Commanders Post at The Warpath - View Single Post - The 12 Biggest Idiots Found in Online Forums

tryfuhl · 05-11-2009, 06:18 PM

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, okay?'.
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 Antagoniser'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?

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.
Some of these hair-splitters will spend their days doing the digging 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 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 idiot, 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. Fanboy

The Fanboy defends a particular product under any circumstances, no matter what the scenario. He assumes that anyone who fails to praise said product to the skies must be engaged in an irrational vendetta against it - in effect, he sees everyone who isn't a Fanboy as an Anti-Fanboy.
The most common Fanboy tendency is to worship either something (or everything) Apple-related or something (or everything) Microsoft-related.
One unmistakable sign that you're dealing with a Fanboy of this kind - and not with just an enthusiast - is that, even though the object of his affection is ultimately a product for sale, he somehow manages to subordinate technological and monetary considerations to moral imperatives.

10. 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 Apple 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.

11. 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 rubbish-looking, home-made 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.

12. 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' and 'Wrong'.)
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.

Source: PC Advisor

05-11-2009, 06:18 PM	#2
tryfuhl Gamebreaker Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Waldorf, MD Age: 42 Posts: 12,514	Re: The 12 Biggest Idiots Found in Online Forums 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, okay?'. 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 Antagoniser'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? 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. Some of these hair-splitters will spend their days doing the digging 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 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 idiot, 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. Fanboy The Fanboy defends a particular product under any circumstances, no matter what the scenario. He assumes that anyone who fails to praise said product to the skies must be engaged in an irrational vendetta against it - in effect, he sees everyone who isn't a Fanboy as an Anti-Fanboy. The most common Fanboy tendency is to worship either something (or everything) Apple-related or something (or everything) Microsoft-related. One unmistakable sign that you're dealing with a Fanboy of this kind - and not with just an enthusiast - is that, even though the object of his affection is ultimately a product for sale, he somehow manages to subordinate technological and monetary considerations to moral imperatives. 10. 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 Apple 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. 11. 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 rubbish-looking, home-made 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. 12. 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' and 'Wrong'.) 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. Source: PC Advisor