While we can see why some would want the eternal banishment of Internet trolls, we are of the opinion that there are cases when trolling can be used for good, not evil. And it seems we're not alone in this: Buzzfeed's Matt Saccaro even went so far as to say that "it's actually the best part of the web." Now, we're not saying that we totally agree with that 'best' tag. After all, the Internet is just a treasure trove of awesome things like Grumpy Cat, Facebook (for the most part), The Onion, and so on. We will, however, admit that in recent years, a new breed of troll has emerged—one who is actually well-intentioned and doesn't just use his or her powers to ignite flame wars. To give you clearer concept of this noveau troll, here are three examples of trolling gone awesome.
#1 Charity Bribes
Described as the Kickstarter for trolling, Charity Bribes is a site that "lets regular old citizens of the Internet come together and, as a group, extort their favorite famous person." For their debut proposition, creators William Burks Spencer and Chris Baker (both writers), chose to troll Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David. If David joins Twitter, 103 bribers will give $10,163 dollars to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). If he doesn't, well then, no one would be charged anything, "no donation would be made to the NRDC, and life would go on, albeit in a comparatively much less awesome way." It's a good thing then that Larry David saw fit to join Twitter on May 12, 2012, tweeting "I was told by Charity Bribes that if I Tweeted (sic), they'd give 10K to the NRDC. Pay up!"
#2 #ExilePitbull
Love him or hate him, you have to give props to Armando Pérez, aka Pitbull, for just being a good sport - especially in the face of such epic trolling. While other grossly self-entitled celebrities would have refused to be exiled to an island with less than 7,000 people, Pitbull proved that humoring Internet citizens is a great way to boost street cred and net positive karma. Just to give you a backgrounder on this whole #ExilePitbull thing, "Walmart and Sheets Brand energy strips launched a promotional campaign to bring the rapper Pitbull to whichever local Walmart store that gains the most new Facebook likes between June 20th and July 15th, 2012." Come June 29th, 2012, Jon Hendren and David Thorpe, editors of Something Awful started an online petition to send Mr. Pitbull to Kodiak, Alaska, "an island that is home to 6,130 people as of the 2010 United States census." Needless to say, after the online petition has mustered over 70,000 new likes for Kodiak, Pitbull followed through with his promise and even brought along #ExilePitbull mastermind David Thorpe for the ride.
#3 Andrew Levy takes on Team Breezy
We're just going to come right out and say it: We don't like Chris Brown, and if we incur the wrath of Team Breezy, so be it. Besides, we know that apart from Michelle Branch, Jack Osbourne, Miranda Lambert, P!nk, and Adam Levine, we are not the only ones who can't forget what Mr. Brown did to on/off girlfriend Rihanna. Seriously, we once thought about contacting telephone service providers in our area just to see if they can give us Chris Brown's number just so we can troll him like a boss. (Stupid idea, we know. But it was 4 in the morning and we haven't slept a wink). Anyway, we are glad that commentator and comedian Andy Levy did a better job of trolling Breezy than we ever could when he replied "You spelled "punching" wrong" to Brown's "No more planking for me unless it's on a sexy lady! Lol" tweet. Of course, this led Team Breezy to harass Levy on Twitter, which prompted the latter to come up with the best "apology" in the history of the Internet. We're not going to repeat word for word what Andy said, but we will say that "the creative possibilities of spelling, grammar and syntax" is something you can look forward to if you haven't seen Levy's sorry, I'm not sorry video.
Author Bio
Monique Jones is an Engineer who deals with telephone systems. Besides being an Engineer, she also works as a part time writer. She helps her colleagues and other people about their communication issues, giving effective solutions to address their needs.
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