Wardrobe trolls
When I was about 8ish, my imagination fuelled by Point Horror tales, I used to terrify my little brother with stories about how the troll in his wardrobe would crawl out and eat him while he was asleep. (This was many years pre-Monster's Inc - the royalties cheque must have got lost in the post.) It got to the stage where I'd convinced him that the only way for him to be truly safe was by turning the lights off, knocking 3 times on the wardrobe door, spinning round three times, and saying "I'm not afraid of the trolls in the dark!" three times before getting into bed as fast as possible. After a couple of weeks he was doing this every night

Those of you with siblings can probably see where this is going.

One night, the second after he'd finished the final, "I'm not afraid...", I leapt out of the wardrobe wearing my glow-in-the-dark Spiderman pyjamas, a sheet tied round my neck (as a cape obviously - all wardrobe trolls wear capes!) and a Leonardo (turtle not Renaissance painter/inventor) face mask roaring my head off.


20 years on, my brother swears to this day that he's never been more scared in his life.


He screamed - very loudly - for a long time, and my parents quickly arrived on the scene. It didn't take Poirot to figure out what had happened - my brother was curled up in a ball on the floor bawling his eyes out, I was standing (dressed very dashingly IMHO) in front of the now open wardrobe looking guilty as sin.

Mum went to comfort my brother and eventually calmed him down. Dad found the whole thing quite amusing right up until the point he realised my brother had literally shat himself, on the carpet, by treading in it.



Epilogue:
The next morning was Sunday. I was grounded, my brother was still slightly traumatised. After breakfast, Mum sent me upstairs to spend the morning tidying my room.

As I went into my room, as usual, all the sheets were now on the floor. But when I went to pick them up they leapt up in the air at me going "Rarrrrggghhhhh!"

To this day I swear I have never been so scared in my life. I shrieked, in not a particularly manly fashion, and turned to run out of the room. In my panic I tripped over some of the many other items on the floor and fell headfirst into my bedside table.

When Mum arrived, I was sitting on the floor, blood streaming down my face, looking stunned. Dad was sheepishly comforting me, still holding onto the sheet.

She said nothing, just went to get the car out of the garage for what was one of many trips to Casualty me and my brother made in our childhood.
(Milo Minderbinder, Thu 19 May 2011, 12:41, 14 replies)

Teasy-girls webcam
My mate (let's call him Shaun) once visited one of those websites were you can watch girls fondle about and tease, and take requests from the chat-room.


'Now what do you want me to do big boy?' - she no doubt purred.

He asked them if she would fix the angle of the picture that was hanging on the wall behind them, as it 'was doing his head in'..
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Thu 19 May 2011, 16:02, 6 replies)

E-mail scams.
I received one of those e-mails from a Russian girl who was supposed to meet/marry someone over here but didn't and now she wants to meet/marry me. You know the type.
To cut a long story short, after much to-ing and fro-ing with her ridiculous requests for money and my ridiculous replies, I asked for proof that she was who she said she was by taking a photo with her holding a card with the initial letters of my (fictional) banking companies - International Money Authority and The Western Accounts Transactions.

Here's what I received.


(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Wed 25 May 2011, 9:56, 23 replies)

Trolling should be done subtly. So far we’ve seen lots of folk displaying overt nastiness, which of course isn’t at all the same thing. It would be good to see future examples containing much sneakier trolls.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sun 22 May 2011, 19:49, 24 replies)

I earned £20 for this
Dear Sir/Madam

First, let me say that I love your shop. Great food, great brand, great quality.

But – my God – the stores are like animated cemeteries. I’ve never seen so many old people in one place, except perhaps in a care home. I step in from the street and immediately my heartbeat decreases as I meet a slow-moving wall of blue-rinse, walking aids and pastels. Honestly, I almost lapsed into a narcoleptic state the other day as I tried to cut past an old dear who seemed to be using continental drift as a means of locomotion rather than the escalator.

