I’ve been blogging for a long time, longer than the term blogging has actually existed. And still, despite that lengthy history, I have been mercifully troll-free.

That is, until this morning:

On a fairly old (and truthfully sorta inane and forgettable) post to this blog, I inexplicably got not one but TWO troll comments. The offender, a Mr. Keenan, felt the need to respond with:

And then, three minutes later, realizing his brief statement might not parlay his feelings on the subject, he added:

Now, I love comments. Like Mr Brier, I believe that some of the best stuff on a blog aren’t the posts, but the ensuing conversations. And I appreciate that on a blog such as this, which is tied to a company that is in the Internet business, we maintain a fairly open comments policy (no filtering or moderating, and a healthy habit of engaging dissenters and critics I like to think I’m above falling for such obvious troll-bait.

But I’m left baffled – why would someone feel the need to comment, not once, but twice on a old blog post about something so innocuous? I’ve posted WAY more incendiary stuff in my day, and I got nothing. What drives these trolls? I could understand if the URL he linked his name to went somewhere self-promoting, but nope – broken link. What drives them? What do they dream about?

I suppose we’ll never know. I can only offer this as some sort of blanket response:

also,