It's not trolling, it's shock. When you wear something unexpected, then it's a lot funnier and more effective. Nowadays, offense is the most shocking thing there is.
Not to say this is as good as A Modest Proposal, but wouldn't you say that suggesting people in Ireland sell babies as food is a similar thing? I wouldn't call that trolling. I'd call it satire.
EDIT: The reason it isn't trolling is that you have to put your name behind it. One of the essential elements of trolling is that what you say can't be tied back to you whatsoever. The minute you say it with your own name, it's not trolling. It's an offensive statement made by an actual person.
Hey, wear whatever you want, sell whatever t-shirt you want, no sweat off my back. This kind of humor is cheap, and possibly hurtful. If you're cool with that, it's your business.
I've never heard that trolling had to be anonymous by definition, and I've been kicking around the internet for 15 years or so. Trolls aim to be deliberately disruptive, and if you're in public wearing a shirt with any of the slogans on TSH, then you are aiming to be disruptive. One reaps what one sows.
ps - I'm watching our points go up & down depending on who agrees with us. It's kind of amusing.
Yeah, I like watching the debate swirl around stuff like this. It's fascinating stuff.
Trolls aren't the only people who're disruptive. It depends on intent. Trolls do it just to cause pain. But if you get that shirt primarily to shock people into a new way of thinking, then it's not trolling. For instance, I'm considering getting the "slaves get shit done" shirt I mentioned. I don't typically wear shocking shirts, but I thought that one was genuinely funny. The point of wearing a shirt like that wouldn't be offending people. It would be to slowly make these more controversial topics (slavery humor, foul language) acceptable in the mainstream. It raises the question of what's acceptable to wear on clothing. My view is everything goes, and I figure that getting a shirt like that might help spread the message.
Cheap? I dunno. Some of the jokes are, some are legitimately clever. Yeah, they're all shocking, but some are shocking in the way that "Rednecks", the Randy Newman song, are. (That song is sung from the point of view of some rednecks "keepin' the niggers down"; some people miss that the point of the song is that stereotyping against rednecks is just as bad as stereotyping black people.)
But I guess it's a matter of taste. Fun discussion, either way.
What's the difference between trolling and satire, then? Where's it stop becoming a social statement and start becoming a case of merely provoking argument thoughtlessly?
A classic CureZone troll is trying to make us believe that he is a genuine skeptic with no hidden agenda. He is divisive and argumentative with need-to-be-right attitude, "searching for the truth", flaming discussion, and sometimes insulting people or provoking people to insult him. Troll is usually an expert in reusing the same words of its opponents and in turning it against them.
That's not the same as wearing a shirt and saying, "I get why you'd think it's offensive, but I think it's funny, and it's my right to wear this shirt."
There may be people who wear T-Shirt Hell shirts because they think they're funny instead of because they want to offend people and get a reaction, but that's not germane to the question of whether anonymity is one of the essential elements of trolling. It isn't.
"Slavery gets shit done"
"Women are like parking spots. They're whores and liars."
I wish I'd known about this store before. These are hilarious.