You’ve got to respect them, of course. They must be your core customers. But it’s beyond frustrating for anyone below the age of seventy. I swear I saw one old dear with a ration book walking around. She must have got lost in knitwear in 1951 and was still trying to find her way out of the shop. Another was perched at the top of the escalator quite mesmerised by this wonder of the twentieth century as scores of people backed up behind her.

I can’t live without your pecan yum-yums or cinnamon swirls, so I come into the store regularly. But I risk lapsing into a coma every time I do. There’s no getting round them. I feel like James Bond trying to overtake an ice-cream van on a Swiss mountain pass as I attempt to get out of the doors before my purchases fossilise or evolve into something else entirely.

So I have come up with a few suggestions to make life easier for everyone. If you could implement a few of these, I’m sure that you’d sell more stuff.

1) A fast lane for people who still have all their mental and physical faculties. This would allow your more mobile customers to get in and out of the shop without getting stuck behind an old gent who thinks he’s still on the Somme.
2) A recovery room for oldsters who can’t remember who they are or why they left home that day. They can get a nice cup of tea here and call a relative to find out what year it is etc.
3) Instructions for escalators, informing users that they must continue walking when they reach the beginning or end of the moving metal steps. Stopping will cause others to stumble, fall or become homicidal with rage.
4) Chat lay-bys where groups of gimmers can leave the main walkways to engage in hour-long conversations with friends on how tall little Johnny has become or how Edna’s womb has gone septic etc.
5) Specially-trained staff to take people away from the checkouts and explain that the reindeer cardigan was available only during Christmas 1973 and that the one chance to get it now is on Ebay (or in heaven, which will be reached sooner than a grasp of the internet).
6) Emergency adrenaline shots (break glass for access) to use on people like me whose metabolism has slowed to hibernative rates as I totter in suspended animation behind a woman who has been in the shop so long that her basket contains a Charles & Diana commemorative box of shortbread.

I offer these suggestions as a fan of the store and I hope that you can introduce some of them. If not, some gift vouchers will have to suffice.
(Fothermucker, Tue 24 May 2011, 16:03, 12 replies)

I can't help trolling strangers
I was on the train and a blind guy got on and ended up accidently sitting on a woman’s lap. He got off after a couple of stops. As soon as he was away the woman, her husband and son started having a bit of a laugh about what happened. It was mainly their own fault, if they’d left the guy alone instead of trying to pull him into an empty seat he’d have been fine.

I chipped in

Me “I can’t believe he’s still doing that”
Woman “What”
Me “Pretending he’s blind”
Woman “What!?”
Me “He’s been doing it for years. He uses the glasses and white stick as an excuse and sits on woman”
Husband “WHAAAAT!”

When we reached my stop they were still on the phone to the police reporting the ‘blind woman sitting pervert of network southeast.’
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Thu 19 May 2011, 13:07, 2 replies)

Driving
I used to have to drive a long way each week for work. As a result of this, I regularly encountered with the dregs of society - BMW and Audi drivers. For a good while, these people used to make me irate and I'd scream and curse and make obscene gestures at them when they cut me up, tailgated me or generaly drove like twats.

But what I discovered as much, much more fun and caused them to get very, very irate, was to wave and smile, give them the thumbs up or blow kisses at them when they did something stupid.

My favourite episode of road-trolling ivolved a Tuareg driver who was driving like an utter tool through manchester. he was cutting people up, queue-jumping, going straight on from the turning right lane... just generally being a gobshite. Now, I'd "held him up" for quite a while before he managed to do a dreadful overtaking maneuver, giving me the finger on the way past and he proceded on his dickish way.

Thing is, driving like this in an urban environment doesn't really get you where you are going any quicker, so a little while after he had gesticulated to me, I ended up sat next to him at a set of lights. So I got his attention by beeping my horn, gave him a massive, cheery wave and a double thumbs-up. He went fucking balistic: gritted teeth, hamming the steering wheel, the whole hulk-out jobby... then, in a fit of pique, picked up his coffe out of the cup-holder and threw it out the passenger-side window. Well, not "out", he failed to open the window first, so it just splashed back into the interior... he was not happy.
(ScousersPet, Tue 24 May 2011, 9:58, 17 replies)

Some real life friend trolling
I've got a mate who managed to make quite a bit of money when he sold his business. He took a portion of said money and invested in a lovely bit of period property in North London.

