.

nanc= uber troll

Sorry, nanc, they left out the one category that you'd fit into perfectly:

The Complete Fucking Dumbass.

#3 | Posted by Angrydad

Not only angry but rude.

I'm the cryin' on the inside kind, I guess.

"Not only angry but rude."

Damn right.

#7 | Posted by Angrydad

How many kids?

JeffJ = No. 6.

i am the nicest person here! dayamit!

I'm the cryin' on the inside kind, I guess.

#6 | Posted by LetUsPrey at 2009-06-08 07:20 PM | Reply

While screeching on the outside

#3 | Posted by Angrydad

Not nice.......

You complete Fucking Dumbass.

Great art and writing in this article, but it is true there are a lot more variations.

Funny article, TRUTHHURTS!

I went through almost all of the "on-line jerks" examples in the article and there are some real classics. I decided to write down 11 of them since I doubt most on here will bother to go through and click through each of them in the article.

It'll take me a about 3 to 4 posts to get them all down but I think all of us on DR can recognize either a little of ourselves or some others on here in at least one or two of them.

All I am going to say about this very first example -- "The FIRST! Guy -- is think of the DR NOONER!

1. The FIRST! Guy

Maybe we should have saved this character for last, but our first offender is the FIRST! Guy -- the mental marsupial whose contribution to the great discussions of our online times is to post the first response to any given topic, consisting of the comment "FIRST!" Clever? No. Original? No. Ironically self-mocking in a postmodern deconstructionist kind of way? Uh, no. Puerile? Now you're getting close. And yet there seem to be multiple FIRST! Guy clones lurking around every forum, ready to share a very important message. Here's hoping that all of these Net nuisances find another source of personal pride by their 15th birthday.

2. THE SELF-PROMOTER

The Self-Promoter is a message board classic: This bore meanders across the Web, leaving thinly disguised comments designed to pimp his own project. Sometimes, he'll take a stab at making the promotion look incidental: "Man, that new iPhone software does look rad! You should check out my blog about Windows Mobile here!" But just as often, he'll ditch the preamble and launch straight into the link without even trying to tie it to the subject at hand.

Shameless self-promotion really is the worst -- especially when the shill has to stretch like Elastigirl to come up with a semi-plausible segue into the promo reference. The only thing that irks me more is behavioral ad targeting, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago here.

3. THE SERMONATOR

A close relative to the Self-Promoter, the Sermonator trolls various comment forums to find some way to divert the conversation to his favorite subject -- most often something related to morals, religion or a particular political view. No discussion is too interesting and no community too engaged for the Sermonator to subvert into a tedious homily on his topic of choice.

4. MR. CREDENTIALS

"As someone who has managed Windows-based systems for 15 years," Mr. Credentials weighs in with a predictable approach. First he encourages everyone to focus on his superior curriculum vitae, rather than on the objective reasonableness of his views. Then he'll launch into a 500-word essay designed to show just how well-versed he is on the subject at hand (or whatever subject he wants to talk about), overwhelming all resistance with the sheer force and volume of his hot air.

And in case his own credentials might be called into question at some point when he has paused to breathe, Mr. Credentials likes to cite his authorities by the bushel -- quoting them at length, and often adding further excerpts detailing his authorities' authorities. In fact, his messages are frequently more heavily weighted toward text from famous figures, user manuals or Wikipedia entries than toward his own original thoughts or opinions.

(CONTINUED FROM ABOVE)

5. THE ANTAGONIZER

Comment forums are made for divergent viewpoints and intelligent, spirited debate. The Antagonizer, though, takes things to another, more primitive level, resorting to personal attacks and insults in what may be a nostalgic flashback to carefree bygone days as a third-grade bully.

"Do I even have to explain how stupid of a name Stefan is for a man?" one such person wrote on a popular tech blog's story about Apple's touch-screens. He went on to close his remarks with this jab: "I bet you shave your armpits." That's about as clever as the repartee gets in Antagonizer Land; more often the insights run along the lines of "You bleep!" "Bleep you!" "Bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep!" Proof positive that, online, it isn't difficult for a person to be both loud and boring.

6. THE MODERATOR

Taking a slightly subtler approach to making visitors feel unwelcome, the Moderator maintains an air of superiority as he bunkers down each day on a particular site's comment section or message board for another 16-hour stint as archivist-in-residence. He's the cool kid -- the site vet who's been around for a long time and knows what's what. Leave a message that repeats something someone else said 16 months ago, and he'll let you know about it within minutes.

"Um, yeah, Newbie0314, we talked about that back when NeverTouchedAWoman24 brought the subject up last May. But thanks for contributing, lol."

