Blog trolls, that is, and why they're good for blogs.

Recently, I've come to the decision on changing my policy on trolls. It was due to one troll in particular.

He's been visiting the site for a really long time now, and was around when it was shutdown. In fact, he was the only person to leave a negative comment when the site went down. :)

Well I guess it serves you well. You underestimated me :))).

You have no clue who I really am :))) And that makes me smile.

Here are some other examples of his antics:

1. "lots of conspiricy"
2. "the industrial espionage of EA"."
3. "Did Blizzard rape the wife perhaps ?"
4. "You live in 1980 or in 2010 ??? dude. Do you sleep at night?"
5. "I don't care that some copies were bought on line. We live in 2011."
6. "players all screamed Blizzard murdered their mothers"
7. "The future lays with the mind of Rob Pardo"
8. "mmorpg.com site is collaborating with EA to kill any leaks by banning accounts for life."

He's from the Mechelen region of Belgium, he refuses to give himself an alias (I've asked him many times), and yes.. all of his posts are non-coherent ramblings. Insanity and early onset dementia will do that to you.

I get a kick out of every post he makes. In fact, whenever he writes something, all I can picture is someone sitting at their computer screen and doing this:

So, if you've ever seen me call someone "@prisoncharlie", you now know who I'm talking about; the insane Belgium guy. I'll point him out whenever he posts.

The reason he's so great for this blog (and why trolls are useful in any blog) is due to many reasons:

1. It's great entertainment.

@PrisonCharlie

Mmmm hmm mmm hmmm.. Yes, that's very interesting.

You seem to know a lot on the subject, and you are clearly highly intelligent and handsome. Please tell me more.

2. You don't even need to read what he says. Just agree with what he's saying and compliment him. He keeps coming back.

3. Normal readers like the entertainment, and keep coming back just to hear prisoncharlie's thoughts.

4. He visits A LOT, which drives up traffic.

5. If he complains on other sites about this blog, it just drives up more viewership! There's no such thing as bad publicity.

6. If you read his comments, within one of his insane posts you might see a certain word that triggers a thought, memory, or brainstorm. He can help further ideas for new posts. Just like this one! He gave me the great idea about how useful trolls really are to blogs. :)

7. All of his comments and mispellings actually increase the number of keywords on the site, giving the blog much better search enginge optimization and increased traffic. Nice.

So, if you're a blogger - take note.

* UPDATE:

Oh another idea!

8. It also increases search engine optimization by having common mispellings on your blog. It gives you a better advantage over other blogs especially since the average person mistypes or mispells all the time and large sites are reviewed and edited for content. It pays to have bad grammar on your site! :)