[mad=dog]

Bumbus: Trolling is as you already presume the attempt to provoke a response from others. The usual format is
"American are so dumb and naive. They actually believe they rule the world. Suckers."
See that will get an instant reply from furious Americans... if the word wasn't out. Everybody know about trolls and moderators strike hard on them the second they appear (which is why you have been shielded from them - you would have been shocked if you were on USEnet in the old days). Also this is lacklustre and without any form of creativity. The ultimate goal is to generate a so-called flame*.
However this particular troll is actually quite intelligent and as such deserves at least some credit. At the very least for the creative process in thinking up this entire thing.
1) It has to generate the response it did.
2) It has to slip through the moderator screen. Hence it must be sensible and coherent.
3) It has to leave a trail of "evidence" so the thread becomes self-contained as baffled users try to figure out what the heck happened.
If the thread had been just a little more travel oriented everyone would have thought nothing of it. If it had been a little more like a contact add everyone with half a day of internet experience would have smelled a rat. Most likely a moderator who would have deleted it pronto. The user has to think "I am smart. I figured out that was a contact add. I'll write a message telling everybody." Brilliant. I know trolls are the scum of the earth, but brilliant none the less.


* A flame is a self-contained thread that keeps on generating new responses. The troll leaves an initial message and perhaps one or two replies (a.k.a. troll bait) and then abandons the thread. New repliers will simply feed the flame itself. The problem is that the newreader only display a limited number of entries so you wind up with flame upon flame at the top since they always have the most recent reply. This was a particular problem on USEnet long before normal boards as we know them now appeared. USEnet is unmoderated (or at least was) so you had to manually set and update ignore lists (a.k.a. killfile) to filter trolls and spam. A particular nasty form would span different groups with a vague title and content.