Omgwtflol (aka Annoying Internet Denizens Pt.5)

You've seen them before. Even on the most literary-based forums with the snootiest posters, they will be there. The one who doesn't contribute jack, and yet somehow has the most posts of anyone on the site. They are not hard to find, because they are in every forum, with a "lol" or "wow". And nothing else. Oh, good for you. You've got 20k posts? You've also typed in 20k words on the site. Isn't that interesting?

Sample:

OP: Hey think about this rather interesting thing. [3 paragraphs of text which are semi-enlightening, probably took an hour or so to type]

theomgwtflol: lolwut? first!

The omgwtflol's can be characterized not only by their one to two word posts, but also the overuse of strange, obscure acronyms, half of which were probably made up on the spot, inability to find their shift key (As opposed to the caps lock rager), completely meaningless posts, and frequent immaturity. At times (in other words, all the time) omgwtflols will fill their posts with acronyms or contractions (and not grammatically correct ones, either) only. Then exclamation mark spam thereafter.

Sample: omg rly???!?!?!??! lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good job. For every keystroke you would have saved yourself by using acronyms and false contractions, you lost in excess punctuation. And that sentence made me sound like a real douche. But still, if your goal was to save yourself time, I don't think you did. If you really wanted to save yourself time (and us, as well) just don't post. Truly lazy people don't go out of the way to say they're lazy; that's too much unneeded effort. So follow the same line of thought, and we'll appreciate you for it. Or rather, hate you less.

Apart from "first"-ing threads, and "omgwtf"-ing everywhere else, what do omgwtflol's do?

--Bump every thread they can.

Do you not understand that there is such a thing as a dead thread? Or that it may have purposefully have been sent to the next page? Oh, yes, of course we should resurrect this thread except for the fact that nobody has posted in it for a year and the original poster was banned for giving links to trojans! If you're that desperate to increase your postcount, make your own thread, lock it to everyone but yourself, make a bot that posts in it, and run the bot. Voila. You get your posts, we stop hating you. Problem(s) solved.

--Make threads as pointless as their posts. Then "first" it, appending a "lol" for irony at the end of their post.

Okay, a link that says "watch this rly fnny vid i found!!!!!!!" linked to "the 100 best lolcatz EVAR!!!!!" is just what I needed, of course. My life would not have been complete without it. And yes, of course I need to see "top 10 sk8bord trikks" or I will die a sad man. Chances are that by the time the omgwtflol dies, they will have linked every youtube video to the forum they lurk in.

--PM Spam

This is potentially the most annoying thing omgwtflol's do. You wake up in the morning, check your inbox, and find over 1k messages. All from the same person. All titled the same, and all containing, "hi!!!!!!"

Yeah, I really laughed at that. Hurr hurr. That was pretty damn genius of you, too.

--Randomly Post "i lost the game lol"

Everywhere. In topics which don't even vaguely mention any sort of activity.

Oh, and yes, you did just lose the game. Live with it.

So, what can we do against this particular case of AIDS?

There is only one option. Nukes.

Oh, if only. But really, here's what you can do:

The Dangerous Solution: "First" every thread before they do (Yes, with a capital 'f'), and spam their inbox until it's full. With any luck they will become bored to the point that they will find a different forum (hopefully one you aren't in) to harass. Beware that you do not become an omgwtflol in the process. To prevent against this, I suggest typing a three-page essay using proper capitalization and no contractions whatsoever, slapping yourself with a cattle prod each time you don't do so for each day you are enacting this solution.

The Douche Solution: Spend ten hours typing a multiple-page PM filled to the brim with hatred attacking them, their family, and their little dog too, send it, then make it public. If it works, they'll never be seen again. If it backfires, you'll be banned. Take one for the team, come on!

The Blogger's Solution: Err, blog about it. That's about it.

The Passive-Aggressive Solution: Figure out the poster's IP, and use that to find their country, city, and home address. Then, write several nice notes asking them to "kindly cease posting inane gibberish on [insert forum name here]", mailing them at one week intervals. Follow this up with notes that sound slightly miffed, growing in anger with each week, (But always ending in, "Thanks, [your name here]") until you finally mail them a paint bomb, and laugh hysterically for an hour after mailing it out. Alternatively, spam their computer with viruses. If you know them in real life, give them the evil eye every day.