Lovely, except for this crappy old out house type building in the back garden, about 5 foot away from the back door. He decided he wanted to put funky glass conservatory on the back of the house. Now you don’t need planning permission from the council to put in a conservatory but you do need planning permission to alter the existing building in anyway. He was refused permission to pull down the crappy old our house standing in the way of his conservatory but though “piss off council minges” and decided to pull it down and go ahead anyway.

One day shortly after he’d moved in he was telling me all this while we were in the pub, before adding that the only way he thought he’d get caught is if the council had anyone drive by the house to check if building work was going on, following the planning permission refusal. He told how he had planned meticulously to make sure the window of getting caught (having a skip outside his house for the old rubble) was as short as possible, ½ a day and would make all the builders park two roads along at an all day carpark.

Realising how much effort he must have gone to and that he would undoubtedly be stressing out about being found out, I hatched a plan. Below is the outcome of said plan, which I mailed to him shortly after work commenced. To be fair I did include a few subtle references that it might not be quite what it appears on first glance.



Length? He called the number I included about 3 days later.
( lucosade is counting down the minutes until, Thu 19 May 2011, 16:26, 3 replies)

Most carefully weighted piece of trolling I ever saw?
On a messageboard of roughly evenly balanced political affiliations.

'I see Margaret Thatcher is in hospital. Let's all keep our fingers crossed.'
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Fri 20 May 2011, 11:47, 12 replies)

Phone Troll
I always take unsolicited telephone sales calls. I am always polite, express interest in the products or services being sold and generally act like a lovely customer. Sadly, I am quite hard of hearing, have a very poor memory, suffer from congenital stupidity and did I mention not having a good memory? Due to these health issues, it will often take many, many, many repeated attempts before I understand even simple concepts. Sometimes, to the general embarrassment of all concerned, I will need the same sentence to be repeated ten or more times before it sinks into my thick skull. When we ultimately, normally after more than 30-minutes later, get to the point were I have to hand over my bank details, to secure whatever great service is being offered, I generally get very confused about my bank provider. It's not been unknown for me to confuse the barcode on a can of coke for my account number. One nice gentleman was VERY frustrated at my 28-digit account number. He made me get my cheque book, explained where to get the account number from, and was quite upset that it had the same 28-digit number I'd already given him. I did explain, patiently, that it was a very BIG chequebook...

This is why I'm signed up to the Telephone Preference Service. It's not to protect ME and to save ME any wasted time. No, no, no. I have altruistically signed up to TPS to protect the poor telesales industry from having to deal with my fuckpiggery. If they opt to ignore TPS and illegally call me anyway ... well, it's hardly my fault is it?
( Linbox has a serious dunk habit, Thu 19 May 2011, 11:57, 1 reply)

Confessions of a troll
Hello QoTW, I've a confession to make. I am a troll.

I've been trolling on and off for about 4 years on b3ta and over that time I've learnt a few tricks, which I'd like to share with you so that you can either troll people yourself or avoid being trolled.

1. Be economical.
As a troll you need to get maximum impact from the fewest number of posts. Every post that you make dilutes your impact and allows greater opportunities for white-knights and other trolls to pick away at your trolling.
Think Commando rather than siege. People will become aware of being trolled or tire of an existing troll more quickly if you post a lot.
Keep it brief, keep it to the point. Maximise your impact.

2. Pick your battles.
Similarly, there's no point trolling everyone, all the time. Good targets are isolated people who aren't particularly well-liked or intelligent. There is no point locking horns with an attractive, intelligent person (not that any exist on the internet) unless you've got a really good angle. Unless you've got some killer material or there are no white-knights around, avoid targeting all but the most chunky girls.

