Mock. Mockmockmock. Mockity-mock-mock

12:00am: If it's too good to be true...
I went over to Gamefaqs.com to look for some info on Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix, and I see:

Someone claiming that he got the "retail" copy of the game early, and is willing to answer questions!

Quite naturally, people jump on this, but lots of people are also skeptical. Much as I wanted to believe "SaWa", I couldn't bring myself to. The 14 page(and counting) long thread starts out with Q/A, but it ends with people simply not believing him when he failed to provide proof that he actually had the game(they wanted a picture). Now people feel stupid. Still, all this is in one day, so who knows? Maybe SaWa really does have the game, but I doubt it. Either way, I don't think that thread will be dead any time soon.

Edit: Oh DAMN! It ended up "moderated", or deleted, but this new post comes from SaWa:

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=935702&topic=33600314

So far people aren't so forgiving. Can't say I blame them.

9:20am: Chris Ott vs. The Decemberists
In which we learn that 1) when someone writes a snarky piece about a band, it looks kind of bad (for the band) when the lead singer's girlfriend shows up in the comments and savages the writer, and 2) it looks even worse (for everyone, probably) when the writer takes four paragraphs to snipe back at her. And that's even before the readership really starts to weigh in.

It starts when Chris Ott writes a piece for the Village Voice in which he takes the Decemberists -- and specifically frontman Colin Meloy -- to task for, well, being pretentious, in a word.

Of course, Ott takes several paragraphs of varying readability to say this. Then the comments (oldest at the bottom of the page, so scroll all the way down to read the fun from the start) get rolling, and the second comment comes from Carson Ellis, Colin Meloy's girlfriend: "Why is this review so spiteful and weirdly personal? You're lucky nobody wants to write a piece about you and the inferiority complex/unrequited romantic obsessions/high school ass-kickings/unrealized dreams that undoubtedly led you, presumably a music fan, to make a career writing bitterly hateful music reviews."

And they're off! Ott and Ellis fire a few more salvos at each other; fans shoot off at Ott; non-fans give an old-fashioned "right on!"; fans and non-fans get into it ... it finally culminates in a lengthy comment from kingpidge that starts off with the pithy statement "Chris Ott is killing music."

Ahh, indie music fandom. Don't ever change, you egomaniacal wanky little bastards.

(Full disclosure: I love the Decemberists, but even as a fan, I do admit that they can get pretty damn precious sometimes.)

10:08am: Ancient FFX yuri wank
It all started with a Lulu/Rikku fic in which Rikku's brother was an evil rapist. In a nutshell:

YuriElf: NEW CHAPTER OMG!
Fans: Yay that was great!
VoidStar: I don't like that you used the rape plot device, you should rethink it.
YE: OMG I'M NEVER WRITING AGAIN I'M SO SORRY ;_;
VS: Chill out, it's just a little concrit!
YE: I CAN HANDLE CONCRIT BUT YOURS WAS JUST MEAN!
VS: Just don't make the brother into a rapist.
YE: But I HAD to!
Fans: OMG HOW DARE U!!! It's okay YE we love you *hugs and cuddles*
Other guy: He was just giving his nice clear opinion, pipe down.
Fans: RAWR!!!!
VS: *siiiiiiigh*
YE: *wibbles and acts generally helpless*
Fans: *coddle*
SaraJaye: Can't we all just get along?

The first chapter post, in which Andy00 criticizes the fic and YuriElf pulls out the OMG BAD PAST card.

5:53pm: Top Gear and the Wankmonster
Moved from clairvoyantwank:

Once upon a Sunday night the happy, caravan-tormenting, BBC motoring programme Top Gear screened a US road trip special.

The road trip's premise was to send the three presenters to Miami, let them each buy a car with their individual budgets of $1000 and have them drive their cars to New Orleans, while completing challenges along the way. The result was a pre-packaged internet flamewar ready to go with the show's challenges covering cooking with roadkill and the presenters attempting to drive through the state of Alabama with slogans painted on the side of their cars.

Not content with the internet short-out this would cause, they then sprinkle the show heavily with references to Hurricane Katrina and a little mock celebrity altruism when the presenters decide to give their battered cars to the 'Needy and Poor' of New Orleans.

The wank begins in Final Gear's forums in the Episode Discussion thread and rapidly travels around the internet.

( Katrina, Albanians/Alabamians, Blame Socialism, stalking petrol stations through Google Earth and a very dead cow being flipped off the roof of a Camaro )

Now Metafilter have got hold of the slogans-on-cars segment (link courtesy of grapefruitzzz) and are churning out more of the same.

By comparison the dead cow related musings on TopGearTotty and the TG IMDB message board are tame. As are the 91 official complaints the broadcast itself received.

If they do this again next week, there's going to be no internet left for HP fandom.

ETA: There's no wank like wanking to a brick wall. The spooge hits the official weblogs of Andy Wilman (Exec. Producer) and James May.

( Snippets )

The best bit?

"Whatever happens, I will as usual be logging onto our mates at Final Gear on Monday for a masochistic kicking." - Andy Wilman

"And that seemed like a fair comment. I like a sense of history as much as anyone. But then something else occured to me.

I've never met anyone in Europe wearing a swastika T-shirt. " - James May

This lot really do want to break the internet.