manipulation

[egypturnash]

postvixen has started a very lively debate about What Should Be Done About Something Awful, due to their latest article on The Horrors Of Furries ending with him advocating that every single fan of that site attack every furryish guestbook/board/etc they can find. (I thought that went against their "Prime Directive"? Or is it Portal of Evil that has that Trek-geeky rule of 'noninterference'? I don't really bother to distinguish one "ironic" 4-pixel-type net.asshole site from another.) Me, I suggest good sex, creativity-enhancing drugs, and some therapy for all the self-hate they seem to pour out across anyone who seems to be having fun outside of the approved channels of society.

What I find interesting about it is how I ended up having seen the article already: someone left an anonymous comment on what was, at the moment, the most recent entry in my journal. An anonymous comment that smelled like troll:

Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 18:03:58 UT
Subject: Important Read
In my many years as a furry of the highest order, I came across this ridiculous story where we, furries, are compared in some sick fashion to pedophiles. To say the least I was horrified, appalled and disgusted. Anyways, here's the link to said story http://www.somethingawful.com/ , the name of the story is called The Internet is a Sad Sexy Place. If anyone knows who wrote this please let all the furries know. Thank you.

(Cut and paste from the comment notify mail rather than linked. This was appended to a pretty serious entry that I really didn't want this sort of shit attatched to. Link deliberately broken, I'm sure you've seen it elsewhere if you're part of TEH FANDUMB and I don't want to participate in being part of their free advertising for it...)

And something about the language of it instantly felt false to me. The broken syntax but perfect spelling. The plea to find out who wrote the story, given that there's a byline right at the top of the article. The fact that it succinctly sums up the article and offers a suggested emotional reaction. The fact that (I realized just now, when looking for the email) I seem to have gotten this comment very shortly after the story went up on the stupid site. Here's what I find myself quickly and easily reading as a subtext: These guys are now resorting to sending 'indignant warnings about that new SA story' to people they think might fly into an interesting flurry of drama. Gotta make sure those furries see it, or it's no fun mocking them. Who can we poke at to hopefully stir up some drama? Who can we get to waste their time ranting back at us? Sorry guys, not me. I already feel nasty enough having wasted this much time contemplating the come-on. Thanks for the vague implicit complement that I'm someone interesting or influential enough to try and stir up directly. Craft your anonymous come-ons more subtly next time and maybe I'll actually talk about the attack rather than the bait..

Ironically, part of the feelings involved in the angsty entry this little anonymous comment was left on involved wanting to stop reading subtext into things and getting into mental loops of drama because of it. Posting a link to an article designed to throw furries into fits of drama, on an entry that opens with me resolving to "stop being such a fucking drama queen", is just funny.

So - I just deleted the comment shortly after getting it; I didn't want it sitting there at the end of something serious. Yeah, I read the article that Friday afternoon and rolled my eyes, but it was so obviously a troll. I've got much more important things to whirl in a tizzy over right now. But reading Postvixen's commentary on the article, and looking back at the comment notification, made me quite aware of the ham-handed attempt at manipulating me these guys did.

I think there's only one thing to say, in a bit of Ironic Net Hipster jargon that's probably been around since before the Something Awful guys discovered the net: IHBT HAND. Oh, and FOAD.

Comments

Okay, wait...

[(Anonymous)]

...someone trolled your livejournal...

...so you deleted his post...

...but then you posted it back onto your livejournal...

...in its entirety...

...Just To Show Him?


We have come at last to that dark borderland where Cool and Lame fade into each other...

--The Green Tarnation

Re: Okay, wait...

[non-grata.livejournal.com]

Yes, where Egypt==cool and troller==lame.

And also where postvixen==badly in need of not letting his buttons be pushed so easily. Much like the 'Green Tarnation' (cute homosexual pseudo-reference there, chappy).

Re: Okay, wait...

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

You mean like this? :) I admit it, my bullshit tolerance gets inconveniently low from time to time, but at least I finally developed a sense of humor about it. If you think I'm bad now, you should've seen me in high school when I was face to face with these losers and less centered. Several bullies did impromptu remodeling work on my high school with their heads. :)

Re: Okay, wait...

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, though, what about my response to the SA thread struck you as angry or impulsive? Frankly, I thought I did a pretty good job of exposing the more ironic points of Parsons's troll without explicitly committing to the idea that it was a genuine attack on furry. That was tough to pull off, 'cause I genuinely didn't know, but I was actually pretty calm through the whole thing. Yeah, I did get pretty heated in the comments, but that's just the way I am. (READ: DAGO)

I hope you're not making the common mistake of mistaking a flood of postvixen verbiage for some kind of frenzy -- shit, I can write more than that in a sitting about the way Postrodent snores. :p

Re: Okay, wait...

[non-grata.livejournal.com]

That's just the way I am.

Yes. Exactly.

Now how 'bout less dickering over silly trollers and more showing up on Puzzlebox, eh? eh?

Re: Okay, wait...

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

That's probably the best possible thing you could've said to convince me. Splitting troll hairs is fun, but doing bizarre improv art with my friends is much better...

[baroquevertigo.livejournal.com]

All that energy spent that you could have spent onmaking yourself and a few friends happier!

Re: Okay, wait...

[(Anonymous)]

If you read the post, it wasn't that Peg wanted the comment deleted Just To Show Him, but because the comment was associated with a post that was important to her, preferring that particular post not be the playground for such games.

