Three Billy-Goats' Gruff: The Origin of All Trolling

The Norwegian folk tale Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff — collected by Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe in the 1840s — is the ur-troll tale in European culture. It defines what a troll is, what a troll does, and where trolling happens. Understanding this tale is the key to understanding why the Disinfolklore framework redefines “trolling” as emotion-moving activity of body, speech, and mind.

Disinfolklore’s Fundamental Metaphor and Archetype: Trolls

  • As a Unit of Information / Observable / Meme
  • As human conveyor of meaning (Mana) immanent in an Observable / Meme / Unit of Information

Troll Defined: ANY and EVERY emotion-moving activity of body, speech, and/or mind.

But what is it that is being moved? Mana is the well from which our Motivations / Intentions (mens rea) / Moods / Attitudes / Causes flows.

The Tale

Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff — A Norwegian folk tale collected by Asbjornsen and Moe. Three goats set off for a pasture. They have to cross a bridge, beneath which lives a troll. Their feet go ‘Trip, trap! trip, trap!’ and the troll calls out: ‘Who’s that tripping over my bridge?’ The youngest goat tells the troll not to eat him, but to wait for the next goat, who is fatter. The second goat says the same, and when the third goat crosses the bridge it announces: ‘It is I! The Big Billy-Goat Gruff!’ It kills the troll.

Source: Disinfolklore (5)

Every element of this tale encodes a principle of the Disinfolklore framework: the bridge (the crossing point between realms), the troll (the entity that guards the crossing and extracts a toll), the trip-trap (the TR sound of movement), and the three goats (escalation from vulnerability to strength).

The Radical Redefinition of “Troll”

I would like to anchor this provisional meaning of troll, trolls and trolling in your mind:

“Emotion-moving activity of body, speech, and mind.”

A troll can be a person, a personality, an activity or any activity of body, speech, or mind which contains an emotion-moving meme. A flick of an eyebrow, a wave of a finger or mere words can act as a troll.

Source: Disinfolklore (5)

This definition is broader than internet culture’s usage. Advertising is trolling. Courting is trolling. An evangelical preacher driving the emotions of their audience is trolling. A neural network algorithm driving your social media feed is trolling. We are trolled a million times a day. The question is not whether we are being trolled but whether the trolling is Positive, Negative, or Neutral.

The Six Perfections: Evaluating the Troll

If every emotionally resonant movement of body, speech and mind is a “troll,” then we need a means of evaluating such trolls — criteria with which we can assess whether they are positive, negative or neutral.

As soon as I read Oxford University Press’s The Six Perfections I knew I had what I was looking for. An evaluative dimension consisting of criteria with which we can assess whether such trolls/memes/informational units are positive, negative or neutral is necessary. Throughout 2018 and 2019, I was searching for just such an evaluative framework. The Code of Positive Trolls is derived from that book: Generosity, Right, Patience, Energy/Mana, Focus and Insight.

These six criteria became the Code of Positive Trolls — the Bridge tool that connects the five Detection tools to the six Adjudication tools, and the evaluative framework that makes the redefinition of “trolling” actionable.

The 65,000-Mention Research

In February 2020 I started to look at the use of the terms “troll” and “trolling” in contemporary culture. So I read through sixty-thousand media articles with those terms in the Dow Jones Factiva database of thirty-three-thousand sources going back to the early 1970s.

I went down the Word Origins’ route, too. This brought me through the first written texts in Indian culture back across ancient Persia to eastern Ukraine where the first Indo-European language was spoken.

Source: Disinfolklore (5)

Three routes converged on one definition: the Factiva database (65,000 media mentions), the word-origins route through millennia of Indo-European culture, and the contemporary culture route from troll dolls through Silicon Valley’s early internet. See Factiva Research.

The TR Sound: Movement Is the Key

What is common to all these forms of trolling is this TRA and this movement. And in early English, for instance, “trole, trole the bowl to me…“. It’s in Shakespeare. And it goes back into very deep into language.

