I don't know if it's really that rare, though. From where I sit Maciej is playing the fox/anansi/trickster character to a tee, with a healthy dose of ha ha only serious (http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/ha-ha-only-serious.ht...). Whether it's a character he's pretending to be or just his natural communication style is for him to say, but dude-who-wanders-in-to-fuck-up-your-ego-with-practical-jokes is a pretty well-established archetype that predates "troll".