New to me, too: 'concern troll'

[Geoffrey Steven Nathan]

So before today I'd never heard the term. And then today everybody on this list chimes in and I decide I've been reading the wrong blogs (warning: I tend to read libertarian blogs.
Two hours later, however, for the first time, the word is used repeatedly in Reason comments.
The issue was reporters and lawmakers so worried about doctors overprescribing pain medication that they are advocating special laws to make it harder to get, with the inevitable result that folks really suffering from intractable pain now just have to 'suffer'.
Here are some choice data points:

[a propos of reporters]:

Why is nearly every reporter on the planet a f*****g scumbag concern troll?
...

If they didn't concern troll, the amount of material they would have to write about would decrease by a factor of ten, at least.
     Ans: It's a living.
         Ans: There has to be more to it than that. Because they're all concern trolls the same way.

[note use of both noun and zero-derived verb forms, incidentally]

in case anybody wants to go read more:
 http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/09/the-governments-medical-meddling-hurts-p#comments

Geoff

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)

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