Years ago when mn was much smaller the troll threads were different because so many people became invested over such a long period of time. So e.g. we had the likes of judge flounce, trolls who claimed to be escaping abusive relationships, oliver’s Army and so on and those threads often ran for a good while before the troll was outed (usually on the thread itself).
But they were talking points precisely because they took so long to develop and because people developed relationships with the trolls either on or off the boards.
However, now we have far more (dare I say it) flippant threads pop up every single day most of which end up being deleted for being questionable and some which run and run but because mn is so big now the whole site doesn’t take on board the fact that almost all long-running threads in e.g. Aibu and chat are ultimately deleted.
I’m not entirely sure why people do it, but I do think that most threads on here are made up now, far more than are actually real, general debates not withstanding.