.....k...
....anyone else feel like they've just been massively trolled?
After spending literally minutes researching photos of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his older "sister" Randi on the interwebs, The Register can exclusively reveal that the siblings are in fact ONE AND THE SAME person. Ironically, we uncovered the shocking truth with the help of Facebook's ground-breaking photo …
The point of online trolling - which first became common on Usenet in the late 1980s, as far as I can tell, and so is a well-established and widely-studied phenomenon - is to post something the poster does not believe is true (this distinguishes it from kookery), and that is deliberately inflamatory (this distinguishes it from a simple lack of social graces and rhetorical skill), but while maintaining the strictest appearance of sincerity. The point is to fool your interlocutors into believing that you are in need of correction.
A classic example is David "snopes" Mikkelson's "shadow in a vacuum" rec.arts.sf.star-trek troll, from the early '90s. (Google Groups will help you find it if you so desire.)
I think this piece was pretty clearly tongue-in-cheek, so it can't be trolling. It's just a joke. Different genre.
HTH. HAND.
...should be a dead giveaway. I mean, what reasonable parent would be dim enough to call their daughter "Randi"? You can imagine the scene in countless clubs, bars and other sundry social occasions...
"Hi! I'm Randi!"
"Waa-heyyy!" or "I bet you are!" or "I'm a bit excited myself!" or "OK, my place or yours?" or <insert endless litany of Carry-on movie or sub-Bond-script repartee here>.
Very silly name.