The troll abuses the terms of the attention agreement, by violating the decorum of what is meant to be quasi-conversation with outrageous and intemperate comments—expressing opinions not necessarily sincerely held but said for the purpose of provoking an emotional response. Most people aren't trolls, but it doesn't take many. One academic study found that trolling "correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism….[of] all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior."

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 986