User blog comment:ForestFairy/How to Take the Fun Out of Trolling/@comment-2228158-20150604232103/@comment-2228158-20150605222645

It started when I was actually underage, so part of it was immaturity, and wanting to do it just for the heck of messing with other people. First time was here on the Gears of War wiki. The "forgetting we have a revert button" bit was actually pretty spot on, because at the time I had no idea there was such a thing.

As time pressed on, I did tons of stuff, and not alone either. I made friends with some users who probably want to keep their anonminity and we all trolled together, mostly just in the form of chat raids. I'm still friends with some of them, but none of us do anything like that anymore.

I'd have to say the turning point was the UAOACC wiki where I went all-out for like, an entire summer. I had dozens of alternate accounts and a naturally dynamic IP, so it was hard for them to keep me down. And then, one night, it just hit me. I'd invested all this time and energy and put my account, that by this point I actually contributed with, in some serious danger just because I wanted to mess with some people I didn't even know over the Internet. What was I doing?

That Wiki wasn't the end, but after that it all went downhill. I rarely ever even trolled just for the fun of it; I was usually angry or depressed and it was easier to let it out on some stranger online with little to no consequences than it was to IRL. Each time, I'd have a similar moment of realizing just how futile it all was. It also helped that by the end, the admins I was dealing with had a good deal of wisdom and experience when it came to dealing with trolls and knew how to "starve" me pretty easily. So, after a while, I quit. It just wasn't worth it.

tl;dr I started because I was immature, looking for amusement, and the admins weren't the best at keeping trolls out, and quit because I had grown up, trolling had lost its fun, and the admins got savvy.