It's just you. Trolls abuse attention, which is why you should ignore them. People who feed trolls are just misguided, it's OK to talk to them.

fair enough, but would that also mean that its ok to reply to people who reply to trolls in the threads?

Please don't; it compounds the problem. If you do, can I suggest that you say, "I'm going to delete my comment in a little while. Can you delete yours?"

Tptacek seems to be worried more about drawing attention to particular trolls than to trolling in general. If you comment on a troll comment, you draw attention to it and lift it up the page giving it more visibility at the expense of more useful posts. In contrast, this thread/submission doesn't give any more visibility to any particular troll, but does provide a place for meta-discussion on dealing with them.