Source: Swifty Decoding Interview

The “TR” element in trolling is about movement — travel, transition, trans, transcend. Trolling comes from fishing discourse (bait wandering through water to ensnare prey), then into police discourse, then into early internet culture. The goats’ “trip, trap!” on the bridge is the TR sound in action: movement across a threshold, which is what every troll — from the fairy-tale creature to the internet provocateur — seeks to control.

The Bridge: Crossing Between Realms

The bridge in Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff is not merely a physical structure. It is the crossing point between the Inner and Outer Realms — the boundary that Disinfolklore seeks to breach.

In ancient Iranian religion, at the time of death, we approach Chinvat bridge. Chinvat is guarded by Daena. If Daena appears as a beautiful woman, we will pass into the eternal heavenly House of Songs. Yet, if the bridge narrows as we approach it to the width of a sword blade and Daena is a witch, we shall spend eternity in the hellish House of Lies.

I was a living character in the daily re-enactment of one or other of these stories.

Source: Bridge to the House of Lies

The author’s own experience — three years on a literal bridge in eastern Ukraine, guarding the crossing between Russia-occupied territory and the rest of the country — re-enacted the same archetypal pattern. The Donets river as Styx, the biosphere reserve as locus amoenus, the Russian occupiers as trolls beneath the bridge. See Origins of the Concept.

Three Billy Goats in Modern Disinfolklore

This archetypal tale was immanent in the first moments of Druidey Don Disinfolklore the Shaman Trickster Trump’s campaign in 2016 when he talks about the migrants, the criminals, the rapists coming from Mexico, which is this idea of threatening the sovereignty, the security and the fertility. So these are the three billy goats coming from Mexico into the inner realm of America. And Donald is situating, is archetyping himself as protecting it.

Source: Video Podcast: In the Faery Tale

Trump’s 2016 campaign re-enacted Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff at national scale. The migrants are the goats crossing the bridge (the border). Trump archetypes himself as the troll-slayer — the protector of America’s Inner Realm. The three threats (sovereignty, security, fertility) map to the three goats. The same structure recurs in Brexit’s “Small Boat People” — folkloristic creatures crossing the English Channel.

The Troll Economy: We Become the Fuel

Trolls are energy (Mana) that only moves when we share them. Then, we become the troll. The informational unit (Troll) consumes us as it instrumentalises us to keep it in motion. Like a virus hacking our mind, the troll uses us to keep their troll moving. Ruschia’s Nordic troll monarch Putler is very successful at provoking us into doing his mental work. We are the petrol fuelling the troll, even when we disagree with its content.

Source: Twitter Note (2023)

This is why Tool 2: Troll Radars scans in both directions — Incoming and Outgoing. Every time you share a negative troll, even to condemn it, you do the Disinfolklorist’s work. The troll only moves when we move it.

Positive, Negative, Neutral

Not all trolling is Disinfolklore. The Code of Positive Trolls provides six criteria for classifying any troll:

We use the Code of Positive Trolls six criteria to proof any informational unit. If any informational unit being assayed conforms to all six criteria, it is Positive (Counter Disinfolklore). Usually, Disinfolklore (Negative Trolling) violates the second criterion — it is NOT ethically disciplined. It’s a lie.

Make A Call. Don’t just stand there assaying.

Source: Counter Disinfolklore

If a troll passes all six criteria (Generosity, Right, Energy, Patience, Mindfulness, Wisdom), it is Positive Trolling — the constructive use of emotion-moving activity. If it fails any criterion, particularly the second (Is it ethically disciplined? Is it true?), it is Negative Trolling — Disinfolklore.

Key Takeaways

  1. Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff defines trolling — the troll guards a crossing and extracts a toll
  2. “Trolling” means emotion-moving activity — a definition confirmed by 65,000 media mentions and deep etymology
  3. The TR sound encodes movement — travel, transition, the trip-trap across a threshold
  4. The bridge is the crossing between Inner and Outer Realms — Disinfolklore breaches this boundary
  5. Modern Disinfolklore re-enacts Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff — Trump’s 2016 campaign, Brexit, and Russia’s Little Green Men all follow the pattern
  6. We become the troll when we share its energy — the Outgoing Troll Radar is as important as the Incoming one

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