Treating the forum as his own private gated community, the (self-appointed) Moderator seems to have adopted as his personal philosophy the Pythonesque commandment "Every thread is precious." To keep each discussion safe and pure, he will treat any commenter who has fewer than 200 messages to his name as an undocumented invader who doesn't deserve a spot on his beloved forum. All of this, we assume, from the comfort of his parents' basement.

7. PEACEKEEPER

Another long-standing character common to forums is the Peacekeeper. This guy has been a regular at a particular site as long as the proprietor, but his goal as a participant has somehow devolved from saying something interesting to keeping the peace -- and he has no problem peppering every thread with his efforts to intervene as Mr. Manners.

"Hey now, that's not appropriate," he may say. Or, "Let's watch the language, OK?"

Though the Peacekeeper's intentions are good, his actions end up clogging the forum with pages of useless and often long-winded discussions of propriety that are every bit as annoying as the attacks themselves. Worse, unlike the Antagonizer's antics, the Peacekeeper's contributions can be virtually impossible to silence, even if you're the site's moderator. After all, how do you tactfully tell a guy to stop pacifying?

(CONTINUED BELOW)

(CONTINUED FROM ABOVE)

8. SMARTY PANTS

If the Peacekeeper is on a search-and-destroy mission against offensive content, the Smarty Pants' goal is to find and expose inaccuracies -- no matter how insignificant -- solely as a means to demonstrate his intellectual superiority. A Smarty Pants constantly runs a fine-toothed comb through both a site's original articles and its comments in search of nits to pick: factual errors, grammatical errors, typos -- it doesn't matter. The instant he finds one, he pounces on the offending poster, thrashing him with the wet capellini of his erudition.

Some of these hair-splitters will spend their days doing the spadework necessary to prove a minor mistake in someone else's words. The most obnoxious -- and yet most grimly satisfying -- kind of Smarty Pants, though, is the one who bases his corrections on his own "infallible" knowledge base. He might, for example, summon his Univac-like powers of recall to dispute an author's mention of when a particular piece of software came out.

"DOS 3.0 was not around in 1985," an actual comment from Digg reads, referring to a story that mentioned various points of computer history. "I bought my Tandy 1000 in 1987 and it came with DOS 2.11."

DOS 3.0 actually came out in 1984. This gomer, it would seem, simply got ripped off late-'80s style. But as you introduce a Smarty Pants to his richly deserved comeuppance, you can't help noticing that you have just increased the online population of this particular scourge by one.

9. THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST

This edgy fellow detects conspiracies (or the shadows of conspiracies) in everything he reads, and he has no compunction about publicly sharing his off-kilter suspicions. The Conspiracy Theorist is often convinced that he's under constant surveillance by the government -- for some reason they've singled him out (and even more mysteriously, they haven't bothered to terminate him yet, despite his constant blabbing) -- and he sees signs of schemes in the strangest places. A story about iPhones might inspire him to share how Apple is using "Q-waves" to trace his thought patterns. A blog on the best browsers could trigger a rant about the time he opened Internet Explorer and saw a toxic waste symbol on his home page.

I don't pretend to understand how this quirky character's brain works. I can only hope that the tin-foil hat he presumably wears most of the time (though not shown here) helps prevent all those weird waves from escaping his head as well as from entering it.

(CONTINUED FROM ABOVE)

10. THE SIGNATURE DORK

The Signature Dork appends a 14-line signature to the bottom of each of his posts to the forum or comments section. The boilerplate often consists of the dork's name and titles, followed by a (lengthy) quotable quote, system specs, possibly a grocery list, more quotes (usually from Einstein or Isaac Asimov), followed by a straggling line of shoddy-looking, homemade animated GIFs.

This makes a brisk back-and-forth dialogue of Twitter-length comments between the Signature Dork and anyone else look like a series of fortune-cookie fortunes interspersed with a series of fortune-cookie fortunes attached to bricks.

11. JOHNNY ONE-WORD

This character seems to hate everything about the publication whose forum he frequents, and yet he seemingly never misses a chance to read and comment on a story. (He gets his name because of his tendency to express his dismay in comments of a single word: "Lame." "Whatever." "Wrong." "Fail.")

It's sad, really: Here's Johnny One-Word trapped by his own loneliness and real-world social ineptitude in an online community dedicated to reviewing and discussing content that he consistently despises. It's like a guy who hates water but spends all his time fishing because it's the only place where he knows he can find other people.

