haha I don’t actually think we’re disagreeing. If you just take the word “interruption”, there are situations where interruption is bad and situations where it’s good.

Depends how precisely you’re pointing: the metonym is the word or group of words that substitutes for whatever’s being er metonymised. So I think strictly a metonym is an example of a word or phrase you use to create or cause a metonymy. But I think act/tendency and tool collapse quite easily into one another at this level of discussion: for example metaphor is used as both act/tendency and tool (even though metaphorism is strictly speaking the term for the former). Ditto perhaps synechdoche and synechdochism, to answer your original question. The metonym is a part of the metonymy: the means by which metonymy happens. But if a poet uses metonymy and you point at the relevant line or section and say “this is metonymy” or “this is a metonymy” or “this is a metonym”, you’re pointing at the exact same set of words and making the exact same claim.

I don’t mean that there’s something that everyone will agree is “the issue” or “the problem,” but that “trolling” becomes a shorthand name for what everyone assumes everyone agrees is “the issue,” without, you know, their figuring out what’s at issue (which may not be the same for everyone, or the same for some individual at all times).

Thought an example of metonymy was a metonym (as an example of synonymy is a synonym).

Isn’t the actual problem word “conversation”, though? “They didn’t reply well to me” is a problem for YOU, but it isn’t (necessarily) a problem for a conversation, even a conversation started by you in your own territory to your own rules. (Because your rules and habits and manner may be good-conversation averse…)

What’s a conversation for? Well, people come into one with all kinds of very different intentions and expectations, from killing time or hooking up, to solving problems, to creating problems. Which of these enrich the conversation can only be judged situationally—and there’s never going to be an overall agreement on the value, precisel because people come in from such very different angles.

Er, I mean “‘trolling’ is a misfiring synecdoch(e),” so the word “trolling” (when trolling is taken to be the name of a problem), not the activity.

The true problem on the ‘Net is ambiguity.*

*Unless it’s the solution. What was the question again?

I was just trolling Dee. But s/he could have safely left out the words, “since you folks didn’t seem to grasp.” Could have put a period in their stead.

What’s at issue is whether and how well people comment on me. And I don’t think trolling has much to do with it.

Trolls aren’t like, say, drunk drivers, even if they and their co-dependents are similarly hooked. Drunk drivers really do mess up the road. Whereas you can sidestep trolls on the Web (unless the troll has hacking/cracking skills; but most don’t). Sometimes you can even learn from them. If the convo’s good, trolls will enrich it. (And I say this as someone who’s been trolled viciously.)

Not that there aren’t situations where troll posts should be deleted. But if it comes to that, likely something else was wrong anyway.