Every film, show, and web series that shaped the culture trolling emerged from. Pure Pwnage to Zero Punctuation, WarGames to Mr. Robot.
Running list of TV shows, films, web series, and other media that depict,
embody, or satirize trolling culture, nerd culture, hacking, and adjacent
subcultures. For cross-referencing across all four books.
Also includes the “hacker movie list” — films every nerd of a certain
generation watched and quoted. Not all are trolling per se, but they
shaped the culture trolling emerged from.
Web Series / Early Internet
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| Pure Pwnage | 2004–2010 (web), 2010 (TV) | Canadian mockumentary about a self-proclaimed “pro gamer” in his mom’s basement. The show IS the troll — weaponizes every gamer stereotype into a character study. Creators maintained the fiction across fan interactions. Commitment trolling. |
| Red vs. Blue | 2003–2024 | Rooster Teeth machinima in Halo. Turned a corporate product into unauthorized guerrilla art. Trolls the pointlessness of multiplayer FPS culture — two teams of idiots fighting over nothing in a box canyon. |
| The Guild | 2007–2013 | Felicia Day’s sitcom about dysfunctional MMO players. Insider knowledge, not contempt. |
| Mega64 | 2003–present | San Diego troupe re-enacting video games in public, filming confused reactions. Socratic trolling — forces passersby to confront game logic in meatspace. |
| Zero Punctuation | 2007–2024 | Yahtzee Croshaw’s rapid-fire game reviews. Trolled games journalism by proving one angry Australian with MS Paint could outperform professional outlets. |
| Homestar Runner | 2000–2010 | Strong Bad answering emails is literally a troll answering fan mail. Trolled the concept of web content needing a business model. No ads, no monetization, pure craft. |
| Salad Fingers | 2004–present | David Firth’s unsettling Flash animations. Trolled audience expectations — presented in comedy portal ecosystems, delivered genuine dread. |
| Happy Tree Friends | 1999–2016 | Children’s show format weaponized against the viewer. 15M monthly hits. The trolling IS the form. |
| Channel 101 | 2003–present | Dan Harmon/Rob Schrab’s monthly 5-minute pilot festival. Proto-YouTube. The format trolls television itself. |
| Internet Comment Etiquette | 2009–present | Erik “Big Money Salvia” — satirical tutorials on posting “proper” comments while leaving unhinged ones on real pages. Trolling as pedagogy. |
| Freeman’s Mind | 2007–2014 | Neurotic inner monologue added to Half-Life’s silent protagonist. Trolls the silent hero convention by showing what they’d actually think: OSHA complaints. |
| Internet Historian | 2017–present | YouTube documentarian covering Dashcon, Kony 2012, He Will Not Divide Us. Documents trolling with real documentary production values. |
TV Shows That ARE Trolling
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| The Colbert Report | 2005–2014 | Longest sustained commitment troll in TV history. Never broke character, including the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner (Wikipedia). Coined “truthiness.” Covered in Book 1. |
| Nathan for You | 2013–2017 | Socratic trolling via absurd business consulting. “Dumb Starbucks” generated actual news coverage (Wikipedia). Every bit required enormous logistical planning. |
| The Rehearsal | 2022–present | Fielder takes it further — trolling the concept of human authenticity itself. |
| Da Ali G Show | 2000–2004 | Baron Cohen’s triple-persona operation. Ali G got a UN drug official to discuss “da chronic” on camera. |
| Who Is America? | 2018 | Baron Cohen got a sitting congressman to scream the N-word and multiple politicians to endorse arming kindergartners (TIME). |
| Brass Eye | 1997–2001 | Chris Morris’s fake current affairs show. “Paedogeddon” special: 3,000 complaints, most from people who hadn’t seen it (Wikipedia) — perfectly proving his point about media hysteria. The single greatest piece of trolling ever broadcast. |
| The Day Today | 1994 | Morris/Iannucci BBC2 news spoof (BFI Screenonline). Predicted the entire trajectory of 24-hour news culture. Everything Morris warned about came true. |
| Wonder Showzen | 2005–2006 | Sesame Street parody on MTV2. Child reporter asking a Wall Street businessman “Who did you exploit today?” Trojan horse trolling — children’s TV format is the weapon. |
