Current mood:

Gobsmacked

When cryptozoologists attack!
As most of you probably already know, Snopes is the site to go to online to debunk or confirm various urban legends, forwarded emails, and scams. It's also the home of a very fun message board community, which often reminds me of fandom_wank for it's biting humour and commentary.

On May 11, a link to an article about Bigfoot was posted on the community. (I'm sorry, I can't even paraphrase the article, as it is banned in China.)

For 8 days, the only comment on this link was someone saying that they knew all along that the bigfoot video was a hoax.

Then...

JonErikBeckjordMBA joins the community, just to tell Barbara that she can't possibly have an opinion, because she isn't an expert like he is.

The snopesers are quick to tell him to stop being an idiot.

He's followed by Inrepair, who tells everyone upfront he only joined the community to defend those who believe in Bigfoot.

AnotherPullTab comes along to defend the honour of Bigfoot researchers and to assure everyone that they aren't all like JonErikBeckjordMBA, who is obviously insane, according to AnotherPullTab.

Turns out that The Bigfoot Forums, seeing the original post, called for people to sign up for the snopes forums. You can read the forums without an account, but to get an account, you must be approved by Snopes. InRepair called for people to join the forums and explain The Truth to that silly Barbara for insisting she knew the video of Bigfoot was a fake all along.

JonEricwhatever comes back to quote an entire message for no reason, then follow it up with a post where he insists he will educate the foolish.

He also starts bashing his own groups, insisting that newbies to the bigfoot community have no right to an opinion. He calls them "pizza-boys and bums". He's quick to insult AnotherPullTab's opinions and handle. Of course, he also thinks that Bigfoot is an alien or an angel or something. I was quite lost when he started telling everyone that Bigfoot spoke to him.

JonEricwhatever makes repeated back to back posts. The first one is always a direct quote of another poster, with no comment from him. He puts his comments in the next post. Which is... strange.

I think my favorite post by Johntoolongofaname is this one:

YOU DO NOT PAY ME ANY CASH TO LOOK AT THESE
PHOTOS. Comprendo? Nobody pays me anything for my
website nor the BANDWITH CHARGES I INCUR.
Got it?
I put TIFF images up, ARE YOU GONNA PAY ME FOR THAT?

Real researchers can visit me and see the images in Kodak prints or slides and some
do this.

Hey Swollen -- how about you send me

$2,000 via paypal.com ??? OK?

Send cash. rudy@stealthaccess.net

(God,the net is full of d*rks !)

--------------------
"Nothing bugs me more than people
who think they know it all, when of course it is only I that know it all."

Although AnglRdr's response really makes it:

*sigh*

Indeed.

Apparently Erictoolongofanametobotherwith has been a troll in the side of the bigfoot community for a while, according to AnotherPullTab:

The "unmentioned one" is none other than Mr. Beckjord..its kind of a running joke, a talisman if you will, to keep him away LOL!

To which he responds (all typing errors his own):

JB-- I am banned from ALL sites run by idiots and newbies. They can';t take any logic and cannot take being told they don;t know much.

Being banned means you pissed off ONE guy, who runs it. Like, "so what?" It is like being barred from the idiots club

See, they have their very own she-who-must-not-be-named! Except, you know, as a guy.

Iraq gets brought up. Why? I don't know. So do the Hitler diaries, Dungeons and Dragons, altered photos (my message is pastede on yay!), a betting pool/death watch on our man Ericwhatever, and the ALL CAPS of rage. Oh, and cookies.

The whole thing ends with Jonwhateveryouwanttocallhim bravely announcing that he's leaving, forever, because everyone is too stupid to understand him.

Hi folks, and kiddies:

With due resp[ect to Barns and Bull,' The guy who was nicely stringing him along the whole time. Those posts are beautiful, do check them out.

(thanks) I think I will mosey on and go trash other boards, since the idiot element is growing here. It has been fun.

Best to all,

Bye..

Jon-Erik

Of course, the entire thread of people just saying "Look, go away" in various ways is kinda fun, too.

Edited: Because I can't close html tags, nor can I spell.

(Post a new comment)

	rogue 2004-05-23 06:37 pm UTC (link)
	I love that the dancing "Bigfoot" gif on that guy's page is actually a character from a video game. (Reply to this)

	marginalsanity 2004-05-23 06:51 pm UTC (link)
	Anyone who posts THIS on their site I just cannot take seriously. I mean... really. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	amasaglajax 2004-05-23 09:28 pm UTC (link)
	Ohmigod! I want that iconized. Like now. has a collection of dancing icons (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: marginalsanity 2004-05-23 10:14 pm UTC (link)
	giggle Take and icon! Do eet. DO EET. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	marginalsanity 2004-05-23 10:19 pm UTC (link)
	Eh, it doesn't say anything. But it dances. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	amasaglajax 2004-05-23 10:26 pm UTC (link)
	DANCING YETI! cries The beauty, it OVERWHELMS. Sankyuu~~~ steals (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: marginalsanity 2004-05-23 10:30 pm UTC (link)
	Steal away! I spent all of a minute making it, so I'm sure it could get better by someone else. :P (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	elkins 2004-05-24 10:03 pm UTC (link)
	It's beautiful! But where is the Baby Head? The Baboon Extra Head? And where is the Coke Bottle, for God's sake? (Reply to this)(Parent)

