A Menagerie of Web-Animals

[Pyrotex]

Hello to one and all. Greetings.

 

This is a humble attempt to educate the masses, the online masses. On any number of occassions, members have described each other (or insulted each other) by using words that may not be understood by the Internet Newbies. So, here are a few definitions.

 

Newbie. This is a person who is new to the Internet, to a specific website, or to a conversation. Newbies are not by nature "bad", but since they are not familiar with the local culture and characters, they often ask questions that have already been answered, or do things that innocenty violate the local "rules". This is okay, we all learn by making mistakes and that is no sin. As long as you do learn.

 

Troll. This is a person who intentionally asks controversial questions and makes inflammatory statements. The troll is just trying to stir up the ants nest, so to speak. Trolls start threads with titles like "Albert Einstein was Gay". Trolls seem to enjoy getting people a little upset and watching them run around wasting their time responding to their inflammatory posts. The troll is not out to learn anything, and oddly enough, isn't out to teach anybody, either. They just love making total strangers lose their temper.

 

Thumper. This is a person who is so caught up in one religion or another that they want to proseletize on every website they visit. They really don't care that nobody is interested, and they truly believe their need to spread the "good word" takes precedence over local rules, interests and subjects. Sometimes we can persuade thumpers that preaching is not appropriate on a Science Website like Hypography, and they go away.

 

Royal Thumper. This is sub-species of Thumper; it is a person who becomes righteously indignant if their religious zeal is not appreciated or if they aren't given special dispensation to preach. They feel they're justified in punishing the unbelievers by disrupting threads, or starting threads on "philosophy" or "history" where they can sneak in their fundementalist viewpoints and call the wicked to salvation.

 

Vampire. This is a person who purposefully changes the subject of a thread and makes it their own. This is referred to as "highjacking a thread". It's like kidnapping a conversation. One minute, you are discussing the impact of Natural Selection on Darwin's theory of evolution, and the next day, some bloke has shifted the conversation to 'Natural Selection is self-contradictory and meaningless'. It may take days or weeks to take the thread back from a Vampire get back on topic.

 

Lamer. This is a person who is a few sandwiches short of a full picnic. Lamers often have this pet theory that only they understand. They know who the UFO's really are and why they are here. They know an easy way to build an anti-gravity machine, only they want somebody else to do the math. "Trinitarianism is the KEY to ALL understanding!" They have just that one subject they can talk about, and they talk about it endlessly.

 

Drooler. This is a person for whom making sense is a major challenge. Sentence fragments. Run-on sentences lots misspeld words. Things are not as they seem. "Beware the illushun of the mind of the eye that you don't know at all caus if it was then you woul be know how it does it when I said ..." You get the idea. On rare occassions, we find that a drooler is actually a perfectly normal six-year old who can type.

 

Ogre. This is a person for whom their mission in life is to contradict and tear down some established fact or truth. It becomes a personal vendetta for them to urinate on every thread (or every poster!) who supports the hated fact or truth. It may be Darwin's Theory of Evolution. It may be Kepler's Theory of Elliptical Orbits. It may be the historical existance of Napolean Bonaparte, the Hollocaust, or the Apollo Moon Landing. Evidence and reason is usually wasted on an ogre.

 

Yahoo. This is a person whose purpose in life is to prove to themselves that they are smarter than anyone else. They typically do this by contradicting what others say, and writing loooooooong rambling posts proving that their understanding of *whatever* is vastly superior to yours even though YOU have a Masters Degree and 25 years working in that field. Yahoos will always ignore every point that you make. Yahoos cannot see their own fallacies but will rake you over the coals if you make one. Yahoos actually think that they are perfectly logical.

[Racoon]

Hello to one and all. Greetings.

 

This is a humble attempt to educate the masses, the online masses. On any number of occassions, members have described each other (or insulted each other) by using words that may not be understood by the Internet Newbies. So, here are a few definitions.

 

 

Troll. This is a person who intentionally asks controversial questions and makes inflammatory statements. The troll is just trying to stir up the ants nest, so to speak. Trolls start threads with titles like "Albert Einstein was Gay". Trolls seem to enjoy getting people a little upset and watching them run around wasting their time responding to their inflammatory posts. The troll is not out to learn anything, and oddly enough, isn't out to teach anybody, either. They just love making total strangers lose their temper.

 

Trolls are often used by members of message boards, somewhat as an off-shoot personality.

 

Lets say I wanted to say/post something that wouldn't really fit my perceived character, or some such.. then I create another username and proceed to post. It can be clever or totally inocuous.

 

Administrators can track the IP, and most trolls are detected this way, unless they use another computer for their antics.

 

I have fallen in troll traps before, by responding to their posts... :cup: ( I also post at a sports and smack forum, and subsequently have learned a few tricks..) Trolls can be funny, and not necessarily inflammatory

 

live and learn.