| The Eric Andre Show | 2012–present | Andre trolls the talk show format itself — set literally falls apart. Street segments are high-effort trolling: elaborate scenarios designed to short-circuit social norms. |
| Tim and Eric Awesome Show | 2007–2010 | Adult Swim. Deliberately mimics 1980s public access. Trolls the audience’s expectations of what “comedy” means. |
| Review | 2014–2017 | Andy Daly rates human experiences on a 5-star scale, destroying his life for content. Satirical mirror of influencer culture before that term existed. |
| Tom Green Show | 1994–2003 | Canadian. Public access to MTV. Targeted his own family — painted their house, dead animals in their car. Directly inspired Jackass. Escalation as creative practice. |
| Trigger Happy TV | 2000–2003 | Dom Joly’s hidden camera show. Giant mobile phone in libraries. Targets social conventions, not individuals. British restraint as trolling weapon. |
| Space Ghost Coast to Coast | 1994–2008 | Recycled Hanna-Barbera IP repurposed as a bad talk show. Invented the Adult Swim ethos: take something corporate and use it against itself. |
| Look Around You | 2002–2005 | BBC spoof of 1970s educational TV. So precise some viewers thought it was real archival footage. Form-perfect parody. |
| Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace | 2004 | Ayoade/Holness. Trolls bad television by replicating it with surgical precision. |
The Hacker Movie List
Films every nerd of a certain generation watched, quoted, and argued about.
Shaped the culture trolling emerged from.
| Title | Year | Relevance |
|---|
| WarGames | 1983 | The original “bored teenager hacks NORAD.” Prompted actual US government cybersecurity policy review (WarGames — Wikipedia). The most consequential troll in cinema — a kid almost starts WWIII by accident. |
| Three Days of the Condor | 1975 | CIA analyst discovers his entire office murdered. The paranoia template — the system is corrupt, the individual is expendable, and intelligence agencies cannot be trusted. Required viewing for anyone who later ended up in infosec. |
| Sneakers | 1992 | Redford, Poitier, Aykroyd. Depicts hacking correctly: mostly social engineering, dumpster diving, talking your way past security. The team are professional trolls — they break systems by exploiting human trust. |
| Hackers | 1995 | Universally mocked by actual hackers. Cyberpunk aesthetic treated hacking as counterculture rather than crime. The technical inaccuracy IS part of its charm — it depicts hacking as a lifestyle, not a skill set. |
| Die Hard | 1988 | Hans Gruber’s heist disguised as terrorism. The CCC reference in Book 1 Ch. 14 (“bad guys from Die Hard”) — for a generation of American nerds, this was the image of European technical sophistication deployed for criminal ends. |
| Die Hard 2 | 1990 | Airport systems hacked. Pre-9/11 infrastructure vulnerability as entertainment. |
| Die Hard 4 (Live Free or Die Hard) | 2007 | “Fire sale” — coordinated infrastructure cyberattack. Hollywood’s attempt at depicting nation-state cyber warfare. Every infosec person has opinions about it. |
| The Matrix | 1999 | “The desert of the real.” Trinity’s nmap usage. The red pill/blue pill as the ultimate trolling metaphor — do you want comfortable ignorance or uncomfortable truth? |
| Swordfish | 2001 | Travolta, Jackman. Hacking under duress with a gun to your head. Stupid and beloved. |
| The Net | 1995 | Sandra Bullock’s identity deleted. Peak 90s internet paranoia. |
| Tron | 1982 | User gets pulled into the system. Pre-cyberpunk digital world. |
| Enemy of the State | 1998 | Will Smith vs NSA surveillance state. Pre-Snowden paranoia that turned out to be roughly accurate. |
| The Conversation | 1974 | Coppola. Surveillance as craft and paranoia. Harry Caul dismantles his own apartment. The original infosec tragedy — the expert destroyed by the very system he understands. |
| Catch Me If You Can | 2002 | Frank Abagnale as social engineer. The con man as troll — identity is a tool, every institution’s security is built on trust, and trust can be exploited by anyone willing to play the part. |
| Ghost in the Shell | 1995 | Anime. Cyborg consciousness, identity hacking, the Puppet Master. Required viewing for the cyberpunk-to-hacker pipeline. |
| Mr. Robot | 2015–2019 | The most technically accurate hacking show ever made. Elliot as the hacker-troll who can’t stop pulling threads. fsociety as Anonymous with better writing. |