Anyone recognize any of our DR posters in the above examples? LOL

forgot to put #10 and #11 in blockquotes

I don't pretend to understand how this quirky character's brain works. I can only hope that the tin-foil hat he presumably wears most of the time (though not shown here) helps prevent all those weird waves from escaping his head as well as from entering it.

Anyone recognize any of our DR posters in the above examples? LOL

Posted by CalifChris

only the idiots who smugely retort with "Tin Foil" as a reasonably intelligent response to obvious questions:>)

9. THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST

JeffnDenmark? BuffaloBob? where are you?

7. PEACEKEEPER

I usually think of JeffJ as one of the DR "Peacekeepers"

A Smarty Pants constantly runs a fine-toothed comb through both a site's original articles and its comments in search of nits to pick: factual errors, grammatical errors, typos -- it doesn't matter. The instant he finds one, he pounces on the offending poster, thrashing him with the wet capellini of his erudition.

is having an abortion a conspiracy?

5. THE ANTAGONIZER

There isn't enough room on this thread to fill in all the names that would fit this one! hahaha

10. THE SIGNATURE DORK

It's a fair cop.

Be Well.

5. THE ANTAGONIZER

There isn't enough room on this thread to fill in all the names that would fit this one! hahaha

#24 | Posted by CalifChris

self retort?

"5. THE ANTAGONIZER

There isn't enough room on this thread to fill in all the names that would fit this one! hahaha

#24 | Posted by CalifChris "

self retort?

#26 | Posted by Bani at 2009-06-09 12:53 AM

Yep, sure is! And you could probably add me on to the one for "Conspiracy Theorist" too because JeffNDenmark has come up with a few theories which I think are pretty much on the mark -- like the NAU and a couple of others I agreed with him on.

The one category you will NEVER be able to put me in is "11. Johnny One Word." With my big mouth I could never make my posts that short -- much to the dismay of everyone on DR.

is having an abortion a conspiracy?

#23 | Posted by Bani at 2009-06-09 12:49 AM

Kind of a really weird question for this thread and for a guy to ask, Bani.
What does abortion have to do with a conspiracy theory?

Looks like everybody is taking this thread so personal. It's suppose to be for laughs -- at least I think that's why TRUTHHURTS put it up -- for fun. But screw it if it makes everyone so uptight for some reason.

Kind of a really weird question for this thread and for a guy to ask, Bani.
What does abortion have to do with a conspiracy theory?

#28 | Posted by CalifChris

isn't it murder?

Wow.

Hey Bani

I don't know what bug you've got up your butt tonight but do NOT put words from one of my posts, a quote from another, and then try to combine them together and attribute it to me as though ALL the words were my own when the main portion was obviously a quote -- and had been set out in a blockquote.

You took this portion of a blockquote from the last paragraph in my post #16

I don't pretend to understand how this quirky character's brain works. I can only hope that the tin-foil hat he presumably wears most of the time (though not shown here) helps prevent all those weird waves from escaping his head as well as from entering it.

Anyone recognize any of our DR posters in the above examples? LOL

#17 | Posted by CalifChris at 2009-06-09 12:39 AM

and combined them together into this post #19 of yours --

I don't pretend to understand how this quirky character's brain works. I can only hope that the tin-foil hat he presumably wears most of the time (though not shown here) helps prevent all those weird waves from escaping his head as well as from entering it.

Anyone recognize any of our DR posters in the above examples? LOL

#17 | Posted by CalifChris at 2009-06-09 12:39 AM

only the idiots who smugely retort with "Tin Foil" as a reasonably intelligent response to obvious questions:>)

#19 | Posted by Bani at 2009-06-09 12:44 AM

Why? So you could get in some cheap one-liner? Didn't you learn quotation marks in school? Don't attribute words to me combining posts and attributing quotes to me as if they were my own words. If you don't like this thread for some apparent reason then take it up with the guy who posted it.

I wonder which one I am?

I wonder which one I am?

Pick one, shit head. You're all of them

Coincidentally, with this reply, I know which one I am.

Fuckers.

Fortunately, I am in a class of my own.

It's lonely at the top.

Califchris.. good post.. very interesting..

10. THE SIGNATURE DORK

It's a fair cop.

Be Well.

#25 | Posted by dethspud

Now, that was funny.

Sorry, nanc, they left out the one category that you'd fit into perfectly:

The Complete Fucking Dumbass.

#3 | Posted by Angrydad

Mr. Mom must be having another bad day. What's the matter? Kids shit in the sink again?

okay, i'll admit i'm a wee bit antagonistic.

Most of us were not on the list- the sniper.

The Sniper- goes from thread to thread in search of a weak post or one easily mocked post and then unloads both barrels of sarcastic and/or pun-enriched commentary designed only to entertain and attract other snipers in the area.

