sorchar
2004-01-21 10:37 am UTC (link)

They posted a journal belonging to a friend of mine as Awful Link of the Day a while back. It was actually a sort of sock puppet journal where she posted as her pet rabbit. She was pretty upset by it, mostly because a lot of people trolled the journal.

I'm of the mindset that they can point and laugh all they want, but when they encourage people to troll actively, it's annoying. Kind of like F_W's official (well, as official as anything gets with F_W) position on the subject: mock here, but don't go harass over there. I don't really care what they think of Blogs and the Wo/Men Who Love Them, personally.

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rann
2004-01-21 10:43 am UTC (link)

I'm of the mindset that they can point and laugh all they want, but when they encourage people to troll actively, it's annoying.

Right. Like I said in my comment, if they were just in it for "teh funny", as most of SA's fans I've seen seem to say they are, IE, "Oh, you can't take it seriously, they don't mean it", they'd blur out the names of the journals and stuff to keep the trolling down.

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	Re: sorchar 2004-01-21 10:54 am UTC (link)
	I've seen a lot of their Awful Links of the Day, and they actively encourage trolling in guestbooks, journals, etc. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: rann 2004-01-21 10:57 am UTC (link)
	Yup. See, to me, that says they are not about "teh funny", they are about "teh mean". (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sorchar 2004-01-21 11:31 am UTC (link)
	Or teh_sad and lame. Of course, people have accused F_W of all of those things many times, but at least we keep our meansadlame in one easily-avoidable place. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: rann 2004-01-21 11:33 am UTC (link)
	Plus, we're just a community, who doesn't tend to go out of our way to get ourselves publicized and such. Doesn't SA -advertise-? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: sorchar 2004-01-21 11:35 am UTC (link)
	I dunno if they do or not - wouldn't be surprised. Like I posted below, some of their stuff is pretty amusing. Much of it, however, is not. This whole mess would fall into the latter category. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sagralisse 2004-01-21 05:32 pm UTC (link)
	at least we keep our meansadlame in one easily-avoidable place. Or most of the time anyway. (Reply to this)(Parent)

virago
2004-01-21 02:58 pm UTC (link)

My impression (at least when I read it with any regularity, which I've forgotten to do lately) is that their writers are funny often enough to be worth it, but many of their fans are cretins. Unless there's a joke behind their attitude of "we know you idiots are going to flame, so just get it over with" that I'm not getting. Of course, they do encourage flaming, which is irritating.

Then again, there is that tone of "ahaha you're a [targetgroupoftheweek], you're dumb and you smell bad!" that's neither funny nor original, so it's not like they actually give a damn about courtesy by not trolling the people's sites - but now I'm getting wanky.

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	sagralisse 2004-01-21 05:35 pm UTC (link)
	That's the trouble with any humor community... a lot of people show up and want to be funny but just suck at it. I can't help but wonder if encouraging trolling is SA's way of yelling "You kids are driving me insane! Go OUTSIDE and play!" (Reply to this)(Parent)

	calluna 2004-01-21 10:39 pm UTC (link)
	Gah, I remember hearing about when Animated Lust got targeted. Apparently the reviewer read the site name and his brain shut down. (OMG it's called "lust" so it must be sexual, right?!!!1) And then the army of trolls attacked. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ruaki 2004-01-22 03:31 am UTC (link)
	x.x Ugh, yesh, that's what I dislike about SA... I lurk in Portal of Evil on and off (namely the news forums) when it's slow at F_W, and at least they have a Prime Directive (that more or less gets followed by the Old-PoErs) which says you point, you laugh, but you don't stick your hands in it. Cause then Teh Funneh usually disappears, and ruins it for everyone else. (Reply to this)(Parent)

rann
2004-01-21 10:41 am UTC (link)

Hm. I can see why some might be upset with the article, since to me it seemed to just barely be bothering to make the attempt at humor... most of the comments seemed to boil down to "This person sucks. I am l33t, for I laugh at them." ... Except not quite THAT witty. c.c
(Plus, commenting above what you're commenting on? Easily more annoying than top-posting in email.)
The yiff community post you linked to didn't seem to be taking it that bad... they weren't killing themselves to show that they thought it was funny and they weren't offended at all, and the "I'll just kill myself now" didn't seem to be serious. The other one does seem to be getting fairly pissed off, but again, I don't think there was anything that funny about the SA article, so maybe they have a right to be pissed. (I'm not taking the SA article seriously, but I don't have that hard a time believing that one or more people included in it may have had personal axe to grind with some of the featured journals/communities.)
I feel kinda bad for Semiblonde, because even if they were just doing it as a joke, SA basically set her up to get those trolls. I think if they'd really wanted to keep it in the realm of joking, they would have blurred out the names of the journals they were posting.
So, dunno if that's what you were aiming for, but I'd say 99% of the wank here is on Something Awful.