3. Be polite.
Never, ever throw the first stone. The most infuriating way to troll someone is to make them look unreasonable, whilst being totally unreasonable yourself. A good strategy is to feign moral outrage at something they've posted, ensuring that they insult you back and then criticise them for being rude. This is entry level fare but is remarkably effective. This depends on your patter. Spelling mistakes are an absolute no-no for this type of trolling.

4. If you can't be polite, be funny.
Once you've engaged your target(s) in a pointless argument where you look to be in a better position than them and you can't keep it clean, switch to insults which are genuinely interesting. Its all well and good to call someone a cunt but to really get up their nose, pick something which will make other people laugh, this is devastating. The absolute ideal scenario for a troll is to have people bitching at you and everyone else laughing at your replies. Going completely over the top is perfectly acceptable. A classic strategy is to find a photograph of your target and draw a massive cock on their face. Works like a charm.

5. Never apologise.
Never, ever, ever. at least not sincerely. This totally undermines the troll. Similarly, you should have no regrets about trolling someone. Troller's remorse is not something which should ever be entertained.

6. Don't look like a troll.
If you can do all of the above without other people calling you out as a bare-faced troll, the world is yours.

Some Recommended Trolling Strategies (see how many you can spot)
* find a story on QOTW which is obvious a lie. Point out in laborious detail all the problems you have with the story in such a way that the OP thinks you might be able to be convinced. String them along for a few posts before ridiculing them as a bullshitter. Tears will be shed.
* Pretend to hold an extremely contrary view to someone else, continue to post straw-man arguments at them until they bite before ridiculing their view using much stronger well reasoned arguments. a bit laborious, but very effective on a certain type of poster.
* Draw a crap cartoon of someone.
* Pretend to be outraged at something. Pretend to be deeply upset when people accuse you of being uppity. This works as a good opener to getting an OP to agree with you before mocking them. Hard to pull off effectively.
*Create new threads which indirectly imply a point of view contrary to that held by most people without actually stating that. Point out that everyone jumped to that conclusion without any evidence of it. Useful if playing a race or gender card.
*Create an annoying meme.
*Create multiple user accounts.
*Pretend to be a girl.
*Link back to stupid things people have said in the past. Requires Dedication (see Amorous Badger).
( WormuIus, Fri 20 May 2011, 14:01, 59 replies)

The word "Troll" does not appear to be in the bible.
A bit or Trolling-in-real-life... I was out in the local town centre with a couple of friends, standing in an area or the centre called Charter Place.

Whilst waiting for one of the guys who had popped into one of the shops, we were idly listening to someone well-known to the town centre - the gentleman who, come rain or shine would stand around and preach the supposed "Word of God". Without fail he would be there to tell us all how we would go to hell unless we let Jesus into our lives.

"I see evil wherever I go, and so do you all but you do not notice! By following the Word, you will see, and you can stop evil coming into your lives and save yourselves! Does anyone here know the source of this evil? Do any of you know where this evil is coming from?"

"Luton?" called out my mate.

The man turned bright red and shouted back "NO, NOT LUTON!!!" and went on a vigorous rant on how the young people of society do not take God seriously.
( theoriginalsteve <this space intentionally left blank>, Thu 19 May 2011, 12:47, Reply)

Just before Blazin' Squad had their 10 minutes of fame...
We bought up blazin-squad.com (the official site was the .co.uk), The holding page was a soundboard of the band saying things along the lines of "I'm scared of the dark" and "I've just wet meself, on purpose", it loaded to Macho Man by the village people.

We added a forum to the site so see how many brain dead groupies the site would score, making sure add a few word filters, buff= gay, fit = chubby etc.

This ensured not only confused fuckwit fans, but also huge flame wars due to people going onto the forum and apparently slating the band.

"WTF I didn't say Kenzie was gay I said he was gay!"