	cleolinda 2004-05-23 06:53 pm UTC (link)
	JonErik guy: Barb: you do not have the right to even hold an opinion on Bigfoot unless you do field research on it, as I do at http://www.bigfoot.org His signature:"Nothing bugs me more than people who think they know it all, when of course it is only I that know it all." Yeah... I think that's the whole thing in a nutshell, right there. (Reply to this)

	sarajayechan 2004-05-23 08:58 pm UTC (link)
	snickers Snopes wank...why does this amuse me and NOT surprise me at all? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	smo 2004-05-24 04:54 pm UTC (link)
	Your icon... is that YamiBou? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sarajayechan 2004-05-24 05:32 pm UTC (link)
	...Come to think of it, it DOES look like Hatsuki and Hatsumi. O_o; But I dunno for sure if it is them. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	khym_chanur 2004-05-24 03:38 am UTC (link)
	(I'm sorry, I can't even paraphrase the article, as it is banned in China.) Huh? Talking about Bigfoot is illegal in China? Or Snope.com is banned? Or The Charlotte Observer online? If we wank the Chinese ruling government, will they ban JournalFen? ahem TAIWAN IS SO A DIFFERENT COUNTRY FROM CHINA!!1!!1! LOL OMG WTF!1!one (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re:

notjo
2004-05-24 04:12 am UTC (link)

*laugh*

Depends upon the paper, but a lot of them are banned in China. Not all of them, and there are ways around it if you feel like going to some effort.

Slashdot was banned because they mentioned the Blog Blackout, and that China has banned blogger, typepad, and several other free servers. But once that article fell off their main page, Slashdot was unbanned.

Blogspot was unbanned for about a week, I think. Maybe less. Then it was banned again.

Google's been banned before, but never for very long. So has MSN/Hotmail.

The Cartoon Network is banned, IIRC. Why? "They know what they did", according to the government.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

khym_chanur
2004-05-24 05:14 am UTC (link)

Slashdot was banned because they mentioned the Blog Blackout, and that China has banned blogger, typepad, and several other free servers. But once that article fell off their main page, Slashdot was unbanned.

Whoah. So not only does China practice censorship, they try to prevent their citizens from being aware of said censorship?

The Cartoon Network is banned, IIRC. Why? "They know what they did", according to the government.

Bwuh. If governments were fangirls, China would come into F_W, throw the mother of all hissy fits (without saying why she's throwing a hissy fit), try to get F_W TOSed, threaten to sue Zorro when she didn't, delete the evidence of her wanks, and then get an army of sockpuppets to come defend her.

Getting even more offtopic, have any F_W reportees threatened to sue Zorro for not TOSing F_W? Or complain to her ISP's upstream provider? And complain to their upstream provider when they didn't give a flying fuck? You know, I hope someone does that, and then goes the extra mile by writing to their Congresional represantive and saying places like F_W ought to be banned.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re:

notjo
2004-05-24 05:57 am UTC (link)

Every week I wait for www.livinginchina.com to be banned. It was for a few hours after the Taiwan elections, until it edited its reporting to refer to the "so-called" President, or some such.

When you get right down to it, it's kinda scary. I mean, not only is it someone's entire job to censor the internet over here, they use technology that Microsoft and other big American companies designed to do it with.

There was a webpage for a while hosted in the states that was monitoring what sites were banned in China. Which is now not only banned in China, but the software that allows the ban was modified so that this webpage could no longer tell what was banned.

And the thing is, if you don't know about the ban, it's easy to ignore. What's another 404 error on the internet, right? It's not like it flashes "banned, puny mortal* or something.

...

But yeah, China would so be into deleting evidence of wank.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	nevadafighter 2004-05-24 06:01 am UTC (link)
	JonErikBeckjordMBA joins the community, just to tell Barbara that she can't possibly have an opinion, because she isn't an expert like he is. Yes, because we all know a master's in business administration makes him the best qualified to determine whether Bigfoot is a myth or not. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: notjo 2004-05-24 06:23 am UTC (link)
	Is that what MBA stands for? Well, that clears up everything. He's totally legit now. grin (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	nevadafighter 2004-05-24 06:30 am UTC (link)
	Yep. I only know because the MBA students are always coming to the writing center on campus where I work with their papers . . . business majors can't seem to write. (Not all, just a good many, it seems.) (Reply to this)(Parent)