| The Italian Job (1969/2003) | 1969/2003 | Heist-as-systems-engineering. The original is counterculture; the remake is infrastructure hacking as entertainment. |
| Wargames: The Dead Code | 2008 | Terrible sequel, but the fact that it exists proves the original’s cultural permanence. |
| Ferris Bueller’s Day Off | 1986 | Not a hacker movie, but Ferris is a social engineer — he hacks every system (school, parents, restaurants, parades) through pure charisma and audacity. The proto-troll teen movie. |
| The Mechanic (1972/2011) | 1972/2011 | Bronson original, Statham remake. Contract killer as systems engineer — every hit is a vulnerability assessment. The methodology is red teaming: study the target, find the single point of failure, exploit it cleanly. |
| Mechanic: Resurrection | 2016 | Statham sequel. Pure red team cinema — each assassination requires pentesting a different secure environment (Sydney penthouse, Malaysian prison, Bulgarian arms dealer’s yacht). The pool kill is infrastructure exploitation. Every hit is “find the one weakness in a hardened target.” |
The Yes Men / Culture Jamming Docs
| Title | Year | Relevance |
|---|
| The Yes Men Fix the World | 2009 | Culture jamming as praxis. BBC/Dow Chemical stunt. Covered in Book 1 Ch. 2. |
| Into the Zone: The Story of the Cacophony Society | 2012 | Direct lineage from Situationist International to Burning Man to flash mobs. Pre-internet trolling with physical commitment. |
| Borat | 2006 | The most expensive commitment troll ever produced. Covered in Book 1. |
| Borat Subsequent Moviefilm | 2020 | The fact it worked AGAIN — after the first made him globally famous — proves how badly people want to believe what they’re told. |
Gaming Culture
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| Leeroy Jenkins | 2005 | Most famous gaming troll. It was staged — which makes it better (Wikipedia). Trolls the culture of over-planning in MMOs. |
| Goonswarm / EVE Online | 2005–present | Something Awful members organized into EVE’s most notorious alliance. Multi-month espionage campaigns. “We’ll spend more effort ruining your game than you spend playing it.” |
| Corrupted Blood (WoW) | 2005 | Accidental plague. The CDC later studied it (Wikipedia). Players deliberately spread it, others role-played healers. Prophetic of 2020. |
| WoW Funeral Raid | 2006 | Horde guild attacked an in-game funeral for a real dead player (The Escapist). The “was it trolling or cruelty” debate crystallized in one event. |
| Twitch Plays Pokemon | 2014 | Tens of thousands controlling one game (Wikipedia). Trolls indistinguishable from well-meaning players. Emergent mythology (Helix Fossil). |
| He Will Not Divide Us | 2017 | 4chan vs Shia LaBeouf’s protest flag. Used flight patterns, star positions, and honking horns to locate and steal it (Vice). Repeatedly. One of the most elaborate trolling operations ever documented. |
Punk / Zine / Pre-Internet Trolling Culture
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| Negativland | 1979–present | Coined “culture jamming” (1984). “Helter Stupid” — fabricated a news story about their music causing a murder, got real media to report it (Wikipedia). Trolling as media criticism with receipts. |
| Church of the SubGenius | 1979–present | Parody religion. Multi-decade commitment troll against organized religion. Directly influenced 4chan’s “ironic” adoption of ideologies. |
| Discordianism / Principia Discordia | 1963–present | The original meta-troll. A religion about the sacredness of disorder. Operation Mindfuck, fnord, the number 23 all trace back here. |
| Adbusters | 1989–present | Canadian. Professionalized culture jamming through “subvertisements.” Later launched Occupy Wall Street. |
| Cacophony Society | 1986–present | San Francisco. Physical-world trolling — elaborately planned public disruptions. Spawned SantaCon, influenced flash mobs, helped create Burning Man. |
| Processed World | 1981–1994 | SF zine by tech workers sabotaging the information economy from inside. Pranks with class consciousness. |
| Phone Losers of America | 1994–present | Phreak/prank collective. Technical skills serving comedic ends — manipulating phone systems, not just calling. Zine-to-podcast pipeline. |
| Longmont Potion Castle | 1986–present | 20+ albums of surrealist prank calls. Not Jerky Boys crude shock — genuinely bewildering. 40 years anonymous. The highest form of phone trolling. |