The Sniper- goes from thread to thread in search of a weak post or one easily mocked post and then unloads both barrels of sarcastic and/or pun-enriched commentary designed only to entertain and attract other snipers in the area.

#40 | Posted by kanrei

This is what I like about him too.

Whatever category sniper is in, I am in the same group. Sometimes all you can do is make comedy.

Zat and Hans both fit with Johnny One Word making Johnson jealous.

CC plays the Peacemaker while egging on the combatants (you know who they are) making Gimme jealous.

Speaking of jerks online, you can catch OzarkMikey's One Eyed Monster Poster Gallery here:

okay, i'll admit i'm a wee bit antagonistic.

#39 | Posted by nanc at 2009-06-09 09:32 AM

Nah.

You're pretty much a Dipshit.

But you're funny to laugh at.

Looks like everybody is taking this thread so personal. It's suppose to be for laughs -- at least I think that's why TRUTHHURTS put it up -- for fun. But screw it if it makes everyone so uptight for some reason.

#29 | Posted by CalifChris at 2009-06-09 01:12 AM |

So if I call you an self absorbed Drama Queen, you won't take offense?

He left off The Weisenheimer, attempts numerous lame jokes on serious threads.

{takes a bow}

Looks like everybody is taking this thread so personal. It's suppose to be for laughs -- at least I think that's why TRUTHHURTS put it up -- for fun. But screw it if it makes everyone so uptight for some reason.

#29 | Posted by CalifChris at 2009-06-09 01:12 AM

#45 | Posted by jerrytarkanian at 2009-06-09 12:56 PM

Did I take offense ALL the other times you've called me a "self-absorbed Drama Queen"? No.

But your term "self-absorbed Drama Queen" to describe me is inaccurate. I don't go looking to "create" drama -- I merely "react" to various annoying comments made by clowns such as yourself. That's the difference.

So, substitute my having an "Irish temper" rather than me being a "Drama Queen" and your description of me would be more on the money, Jerry honey. lol

He left off The Weisenheimer, attempts numerous lame jokes on serious threads.

{takes a bow}

#46 | Posted by silver_ironist at 2009-06-09 02:18 PM

You're also one of the nicest guys on DR, Silver_Ironist.

Geeze, now I guess I've gone and ruined your "tough guy Weisenheimer" image? lol

Can't put me in a box...

Can't put me in a box...

#49 | POSTED BY DONNERBOY AT 2009-06-09 06:17 PM | REPLY | FLAG: Tastes Better over an open fire

thx Antagonizer!

-btw- "donner" means thunder in German...not cannibal...heh

Thunder Boy...heh heh

With a 10 octave range
Thunder Boy exclaims
not a cannibal
nor confined to box
I'm hot air and bluster you ox.

-btw- "donner" means thunder in German...not cannibal...heh

#51 | Posted by donnerboy

Did you know it means Sperm Bank in French?

You're also one of the nicest guys on DR, Silver_Ironist.

Thanks, CC.

You know what the say about nice guys.

You know what the say about nice guys.

#54 | Posted by silver_ironist

They have short cranks?

They have short cranks?

No, that's the rich bald pricks that collect old Porsches and enjoy huge Cuban cigars.

Minus Cali C, and Nanc, you are all a bunch of freaking dorks!!!

Even me?

Yes, even you...rex.

Hahahahahhaa, ok stir.

I am watching 'Zombie' on my plasma....I hooked up my tv to my computer and got Netflix on demand....cool as hell.....

I am watching 'Zombie' on my plasma....

Is he playing Warcraft, masterbating to his lab partner's profile pic on Facebook, and quivering with all the upper middle-class, bourgeois rage (and undergraduate intellect) he can muster at the "fundies"?

Jesus, Rex.

You need a new hobby.

You lost me dude....

Obviously you're not a fan of classic horror.

Oops.

I thought you were talking about the poster here: "ZombieKiller", or "ZombieHunter", or whatever the fuck he is.....

Like you had him on some webcam shit, or something....

My bad.

#57 | Posted by Beachbuzz

thank you and i'd like to thank the academy. has my fan arrived?

"Do I even have to explain how stupid of a name Stefan is for a man?" one such person wrote on a popular tech blog's story about Apple's touch-screens. He went on to close his remarks with this jab: "I bet you shave your armpits."

LOL.

We need to recruit this guy for the DR.

just found your retort today CC...FF

Drama queen is right...how's it going with Tiller's justified murder these days? >)

Zombie

I love it when the zombie fights the shark.