kook

Term used to describe a regular poster who continually posts messages with
no apparent grounding in reality. Different from a troll , which implies a
sort of sly wink on the part of a poster who knows better, kooks really
believe what they write, to the extent that they believe anything. The kook
trademark is paranoia and grandiosity. Kooks will often build up elaborate
imaginary support structures, fake corporations and the like, and continue
to act as if those things are real even after their falsity has been
documented in public. While they may appear harmless, and are usually
filtered out by the other regular participants in a newsgroup of mailing
list, they can still cause problems because the necessity for these measures
is not immediately apparent to newcomers; there are several instances on
record, for example, of journalists writing stories with quotes from kooks
who caught them unaware. An entertaining web page chronicling the activities
of many notable kooks can be found at http://www.crank.net/usenet.html.

