How far back are we talking? 90s? 80s? 70s?

For the 70s, I would agree with you. But the moment home users, and particularly kids, gained access to the internet, you started to see a subculture of trolling.

Source: I was one of those 80s kids. It’s not something I’m proud of, but writing bots to troll message boards and scrapers for porn and warez played just as significant role in my journey into my IT profession as writing games on 8bit micros.