It seems like the trolling accusation is much more hotly debated here than it was about five years ago. And I do agree that posters deliberately making provocative comments in order to rile people up ("trolling") can be annoying. But if a poster's engaging in reasonable debate (even if you disagree with them), and not being especially provocative, then how much do you, personally, care if they sincerely believe what they're posting, as opposed to someone who just likes playing devil's advocate, or whatever?
I feel like I may be in a small minority here in that I feel quite apathetic about which posters are "real" in either their personality or expressed viewpoints. Instead, it's the debates about who's being real that I find tedious. If someone's making posts that I think are interesting to read for whatever reason, that doesn't prompt me to try to stare into their soul to see if they're being real or not. Maybe I'm alone on that score though....
if the character is so good we can't tell, sure, fine whatever. The problem happens when we can see the strings, at least to me. Some of them you can see the strings on ever post, I don't understand how anybody could find that entertaining....on either end. I suppose HillGoose thought he was "getting one over on people" or whatever, but his character had less depth than a mud puddle and it dragged down many threads.
It's like good magic vs bad magic. Good magic is fine for most people (in small doses at least), but bad magic forces the most eager of toddlers to groan.