Pray silence for the biggest trolls in internet history

Somewhat NSFW.

The first and only rule of the internet is simple: don't feed the trolls. But in the days before it became synonymous with angry and awkward threats from angry and awkward people - say, in 2008 - trolling was considered something of an art-form.

As the government looks to introduce two-year jail sentences for those convicted of posting abusive messages, it's worth remembering that, when done well, 'trolling' can shock, amuse and even inspire.

Don't believe us? Read on...

Bloodninja

Forget Tinder trolling: Bloodninja has been around since the days when merely typing the letters a/s/l could get your pulse racing. A pioneer of the seduce-them-and-then-wildly-confuse-them technique, Bloodninja was famed for trawling chatrooms to find unsuspecting cybersex partners.

His most infamous exchange - reproduced below - involves his partner slipping out of her clothes... while he puts on his robe and wizard hat.

(chat user): I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.

bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.

(chat user): Oh, I like to play dress up.

bloodninja: Me too baby.

(chat user): I kiss you softly on your chest.

bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.

(chat user): Hey...

bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite.

(chat user): Funny I still don't see it.

bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.

(chat user): You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.

Christopher Poole (AKA moot)

Ever been rickrolled? Sent someone a LOLcat? You have this man to thank. Christopher Poole began 4chan, under the pseudonym of moot, from his bedroom when he was just 15.

A decade on and his message board site hasn't just revived Rick Astley's career - it has also spawned the hacking group Anonymous, tricked some (admittedly quite stupid) people into believing iOS7 would make their iPhones waterproof and fooled the Daily Mail into reporting on non-existent selfie fad.

More recently still the site achieved a new level of notoriety by being the first place hacked nude pictures of celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence were posted.

Despite starting one of the world's biggest websites, Poole has said he has struggled to make ends meet, which might explain why some call him the anti-Mark Zuckerberg.

RBX

Anyone who says there is no such thing as a stupid question has clearly never spent time on Yahoo Answers. Back in the early late noughties, RBX did - and he gained internet notoriety for concern trolling its users.

To the Cypriot woman asking for advice ahead of her move to the UK, he recommended she take "evening classes in complaining", while he told another user their burst blood vessel was a sure sign they were close to death.

RBX's infamy led to him doing a Reddit AMA, where he revealed what motivated his trolling: "Making people laugh is something I can't get enough of and RBX allowed me to do so on a larger scale than I ever thought possible."

@Horse_ebooks

Horse_ebooks turned Twitter spam into a work of art. For its efforts, it gained more than 200,000 followers and inspired T-shirts, fan fiction and even tattoos.

The account tweeted out fragmented, semi-poetic updates (example: everything happens so much) as well as junk links, in what many assumed was a strategy to avoid being shut down by Twitter spam detectors. Then the New Yorker dug a little deeper: @horse_ebooks was no robot.

This Twitter phenomenon was actually part of a conceptual art project by Buzzfeed employee Jacob Bakkila. We got pwnd.

James Parry (AKA Kibo)

James Parry, who goes by the name Kibo online, might be not be the internet's first ever troll - but he is the first one to get on the White Houses website.

After launching a spoof bid for the presidency in 1992 when he was just 25, Kibo's campaign was accidentally listed on the newly launched whitehouse.gov.uk site.

His moment in the sun was brief - the content was taken down after complaints from libertarians - but the legend lives on.

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