Still, we never did get any money for the domain name :(
(Ruffgeezer back again like a bad smell., Fri 20 May 2011, 22:39, 5 replies)

Group trolling.
My Chemistry teacher, no matter how much he would have denied it, had an uncanny resemblance to Postman Pat. My friends with elder siblings had been warned that on no account was this to be mentioned, the irrational explosion of terrifying anger that would ensue was not worth the risk. Obviously this was like a red rag flying cat to an autism bull, but being scared little first years none of us were brave enough to outright say anything. Instead, we embarked on what with hindsight I can now see as a monumental effort of group trolling. It started small, little snippets of conversation as he walked past desks. "Did you see Grange Hill last night?", "No, my little brother had his Postman Pat video on", then vague hummings of the theme tune or odd references to 'Have you seen Jess?', Questions - 'Sir, how does the sticky stuff on the back of a stamp work?'. You could almost see the paranoia and twitch in his eye develop as the lessons passed.

Waiting outside at the start of class "it's like pension day at the Post Office'. Bad jokes that didn't even make sense "Knock Knock, Who's There? The Postman? The Postman who? 'The Postman always knocks twice" (Not that any of us would have seen the film, I'm sure, but we'd heard of it).

And then someone turned up to class with a Postman Pat Pencil Box and a whole new level of warfare was opened, we spent our lunch money on Postman Pat rulers, Pens, Rubbers, Pencil Sharpeners, Lunch boxes, a couple of people started bringing in younger siblings Postman Pat satchel's with their books in. And then, finally, in a moment of genius that turned us from irritants to flat out bullies someone bought in about 50 sheets of Postman Pat wrapping paper and each and every one of us, bar a few of the hardy ne'er do wrongs, covered our homework books in them before we handed them in. One by one they piled up on his desk as the steam started to pour from his ears and his face turned red as...well...a post box.

Sadly there is no great pay off to this story. Next lesson we all got our books back, all of which had had the offending paper removed and an unspoken agreement seemed to settle upon us that we had taken this as far as we could. So I never did get to see the infamous temper and this story kinda just fades away, but having just spent 10 minutes writing it down, I'm quite proud of 11 year old me and my cohorts.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 19 May 2011, 16:43, 2 replies)

I am currently engaging in a lovely spot of scam-baiting.
A naughty man is advertising on the internet and alleging he is representing the company i work in recruitment for. I emailed to ask for a job, and was immediately offered a position that I have no experience in, on a salary of £6000 per month. Amazing! Despite the fact that i have completed their 'application' form giving our company name and address as my current employer, he seems very keen for me to go to America for an interview. All he needs is my passport details, and money up front for my visa and documents. What could go wrong?

Despite the fact that I enquired whether my previous conviction for money-laundering and trading illegally in endangered species (which has, sadly, left me unable to obtain any visa for the US or Australia) would affect my chances, and the somewhat startling revelation that I was born on a Boeing 747 over the Gulf of Mexico and lived with my grandmother from the age of five after my parents attempted to sell me to a circus, the company are VERY keen to employ me.

I'm now sorting out the final details with him before I go for the reveal. Well, it passes the time.

UPDATE: well, i've just responded to an email asking me to complete a questionnaire:

Dear Fred (I hope you are not insulted by me calling you Fred - but you seem a friendly man)

I am afraid I cannot open the questionnaire from your email. Please, understand that I really do want this job (despite my lack of experience and crippling autism - regarding this, please confirm that there will be no red lifeboats on board as if I see any form of transport that is red, I have to hop seven times on each foot and fear this may alarm your guests) and have already packed my swimsuit and a packed lunch in anticipation of my new life at sea.

Please, kindly resend the questionnaire so that we can arrange my interview in America. I have never been to America before - can we eat 'chilli dogs' and go to the top of the World Trade Center? How exciting!!

I look forward to hearing from you.

with all the blessings that Jesus may offer the sinners,

Janet Aylia


i wonder if he'll reply?

