I have been a member of Pyramid Online since the beginning, and a regular participant on the Pyramid message boards (especially *.chatter). Naturally, even though Pyramid is a paid service, we do still have flamewars, and the occasional drive-by trolling, though it's not remotely as bad as Usenet, or any free, unmoderated web message board.
This page is where I get to label and make fun of the most egregious violators of online decency. It is completely biased and subjective, based on nothing more than my personal opinion. Don't like it? Put up your own page on your own website.
Let me define my terms first, because as anyone who's been on Pyramid for a while knows, I can be a pretty belligerent person myself, and thus more than one person has called me a troll, or otherwise claimed I am beyond the pale. And lest anyone who's been on the opposite side of an argument from me think that I'm going to put you on this page just because we got into a flamewar, I want to be clear that I reserve the "troll" and "wingnut" labels only for the worst of the worst, the people whom I think are Truly Bad . . . not just obnoxious, stupid, or wrong. You have to piss off a lot of people besides me to be labeled a troll.
If you think I'm being unfair, and would like me to reconsider someone's designation (or if you want to add someone to the list), feel free to e-mail me (flames will be deleted without a response), but don't expect me to change what I've posted just because you don't like it.
One of my personal peeves is overuse of the term "troll". Some people call anyone who posts a flame a troll. To them, "troll" basically means "someone who posts things I don't like." Being a troll requires more than just being occasionally obnoxious or belligerent, or having a hot temper, or being less than nice to people who annoy you (all of which describe me...). These things can indicate a troll, but at least IMO, trolls are an order of magnitude more malicious than someone who's just a loudmouthed flamer.
In common Usenet parlance, a "troll" is someone who posts messages purely to get a reaction, and often posts things he doesn't even necessarily believe (for example, sending Satanic messages to a Christian mailing list), just to stir up trouble and laugh at the responses. Sometimes they really do believe the things they're saying, but they deliberately choose their words for maximum offensive value and inflammatory effect; they aren't really trying to argue a position, they're just dropping their pants and shitting in the middle of the room, then throwing poo at anyone who complains about the stink. These people are low, and they like hurting feelings and upsetting others. A troll essentially believes, in the words of Troll #1, that people online are not real, and that when you say nasty, hurtful things to someone on the Internet, it's not like saying them in real life because you're just playing a game with electrons. These are people who come online to unleash their Inner Asshole, and they're evil.
Here are the people who have earned my designation of "troll":
Now infamous on Pyramid as "He Who Must Not Be Named," S. John Ross was the first real troll on Pyramid, and also the first person ever to be kicked off. More's the pity, since he was a former Pyramid editor and SJG writer. What prompted "the great SJR flameout" was the cancellation of Ross's contract to write GURPS Black Magic. He claimed it was out of personal spite on the part of SJG staffers who didn't like him, particularly Gene Seabolt. Information from within SJG suggests it was because he simply had not produced anything by the deadline, and refused to meet with his editor and discuss what had been completed.
Whatever the cause, S. John proceeded to start posting flames on the Pyramid message boards. They began as mere belligerent whining about his ill treatment, but as people started complaining about his behavior, and it became clear that not everyone was going to take his side (SJR was and is a very popular gaming author, and seemingly did expect that his complaints would cause his "fans" to turn on SJG), he began turning his wrath on anyone who disagreed with him, and finally on anyone who responded to him at all. He called Pyramidians a bunch of dweebs and losers, said that anyone who enjoyed things he didn't enjoy (ranging from mathematics to -- now that SJG was the enemy -- GURPS) was a worthless geek and non-person, and escalated the insults until his posts were nothing but an endless series of trolls, calling people "stupid asshole" and other names, and responding even to polite requests to desist with more diatribes.
He admitted that it was his explicit intent to disrupt the message boards and do as much damage to SJG as possible. After several days of this, the SJG webmaster (Kira at the time) finally cancelled his account. S. John took this as a victory, crowing to Usenet, the GURPS mailing list, and elsewhere that he had "proven" Kira was a "traitor" and that he'd "won."
