLLOLOLOL."

Owen died in 1892, but as one final "kiss my ***" from beyond the grave, Mantell's spine was unceremoniously tossed in the garbage in the 1970s when the museum cleared out a bunch of old bullshit that nobody cared about anymore.

The 6 Greatest Acts of Trolling in the History of Science | Cracked.com

6.Sultan Mehmat IV trolled by Cossacks

Sultan Mehmat IV while on war with Cossacks of Ukraine sent an sternly worded letter to them stating

I, the Sultan, son of Mohamed, brother of the Sun and Moon, grandson and vicegerent of God, sovereign of all kingdoms: of Macedonia, Babylonia, and Jerusalem, of Upper and Lower Egypt: king of kings, ruler of all that exists; extraordinary, invincible knight; constant guardian of the grave of Jesus Christ; trustee of God himself; hope and comfort of muslims, confusion and great protector of Christians, command you, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to surrender to me voluntarily and without any kind of resistance, and don't permit yourselves to trouble me with your attacks!

Turkish Sultan Mohamed

To which the reply of Cossacks was

Zaporozhians -- to the Turkish Sultan

You Turkish Satan, brother and comrade of the damned devil and secretary to Lucifer himself! What the hell kind of knight are you? The devil [$hits] and you and your army swallow [it]. You aren't fit to have the sons of Christians under you; we aren't afraid of your army, and we'll fight you on land and sea. You Babylonian busboy, Macedonian mechanic, Jerusalem beer brewer, Alexandrian goat skinner, swineherd of Upper and Lower Egypt, Armenian pig, Tatar goat, Kamenets hangman, Podolian thief, grandson of the Evil Serpent himself, and buffoon of all the world and the netherworld, fool of our God, swine's snout, mare's [as$hole], butcher's dog, unbaptized brow, may the devil steam your a$s! That's how the Cossacks answer you, you nasty glob of spit! You're unfit to rule true Christians. We don't know the date because we don't have a calendar, the moon is in the sky, and the year is in a book, and the day is the same with us as with you, so go kiss our [butt]!

-Chief Hetman Zaxarcenko with all the Zaporozhian Host