Please check your targets before firing, thank you.

- Grey Enlightenment

Re: Okay, wait...

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

...we have entered a dimension...

...not of sight and sound...

...but of dumb...

...where people go looking for things to disappoint them, yet are still surprised when they find them...

...where shadowy, malformed beings can reshape history to their own purposes...

...where facts can fade away on a whim (like Peggy's clear explanation that she deleted the comment immediately, but only gave it a second thought after seeing the other post, which is a perfectly logical explanation for her behavior)

You have entered the Kelp Zone.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Quoting myself:

This was appended to a pretty serious entry that I really didn't want this sort of shit attatched to.

I'm dissecting the lure. Examining how this SA person was trying to hook me. Contemplating what I think being trolled this way may say about how I seem to other people. This entry is as much about me and my reaction to this as it is about yet another lame-ass 'OH NO FURRIES ARE EVIL' article on a "humor" site I never bother reading.

I was thinking of a sentence-by-sentence deconstruction of the trolling, just as an exercise, but that got edited out before it got written - it was just more mindshare than I wanted to give it. It's fucking Something Awful. It's a shameless attempt to stir up drama. It's only interesting because this is the first time I've been explicitly trolled like this. (Or maybe I haven't been - maybe the message was real, and I'm finding subtle hints that don't exist. I can't imagine someone warning me about an article attacking "us furries", though, as I'm pretty obviously way out on the fringes of the "furry community".)

I don't worry about being cool any more. I just worry about being me.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder if this will ultimately lead to a general backlash against Something Awful by the net at large. The theory behind it is this:

Person A is a furry. Person A has a friend, Person B, who isn't a furry. Person B is not aware of Something Awful until Person A mentions that SA is messing with furries. Now, in Person B's mind, SA are a bunch of jerks who attack good people, and Person B will pass that impression on.

Person A doesn't have to be a furry. They can be any member of a fringe group whom SA deems worthy of mockery. I think we can agree that Something Awful attacks and/or incenses far more individuals than they accumulate as members. Therefore the number of people who think SA = assholes should greatly outstrip SA sympathizers, and ultimately the net at large will regard (or disregard) them as jerkoffs. This would be a direct consequence of their behavior, so unless they stop messing with people, it's unavoidable.

Of course, what this theory suggests is that if you're a furry (or a member of some other fringe group), you shouldn't conceal the fact... you should make sure your friends and allies know it.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Furry, queer, Jewish, BDSM, Buddhist, trans, whatever the association is. Whatever voluntary memetic minority you're a part of, be casually and inoffensively out about it. Don't be a screaming in-your-face whatever, just don't worry about hiding it.

They're saying that [group] is horrible and evil. But [friend] is a [group] and they're a perfectly fine person. Maybe these guys are just full of shit... geez, they're advocating attacking [group], that's wrong!

[arphalia.livejournal.com]

I think this might explain one of my recent hobbies, or at least how it came about. Hmm. Maybe. I did plan on posting a link to this discussion I've been getting into with someone obviously repulsed by furries, but I'm waiting. Sadly enough I'm waiting not because of what this person is saying, but because the conversation actually took a turn for the intelligent. Anyhow, I'm waiting on linking cause I'd hate to have a bunch of furries blindly trashing someone who finally seemed willing to hear me out. There's a lot of blind trashing back and forth. I thought I'd take a different approach since I know I don't do much of anything blinding to begin with. Except maybe my gory images. ;p But that blinds many 'furries' too so.. Bah, I'm babbling.

[martes.livejournal.com]

It's POE that has the non-interference policy.
I go to the SA forums sometimes, but there's so many threads it's impossible to keep up if you're only on for a little bit each day. Sometimes the Photoshop pictures are funny, or threads about weird medical shit that's happened to people. It's certainly not the be-all-to-end-all that some people seem to think it is, unless you're online all day and can look at every single thread. Which I guess some people do.

[mandrill.livejournal.com]

Peganthyrus -- I don't know you personally, but you strike me as the sort of person who could really care LESS about something like that Something Awful article. Which makes that anonymous poster trolling you seem all the more amusing. Have you considered that person might have been some acquaintance of yours who was just trying to get a rise out of you?

I remember back when SA used to let the public check out their forums for free on occasion. Very dull reading, really. The regular SA posters always struck me as just another 'net clique who are always trying to "out-cool" one another.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I considered that vaguely too, but... I know there's some people who leave the occasional trollish comment now and then.

Besides, I need to give in to grandiose paranoid fantasies now and then. Not that the opinion of Something Awful is exactly a matter of terribly grandiose fantasies, but, hey. Some days they're more grandiose than others.

[martes.livejournal.com]

That's absolutely true. They seem to spend an inordinate amount of time congradulating one another on how cool or funny or clever their posts are, or telling each other how fabulous they are. Which is ironic considering one of the criticisms about certain net cultures in that article was how they mindlessly supported one another.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

No wonder they want you to spend ten bucks before giving you any real access to their precious forum.

net.bastard culture always seems to be just like what it's mocking, except far less entertaining. They're like right-wing Christian extremists - horribly afraid that someone, somewhere, might be having fun and doing their own thing. It's just that they mock the people fhey find having imaginative fun, instead of enacting laws against them.