Contrary to his expectations, Pyramid went on pretty much as usual after S. John was gone, but to this day, his statements that people online weren't "real" is often cited as the definitive behavior of a troll.
Pinksplice started out with rants that "fanboys" were destroying gaming. Eventually he claimed to quit gaming forever when his theory about what was wrong with gaming was not instantly embraced. His rants resembled those of Troll #1 a great deal (he called GURPS players "number-crunching geeks"), and some people speculated that he was actually SJR under an alias. Finally, there was a flameout in which someone tracked down his real name (publically posted under his Yahoo! profile) and revealed it on .chatter. PinkSplice became furious, as he said he wanted to remain anonymous, and there was great controversy among the rest of .chatter's denizens over whether or not he should have been "outed" (or whether or not it was "outing" someone to post a name they had posted themselves on a public website.) PinkSplice continued abusing everyone who disagreed with him, but disappeared shortly thereafter.
I'm thinking about removing his entry, since for the past year or more, Alan has been pretty well-behaved. I haven't seen him carry on the way he did when he first appeared. However, his entrance on the boards was a doozy. He claimed to be a friend of Gary Gygax's (or a friend of a friend, or something like that), and went into overdrive when some people made less than complimentary comments about Gygax. In fact, he started calling them names, telling them they were too stupid to criticize Gygax, and otherwise flaming away on the main board, until Pyramid's editor was asking him to take it elsewhere.
Two responses in particular earned him the troll designation: first, when someone asked him to cool it, he replied in a long-winded retort that "when treated politely, I am the soul of courtesy, but cross me or my friends, and you will discover that I am worse than any demon from hell!" (A common characteristic of trolls is their apparent belief that typing belligerent prose makes them fearsome badasses; see troll #6 for more on this theme.)
Secondly, when I ended up arguing with him on .chatter (still over Gygax), he started twisting my words and insulting me for things I never said. (For example, Kellog claimed that those who complained about Gygax's wordy, pompous prose were "too dim to understand him." I replied that I understood what Gygax wrote just fine; I just didn't like his style, and Kellog's next reply to me accused me of claiming that I "had a larger vocabulary than Gary Gygax and knew everything that he did and more," and then demanded I prove it.) After he did this to everyone who argued with him, I declared that I wasn't going to waste any more time responding to him; his parting shot was a long screed declaring that "everyone could see that I was too stupid to continue the conversation," "thanking" me for "playing his game," "proving" to everyone that I was an idiot, etc., etc., etc.
"chuckg" started out as just another belligerent, opinionated person who liked arguing politics. (Actually, he started out by jumping into an argument over whether a Salon essay by David Brin on the virtues on "Star Trek" vs. "Star Wars" made Brin an evil liar -- chuckg was apparently a Star Wars fan, thought Brin's essay was crap, and started insulting those who agreed with it.)
During the whole '00 election fiasco, chuckg came into his own as a purebred troll. His defining characteristic is the belief that his opinion is Objective Truth. All those who disagreed with him were simply wrong, period, end of story (but not the end of his arguing or insulting people); it wasn't necessary to actually debate the issues because universal laws of reality established that he was right. In this vein, he insulted everyone who argued with him, and started killfiling anyone who pressed him (or loudly proclaimed that he was killfiling them, anyway).
My dealings with him actually extended to the In Nomine mailing list (where he also got into arguments over interpretations of In Nomine canon, declared that other people's adventures were simply Bad because chuckg had thought of a flaw in their reasoning and therefore Objective Reality declared that he was right and they were wrong, and so on and so forth). chuckg was, AFAIK, the first and last person to be suspended from the list (after he "accidentally" posted his "private" flame of someone to the list after the ListAdmin had asked all participants to take their flaming off-list). With regards to me, we got into some argument over something I don't even remember, he declared that I was Wrong, demanded that I stop responding to him, and when I didn't, asked the ListAdmin to make me stop responding to him. He also sent me a four-page diatribe calling me a liar and a fool, at the end of which he declared that I shouldn't bother responding because he was putting me in his killfile so he wouldn't see any more of my posts or any responses to his e-mail (not that I was going to respond anyway).