Japanese Variety Shows
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| Gaki no Tsukai | 1989–present | “No-Laughing” batsu games — 24-hour New Year’s specials. Producers spend months building traps to make contestants laugh against their will. Trolling as endurance sport. |
| Takeshi’s Castle | 1986–1989 | Takeshi Kitano literally trolls contestants with near-impossible obstacle courses. |
| MXC | 2003–2007 | American redub of Takeshi’s Castle. A troll of a troll — completely reinvented through dubbing. |
UK Satire / Panel Shows
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| Brass Eye | 1997–2001 | See above — Chris Morris. The gold standard. |
| Monkey Dust | 2003–2005 | BBC Three animated. “The Paedofinder General” satirizing moral panic. Morris-influenced. |
| Fonejacker | 2006–2008 | Kayvan Novak’s prank calls with maintained characters. BAFTA winner (Wikipedia). High-effort commitment trolling. |
Adult Swim as Trolling Network
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| Adult Swim (the network) | 2001–present | The entire programming strategy IS trolling. Random scheduling, canceling beloved shows, the 2007 Boston Mooninite bomb scare (LED signs shut down Boston, cost Turner $2M) (Wikipedia). |
| Aqua Teen Hunger Force | 2000–2023 | Deliberately refuses its own premise. No continuity, characters die and return. The Boston bomb scare was its accidental masterpiece. |
| Xavier: Renegade Angel | 2007–2009 | Deliberately ugly CGI, deliberately meaningless pseudo-philosophy. Dares you to keep watching, punishes you for it. High craft disguised as no craft. |
Canadian Nerd Culture
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| Pure Pwnage | 2004–2010 | See above. |
| Kenny vs. Spenny | 2002–2010 | Kenny systematically cheats at absurd competitions. His cheating is always more elaborate than playing fair would be — that’s the high-effort definition. |
| Trailer Park Boys | 2001–2018 | Trolls class assumptions. The characters are smarter than they appear. Julian carrying rum and coke through every disaster is a visual troll of sitcom continuity. |
| Tom Green | 1994–2003 | The original Canadian troll. Painted his parents’ house. Directly inspired Jackass. Escalation as creative practice. |
| This Hour Has 22 Minutes | 1993–present | Marg Delahunty ambushing real politicians in character. Commitment trolling applied to Canadian politics. |
| The Red Green Show | 1991–2006 | Trolls masculinity and DIY culture. Everything held together with duct tape. |
The Canadian pipeline is real: Tom Green → Pure Pwnage → Kenny vs. Spenny → Trailer Park Boys → Nathan Fielder (born in Vancouver). Canada produces trolling media at a rate disproportionate to its population.
| Title | Years | Relevance |
|---|
| Penny Arcade | 1998–present | Trolled the games industry from inside it. Jack Thompson strips were surgical. |
| xkcd | 2005–present | STEM jokes requiring genuine knowledge, with nerdier jokes hidden in alt-text. “Someone is wrong on the internet” became the defining image of internet argument culture. |
| Perry Bible Fellowship | 2001–present | Beautiful artwork delivering devastating punchlines. Days of painting for a single horrible realization. |
| Wondermark #1062 | 2014 | Origin of “sealioning” (Wondermark). Covered in Book 1 Ch. 2. |
Broadcast Signal Intrusions (Trolling as Criminal Art)
| Title | Year | Relevance |
|---|
| Max Headroom Signal Intrusion | 1987 | Unknown person(s) hijacked two Chicago TV stations. Required sophisticated microwave equipment. Never solved (Wikipedia). 38 years of perfect silence. The most famous broadcast troll in history. |
| Captain Midnight | 1986 | Satellite dealer overpowered HBO’s signal to protest pricing (Wikipedia). Trolling as consumer activism requiring real technical skill. |
To Research / Add
- Improv Everywhere (NYC performance art collective — No Pants Subway Ride, etc.)
- Banksy as anonymous culture jammer
- Sacha Baron Cohen’s earlier work (The 11 O’Clock Show)
- The Onion as sustained satirical trolling institution
- Black Mirror as trolling-as-warning
- Brass Eye’s influence on The Thick of It / Veep pipeline
- Andy Kaufman documentary (Jim & Andy, Man on the Moon)
- The Jerky Boys as mainstream prank call breakthrough
- More anime that embodies trolling (FLCL, Excel Saga, Pop Team Epic)
Source URLs