UPDATED UPDATE: i have an appointment letter! now, do i carry on with this, or hit 'em with a cease and desist?
( janet aylia y'all motherfuckers need jesus, Thu 19 May 2011, 12:01, 14 replies)

Christian Robot
So this Christian turned up on a messageboard I used. Even by normal Christian standards he was a monomaniacal bore. It was apparent his religion - or as he had it his personal relationship with the actual living Jesus Christ - was a crutch to compensate for some crisis or twelve in his earlier life, including but not limited to alcoholism and having beaten and been unfaithful to his wife (this info from him, not a guess). He offended a lot of people with his bluntly homophobic, racist, sexist and generally misanthropic attitude, but was so linguistically dull with it he barely seemed human.

So I started another account on the same messageboard. I went round apologising on his behalf. I explained that he was not, in fact, a human, and that I was a programmer who'd written a self-running chatbot. Like Kenneth Colby with Parry, I'd decided I couldn't simulate a normal human being's conversation, and instead of choosing a paranoid schizophrenic I'd chosen a Fundamentalist Christian, on the basis people don't expect them to be intelligent and are therefore more likely to be fooled.

Plenty of people on the messageboard believed it. The MODERATORS believed it, at first, including my lame excuses as to why I didn't know the username and password "he" had signed up under.

It was quite a chuckle over the next few days watching people try to "break" him by asking him weird questions. It was even more of a chuckle watching the dumb f.ck respond in exactly the same way he responded to everything else, which was to say pretty much as you'd expect an amateurish chatbot to respond.
(SonofRojBlake, Tue 24 May 2011, 8:10, 22 replies)

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 20 May 2011, 20:19, 7 replies)

I didn't know it but I dated a troll once
She'd lost her front teeth in an bike accident. The nice dentist fixed it with a couple of fake gnashers glued to the teeth either side.
She gobbled me down when I came over her bridge.
(TitanLX, Thu 19 May 2011, 12:41, 1 reply)

Imaginary Troll
Used to drive over a toll bridge every weekend with my daughter near Oxford after collecting her from her mothers house.
She was 3 years old and into fairy stories and I told her that the statue in the garden near the bridge was there because the troll that lives under the bridge had turned someone to stone.
Five years on we passed over the bridge again after not taking that route for some years, she looked up at the sign and said calmly and rather disdainfully "they've spelled Troll wrong dad"
(hirudo, Fri 20 May 2011, 14:21, 2 replies)

A good few weeks ago I compared talk user Mortal Wombat to Tom Selleck.
The reason why escapes me. I then did a TOAP of Tom with the words "yeah, and her momma!", hosted it on b3tards and linked it on /talk for a little laugh.
Anyway, the annoying little twat put it in his profile without me knowing and without re-hosting it.
So I uploaded a new image under the same filename and BAM!
Was on there for well over an hour with /talkers dropping hints etc.
Thank god for print screen.
BEWARNED: Contains Scat porn, NSFW!
www.b3tards.com/u/9a8441c6e0b73ddb4e32/mortalwombat.jpg
( Maffers I flow kinda strange like Spina Bifida footprints, Mon 23 May 2011, 18:29, 7 replies)

Real Life Troll - Lost Cat
My pal Fanton runs the Lord Likely website and did this here Lost Cat poster

I thought it's not doing much good sitting around on the internet, so now the good people of Reading are now seeking high and low for poor, starving Thundercock. CAN YOU HELP?


( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Sat 21 May 2011, 17:25, 7 replies)

An anaesthetist of my cquantaince once did a locum shift covering nights at the Royal London Homeopathy Hospital in Great Ormond Street.
He was asked to never return after enquiring if, when attending a cardiac arrest, they had to designate someone on the scene to fill a bucket of water so that they could water down 1ml of adrenaline to a suitable strength.
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Tue 24 May 2011, 13:40, 1 reply)

sunbed girls
i love quietly singing the oompa loompa song at them as i walk past, orange freaks that they are.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 20 May 2011, 18:14, 30 replies)

A few months ago,
I intentionally clicked on a link I knew was to Rick Astely (because I actually wanted to listen to the song), only to find it had been blocked in my country on copyright grounds.

Long story short, I was reverse-rickrolled by Google.
( The Coast Of Yemen, Fri 20 May 2011, 8:47, 8 replies)

2 pages in and no-one's mentioned the greatest ever troll
Detritus The Troll, former splatter and now decent, upstanding watchman.

