Nothing gets people riled up more than a troll.
No, not the kind of trolls in fairy tales who live under bridges, or the iconic dolls with neon hair and groovy clothing.
But the kind of trolls who say or do something purely to instigate conflict and rile people up.
Today, trolling is most commonly associated with the internet and social media, where people make a habit of writing rude, sometimes offensive comments purely intending to get a rise out of people.
But trolling has been around long before the days of Facebook or Instagram.
Redditor drbdrbdr was eager to hear who people considered to be the most notorious troll in the history of mankind, leading them to ask:
"Who is the biggest troll in history?"
Amazing What Good Pictures Can Do...
"The guy who opened a fake restaurant in London using Google reviews and his back garden and shed with microwave meals."- dirtyaccomplice
Just... Why?!?
"April fools day 1974 when a man burned 70 rubber tires on a dormant volcano in Alaska!"
"This has to be up there."
"He waited 3 years to get a helicopter to fly the tires to the top to get a picture perfect condition."
"He even got the coast guard called out too."- jgpdvs
Team Salieri?
"Mozart didn’t like this singer so much that he wrote a piece for her with high and low notes constantly because he noticed that when she hit low notes her chin went to her chest and when she hit high notes her head would fling back."
"So it was like she was bobbing like a chicken."- danielokane
GiphyCloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs!
"In the 30s-40s BBC did an April fools broadcast where they told people how spaghetti was made, on trees.'
"They literally showed fake spaghetti trees and since not many people in that time knew how spaghetti was made, lots of people believed it."- Voicedtunic
He Made A Mockery Of All Of Them!
"There was a Prussian, I can't remember his name, who managed to make an officer's uniform out of scraps of clothing."
"He used it to convince a few guards on patrol to follow him into a government building, ordered the arrest of the man in charge, confiscated all the money personally, sent the arrested man to Berlin calming it was all on order of the King."
"He then ditched the uniformed, got on a train to Berlin him and managed to beat the guards there."
"He then sat back and watched the absolute confusion happen."
"The guy was eventually arrested but the public turned him into a celebrity and his actions into a play that was performed all over Germany."
"He wasn't incarcerated for long and after his release he lived an easy life from there on."- TheGermanMofo
Outsmarting The Enemy
"Technically this isn't a troll since it was serving a purpose, but Admiral Nelson was escaping a French fleet when a man fell overboard."
"It was Nelson's policy of never leaving anyone behind so he turned his ship around to go pick him up."
"The French saw his ship turn back toward them, assumed he had reinforcements coming beyond the horizon, so they turned and ran."- ScarletCaptain
Episode 18 GIF by The SimpsonsGiphyThat's Quite A Grudge...
"I was thinking more like the mortician who patented the automatic telephone switch 3 years after finding out his rival's wife worked as a telephone operator and would reroute calls asking for his funeral parlor to her husbands."
"The guy put a whole worldwide workforce out of work for one person's actions."- ThrowawayKarensBane
By Hook Or By Crook...
"Theodore Hook."
"The perpetrator of the Berners Street hoax in London in 1810 in which Hook sent thousands of letters summoning all manners of various vendors and service people and physicians and dignitaries and others to all come to one random person’s home."
'Literally shutting down a large part of London as they all descended upon the same address throughout the day, all while Hook and a friend sat watching from a house across the street, presumably laughing their a**es off the whole time."- VictorBlimpmuscle
Reverse Psychology
"In China there was the war of the three kingdoms."
"The Wei, Shu, and Wu."
"Two of their armies met in battle and the smaller was out of arrows."
"They were separated by a river."
"One night, the leader of the smaller army stocked the front of their boats/rafts with straw bales and moved toward the opposing army over the river."
"They were immediately hailed with arrows."
"The men ducked behind the straw while the arrows stuck in the straw, undamaged."
"They then sailed away and yelled."
"''We thank you for the arrows, we will return them shortly!"''
"This may just be a tall tale from Romance of the Three Kingdoms but it may be true."- Mr_Caterpillar
You Got It Animation GIF by SWR KindernetzGiphyGenerally speaking, these were deliberate acts of malice, which served no other purpose than to baffle and infuriate the public.
Although, one can't help but wonder if all of these so-called trolls had an ulterior motive.
Deep down, they must have known that these duplicitous pranks would ensure that people would remember their name, or at the very least their actions, for a very long time.
@LeeMerrittesq/X
@bob_moss/X
@jelanijones/Bluesky
@Aurkayne/X
@sadcommunistdog; @froglok/Bluesky