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	ladybirdsleeps 2004-01-21 10:50 am UTC (link)
	I'm disappointed that darkramblings didn't make the cut ... (Reply to this)

	wolfsamurai 2004-01-21 11:02 am UTC (link)
	Good old SA. The only place around that generates as much trolling and unfunny crap as LJDrama, if not more. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	sorchar 2004-01-21 11:32 am UTC (link)
	The Photoshop contests and movie and game reviews can be pretty amusing, at times. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ieatpeople 2004-01-21 12:14 pm UTC (link)
	They've gone really downhill of late, though. I used to check religiously every Tuesday and Friday, but the best thing that's come out of them recently has been their treatment of The Medieval Tapestry Generator. Intellectualize Rap is one that I revisit every few months. I laugh my ass off every time. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	"Greetings to she who provided you with your necessary x chromosome." yadda 2004-01-21 02:00 pm UTC (link)
	That Intellectualize Rap is a most fantastic creative acheivement. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sagralisse 2004-01-21 05:13 pm UTC (link)
	Ooooh. The SA tapestries are nice! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	phosfate 2004-01-21 03:34 pm UTC (link)
	Some of those screencaps appear to be of locked posts. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Locked Posts deoridhe 2004-01-21 04:08 pm UTC (link)
	That's what's disturbing me a bit... I mean, it's one thing to laugh at people's public things, but entirely another to go into locked posts to drag out embarrassing stuff. The latter is simply tacky, not to mention rude! Filters are there for a reason! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Locked Posts thebratqueen 2004-01-21 05:29 pm UTC (link)
	Plus it gives lie to their claim not to have an LJ, since you'd both need one to be added to people's filters and one presumes they wouldn't be added to the filters of all those people if they only created a journal for the purpose of taking those screenshots. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Locked Posts sagralisse 2004-01-21 05:38 pm UTC (link)
	A search through the "friends of" lists could turn one or more of the offending parties. Is anybody feeling particularly stalky today? (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Locked Posts

mpoetess
2004-01-21 08:48 pm UTC (link)

Looking through the linked LJs here, it looks like some of the "victims" of the article were ex-friends of the author. One of them suggested that he probably viewed their posts through a mutual friend's account.

OTOH, yet another reason for people not to habitually friend back everybody who friends them, as I imagine somebody trolling for locked posts to display in the open like this could garner quite a few just by making a dummy LJ, filling it with a few random innocuous posts, then friending a gazillion people.

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Re: Locked Posts

virago
2004-01-21 06:28 pm UTC (link)

>>That's what's disturbing me a bit... I mean, it's one thing to laugh at people's public things, but entirely another to go into locked posts to drag out embarrassing stuff. The latter is simply tacky, not to mention rude! Filters are there for a reason!>>

That would necessitate that they see these people as human, and not just pond scum to be laughed at.

Yeah, I like mocking people's stupid behavior as much as anyone, but something about this goes over the line. Not to mention that they hardly even mock, just posting up screenshots like it's the funniest thing in the world. Maybe furries and anime fiends still shock them OMG THEY'RE SO WEIRD OMG. Tame. Welcome to the internet, kids.

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	Re: Locked Posts wakkymse 2004-01-22 08:55 am UTC (link)
	I'm honestly wondering if SA could be sued or punished for that, if anything worse than a few goons posting silly messages came of it anyway...but I'm in a sour mood tonihgt, so I'm feeling meaner than usual. :/ -lee (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Locked Posts virago 2004-01-22 03:00 pm UTC (link)
	Maybe, but it has a whiff of overreacting, and honestly it's just more fuel for the fire. Wouldn't change the fact that the article was unfunny, either. (Although I did struggle not to laugh at the Intellectualize Rap thing.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Locked Posts wakkymse 2004-01-22 05:19 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, the article was a lot more entertaining if you ignored the mean-spirited "OMFG LJ R FAGORT!!!11!! LOL" comments and just looked at the journals. I still don't approve of them using locked posts for the feature, but some of the featured posts were honestly pretty lame. We're still better than them, though. ^_^ -lee (Reply to this)(Parent)

	feenix 2004-01-21 03:57 pm UTC (link)
	This is what I don't like about SA. Not only is it vitriolic, it's also...well...unfunny. The Weekend Web Updates are the most unfunny pile of crap I've ever seen. Plus, the way they're an "attack site" is also off-putting. The Gay Boat is not impressed. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	sagralisse 2004-01-21 06:47 pm UTC (link)
	Is the Gay Boat anything like Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boatride? (Reply to this)(Parent)

	backfromspace 2004-01-22 02:09 am UTC (link)
	Seanbaby, on the other hand, is a work of art. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	psychofangirl 2004-01-21 10:13 pm UTC (link)
	The only thing that bothers me is that some of those journal posts were protected entries. That couldn't have come from random.bml. (Reply to this)

iczer6
2004-01-22 01:42 am UTC (link)

Problem with humor like this is that it's often very hit-or-miss.

Some of those journals truly are mockworthy, [such as the person posting about how they can take as many muscle relaxents as they want] and some seem to be there simply because the author seems to have a grudge against that particular group. [Like semiblond who's main crime seemed to be squeeing about anime, or another poster who was bitching about a medical problem in a locked entry.]

I think there's more than enough shitty LJs out there to keep the SA fans happy but this just seems to cross the line IMO.

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