Shawn, Shawn, Shawn....where to begin? Not the last troll to grace Pyramid, but probably second only to S. John Ross as one of the worst.
First of all, Shawn is the only person to make both the Trolls and the Wingnuts list, as he fully qualifies for both. In the Troll category, Shawn's contributions are just too numerous to detail, but they began with his claiming to be an economist (when pressed for credentials, he never mentioned anything beyond taking a few classes), and thus, in any debate over the economy, or politics, or society, or history, or...well, anything, his being an economist meant anyone who disagreed with him automatically lost. (No, really -- he actually responded to disagreement by stating the other person was wrong, followed by "Point, set, and match -- you lose!", as if he could declare himself the winner of all debates by divine Economical proclaimation.)
A pseudo-libertarian/neo-conservative, Wilson seemed incapable of responding without insults to anyone with a dissenting opinion. He literally claimed that he was the only intelligent person on the boards, that everyone else was a feces-throwing monkey, and went on and on in this vein, with an air of smug superiority that would have been infuriating if it weren't so appallingly evident that he was writing intellectual checks that he couldn't cash. Wilson succeeded in doing what even S. John Ross couldn't -- by the time he was done, I don't think anyone on Pyramid liked him or had the least little bit of respect for him.
For more on Wilson's perversity, check out his wingnut entry, and a list of his "greatest hits."
Where did this guy come from? Seemingly out of the blue; one day he just appeared on the message boards and started insulting people, me in particular. I don't recall ever exchanging a word with him before, but the first thing he ever posted to me was a claim that "Pyramidians have been laughing for years at what you call a brain," and calling me and some other people "trolls." stain appears to be a troll of the worst sort; without provocation or reason, he simply jumps on people and insults them for no apparent purpose except to chortle at the response.
stain favors particularly nasty insults, and has on more than one occasion actually threatened people (including me) with physical violence, inviting them to send him e-mail if they want to "meet" face to face.
Here is one of Mike Strain's posts, which I think pretty much speaks for itself.
As with trolls, the requirements for Wingnut are very strict. :) Just having extreme beliefs, or beliefs I don't like, doesn't make you a wingnut. Wingnuts are people who insist on things that are demonstrably, provably not true, and usually respond to arguments against their position with disbelief, hostility, and willful ignorance.
(Yes, it's theoretically possible that a "wingnut" might actually be right. This isn't a page discussing the nature of proof or philosophical evidence. Sorry, if you argue that the Earth is flat, or AIDS doesn't exist, you're a wingnut.)
Here is the official "Wingnuts" list:
Arthur Samuels is a hard-core libertarian (the type who describes all those people not sharing his political beliefs as "sheeple"), bordering on an anarchist. Besides whining about how "armed men are dedicated to preventing me from having an orgasm" (Arthur-speak for "prostitution is illegal"), which seems to be a major concern of his given his half-condescending, half-bitter description of women, his qualifying wingnutitude includes:
Fisher, whose tagline is "Soldier. Patriot. Christian", is a right-wing fundamentalist Christian of the "all non-believers will burn in hell" variety. But that is not what makes him a wingnut. What earned him the wingnut label was his seeing liberal bogey-monsters under his bed. Everything bad in the U.S. (and the world) is because of liberalism. America "used to be a pretty good country, but the liberals ruined it." He accuses everyone who disagrees with his politics or religion of being an unthinking liberal whiner who wants to tear down society. When claiming that Christian belief requires adherence to the exclusive salvation doctrine, he was directed to a number of websites publishing the official positions of numerous mainstream churches which specifically deny exclusive salvation. His response was to flatly deny that they said what they said, and even to selectively excerpt statements that seemed to support his position, until he was caught by someone who noticed that he had ignored the very next paragraph, which explicitly contradicted his claim.
Shawn's response was to leave .chatter and not post there anymore, but he continues to call .chatter ".hate" (because they all hate Christians and patriots, don'cha know...)