It was Detritus's interrogation technique to repeat the same questions over and over until the suspect cracked:
"It was you what done it, everyone saw you, it was you what dun it wasn't it"
"Yes, yes I done it. Now please tell me what it was I did!"

Also:

"Slab Just say Arrgharrgharrghnonononopleaseno aaargh".

The troll's a genius, I tell you.
( DrPrunesquallor is determined to post more as of, Thu 19 May 2011, 15:58, 14 replies)

Winding up trusting offspring
I enjoy spinning inordinately detailed lies to my children, and their friends, in the hopes I'll create some kind of oft-repeated urban legend.

The essence is to start with a degree of seriousness, and it really helps if you can throw in a degree of scientific-sounding statements to back it up. The kids quickly adjust from a "haha, Mr Muppet's having a laugh again" to "hang on, I should probably pay attention, this sounds important".

We were on a camping trip one time with a cluster of families. The kids all got glow-sticks at night time which helped amuse them and for us to find them if they wandered off. Of course, some of the younger ones started to chew on them: not good. The older ones noticed they could break them and spread shiny glowing liquid anywhere they wanted - lots of lols.

To stop them poisoning themselves and the landscape, I explained that the tubes contained two chemicals that started a chain reaction when they were mixed. The light was given off by a lightly radioactive substance that started when the chemicals created a cold fusion reaction. I explained that the tubes were strong enough to hold this highly dangerous stuff, but if it got out it could attack their DNA - I also explained the purpose of DNA as the building blocks that govern how your body grows.

Which is why the next evening, one of the other parents was slightly startled when, after telling his 4 year old not to chew on the glow stick, his 6 year old sister solemnly chimed in with "yeah, otherwise you'll grow another arm out of your stomach and your ears will turn into carrots"
(Mr Muppet, Tue 24 May 2011, 23:49, 5 replies)

...
I sent Rick Astley an accurate URL.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Sat 21 May 2011, 13:16, Reply)

A troll walks into a bar.
The barman asks "Why the big nose, warty face, green skin and hairy eyebrows?"

The troll goes "Wrraaaauuughhh!" and eats him.

True story.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 24 May 2011, 15:09, 10 replies)

Telesales (does this count?)
I spent a few month being unemployed a few years back (insert Scouser joke here). What I found quite quickly is that you get an awful lot of telesales calls during the day. Out of sheer boredom, I started trolling these people, rather than just hanging up.

I used to take great delight in:
giving a rediculously false name (Miss Tallulah Nahasapeemapetilon, Rev. Dave Thelordisoursavior)
giving my address as cell 962, B wing, Styal Prison
continuing my conversation with my cat, asking her opinion on what I was being sold
saying "you'll have to speak more slowly, I'm naked"
giving a few fake details, then saying "what is it you want the info for again?" giving a few more fake details then saying "what is it you want the info for?"
when asked if I own my home, saying "no I just squat here"
answering every question with "stop messing about, Dave, I know it's you"
I would always tell double-glazing types that my house didn't have any windows and that I'd bricked them all up because "I'm a vampire, you see"
saying "can you hang on a minute" and lying the reciever on the table, returning every minute or so to say "I'll be with you in a tick"
Asking really stupid questions, like "what's a loan?" or "what are windows?"
just repeating their questions back to them instead of giving an answer

I think I got blacklisted after a while, since the sales calls stopped...
(ScousersPet, Mon 23 May 2011, 15:29, 12 replies)

My Grandfather Jim
Jim used to be a regular letter writer to the Western Mail in Cardiff, usually in the style of Mick Giggler out of Private Eye or Henry Root.

His most celebrated troll, which resulted in about six weeks' worth of letters, was to write in asking if anyone had a recipe for pilchard wine.

For weeks, other correspondents would write in saying that they'd love the recipe as well, as "we tried it once on holiday and it was delicious". Silly pilchards.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Mon 23 May 2011, 13:43, 1 reply)