I got into the game in early 1996, just as the collective intelligence of the Net was rising back into the low-80s, and by the end of that year your standard troll tactics no longer worked. People actually learned basic skills like trimming the number of crossposted newsgroups, or that nothing good could come of any thread that was crossposted into alt.fan.karl-malden.nose. Those trollers that stuck around on Usenet were forced to feed their habit in alternative ways: either by staging flame wars with one another in "designated flame areas" like alt.flame, or by engaging in ever-more destructive means of newsgroup torture. Since plain trolls were ineffective, the trollers resorted to "invasions," flooding, cascading, and forgery. Thus ended the "Golden Age."

Interestingly enough, just as standard trolling became ineffective on Usenet, the Web was transitioning from an informational medium to a discussion medium. Web-boards replaced newsgroups. A whole new batch of newbies - younger, dumber, and about 100x the size of the 93-96 batch - flooded the intarwebs. This was the start of what you term the "Golden Age of Trolling." It was actually nowhere near as interesting as the "Golden Age" on Usenet. On a web-board, the owner can swiftly deal with any disruptive individual. Usenet has no "central authority," leading to endless discussions among the Usenet elite as to who was responsible for whose bad behavior, what sites should be "banned" from the rest of the network, what sort of vigilantism was appropriate to protect the greater good, etc. The hand-wringing going on in news.admin.net-abuse.usenet alone made the whole trolling enterprise worthwhile.

Here's an example of a classic troll. This one originally appeared in a bunch of kids' newsgroups in 1995.