One of the most annoying and persistent trolls ever, Doogie is yet another pseudo-conservative who entered the boards spewing a lot of rhetoric about American "socialism," but his particular gripe was the low pay that military service people receive. He claimed that as a sailor, he had been required to donate a sizeable percentage of his paycheck to charities that the Navy had chosen, as well as pay for uniforms, room and board. All those who were also in the military (including myself) know of course that this is bullshit.
Note: Technically, Doogie is a troll too, but hasn't officially been labeled one. Initially he appeared to actually believe the nonsense he was spouting. Lately, he's been blatantly trolling, posting nonsense which he's admitted is only for his own amusement. However, I don't feel like further cluttering the trolls list and bestowing on him an "honor" that he'd probably enjoy. Hence, Doogie remains merely a wingnut. Who says my classification system has to be entirely consistent?
Continuing to complain about government inefficiency, he claimed that clerks (GS-4s) made $60,000+ per year. This was refuted by public records showing government civilian payscales, to which he responded that we were stupid for relying on "some web page" (instead of him...).
What sealed Doogie's reputation as a troll was when he started posting random right-wing bromides. At first we thought he was just another ranter, until it was discovered that he was simply copying these screeds from various other websites and posting them in *.chatter without attribution.
Since then, he has continued his random, almost autistic posting of screeds irrelevant to anything being discussed, while laughing at people who complain about his behavior. He also occasionally lashes out at his detractors by calling them "socialists," or blaming them for America's "weakness" which led to 9/11.
Absolutely the most dire wingnut we've yet seen, and Wilson also has the distinction of being a troll as well. Besides being an obnoxious, insulting troll, Wilson is a libertoid ("the space program is an evil theft of my money") who believes that being a self-proclaimed Economist makes him an expert on all subjects, and he has stated repeatedly that he is smarter than anyone else and that everyone who disagrees with him is stupid and uneducated.
What pushed him way over the top into wingnut territory, however, is his position on Israel. Now, you can be for or against Israel without being a wingnut. You can even be vehemently for or against Isreal.
Shawn Wilson believes that Israel, and each and every Israeli, is an embodiment of evil on the scale of Nazi Germany, which must be destroyed. With regards to the Palestinian issue, his stance is that the only legitimate "compromise" is that the Palestinians allow the Israelis to depart with their lives, leaving for some other country and turning over the entire nation of Israel to them. (He also foresees it as inevitable that the Palestinians will destroy Israel in 50 years due to superior population growth.) Palestinian terrorism is acceptable, and all Israeli civilian casualties are legitimate acts of war by an oppressed population.
(Yes, I realize that this is also the Palestinian/Arab position. They're wingnuts too.)
Leo is the first "out" racist on Pyramid. He is a believer in Charles Murray's Bell Curve, which claims that blacks are genetically intellectually inferior, complains about civil rights laws making it illegal to keep undesirable races out of one's business or community, and while maintaining an extremist stance on immigration in general, he has made it clear that his particular concern is allowing brown people into the country. White and Asian immigrants do not vex him as African, Arab, and Muslim immigrants do. Muslims in particular vex him, for reasons that become apparent when he praises Michelle Malkin, author of the hideously revisionist "In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror", as someone deserving of the Congressional Medal of Freedom.
Leo eschews the labels "racist" and "white supremacist," but uses all the familiar pat phrases of that ilk: "Why can blacks be concerned about their own people, but I can't be concerned about the well-being of my own people?" He argues that Europe, and in particular Ireland, should be kept whites-only to prevent further decline in the fabric of Western civilization.
Besides his racist views, Leo is also a reactionary with libertoid tendencies and a terribly revisionist view of history. He labels liberals whose opinions he dislikes (notably Michael Moore) as traitors who hate America and deliberately help America's enemies. He is a reliable mouthpiece for propagating every Republican talking point that questions the patriotism of Democrats, and has insinuated that if John Kerry were elected President, it would be because Americans "gave in to the terrorists."