To cap off this post, I would like to say that it is only the severest offenders who qualify as omgwtflols. If you happened to lose your shift key after putting your computer in the wash, or happen to agree exactly with the person who posted above you, and can post nothing but "I agree", that's fine. But if your keyboard only has the 'f', 'i', 'r', 's', and 't' keys on it...

Yeah, you're dead.

I would also be severely disappointed if someone doesn't take this rather perfect chance for irony...

All Your Post Are Belong To Me (aka Annoying Internet Denizens Pt.4)

The meme spammer is yet another type of AIDS. (Is that joke getting tired yet?)

The meme spammer can often be found lurking in forums, waiting for the perfect moment to spring up, and shoot their meme gun. If they are successful, someone will succumb to the meme and begin to use it. This is how memes are spread.

But meme spammers are not your run-of-the-mill forumite. Your average forumite will occasionally use a meme to add to the conversation, or to make a witty point. Consider them snipers, or at least, looking down the sights of their meme gun.

Meme spammers are the same sort of people who spray-and-pray in MW2. Except their meme gun will never run out of bullets. And they shoot from the hip. With akimbo meme guns.

Rather than even attempt to reproduce the horror that is a meme spammer, this XKCD comic about gets it right.

So, now that you know how to identify them, how can you counter them?

That's the only reason you're reading this, right?

Well, it's really not too hard. Just like a MW2 sprayer, you can just knife them. With words!

Okay, I've carried this MW2 metaphor for too long. Stopping now. Time to shoot it down like a chopper gunner.

Wait. Shit.

Anyways, once you have identified the meme spammer, as with any case of AIDS, you have several courses of action.

The Troublemaker - Reply to the post before theirs, and as a post-script, add a link to a random youtube video, telling them that their memes are outdated, and that this is the newest one.

The Troll - As above, but instead of a random video, link them to something which will cause them to need mind bleach, and lots of it.

The Apathetic - Ignore their post, and get on with your life. Someone else will handle it eventually. Or not. It doesn't matter, you know.

The Bragger - Out-meme them. How many meme's are necessary? Over 9000.

=) O.o XP (aka Annoying Internet Denizens Pt.3)

An encounter with an emoticon spammer, while only a minor case of AIDS, still should be taken seriously. Not because of possible annoyance to yourself of others, but in the eventuality that you contract the smiley virus.

Before I get to that, I'll provide an example of what an emote-spammer's text might look like.

Sample: Nice job ^.^ I wouldn't be able to do anything comparable to that =p

As you can see, in the text above, this person has become infected with the smiley virus. The smiley virus is highly contagious, and has only one symptom. The overuse of emotes. This will become readily apparent, although it may need to be pointed out by a friend first.

The only cure to the smiley virus is to write ten-page essays each day which you submit to an unforgiving Language Arts teacher who despises smilies. No other solutions work. Tasing, I assure you, only encourages the disease, and incentive for not using smilies only works for short periods of time before the virus adapts itself to find loopholes in the incentive program.

There are no ways to combat this disease if you find it in another. You can either accept it, or avoid the person like the plague. (They do, in fact, bear a non-lethal variation of it) Just make sure you do not catch this virus yourself. (The sample text has been decontaminated, do not worry.) The best way is to quickly read the message, and scroll down the page as quickly as possible.

Or just skip the message and reply with this.

"I am sorry but I am unable to properly respond to your message as you are showing symptoms of the smiley disease. Please decontaminate your next post so that I do not contract the disease upon reading it."

Many will think you strange, but do not worry. The public will see the truth once this emote disease breaks out to adults and the elderly. (So far the disease targets teenagers, preferring the "popular crowd girls" to any other stereotypes due to the large quantities of texts they send) It is akin to the zombie apocalypse....they will laugh that you are amassing birdshot and have over two tons of canned food beneath your house-turned-fortress, but they'll all run to you once the infection breaks out....*mad cackle*

Now, what should you do if you have this disease already?

There are four solutions, going from the most humanitarian first, to the most fun last.

Solution 1 - For The Greater Good - Remove your presence in text completely. Communicate with your friends over the phone, Skype, or face-to-face. Deliver all your classwork and homework orally. Yes, even your math homework (An x-intercept can be too easily turned into an emote). And your music notes. And your twenty-page essays. I don't care if you're the slowest reader in the world and have a memory span of two minutes (yes, you have to memorize your homework, too); you chose this path for yourself....it's not easy to be good, is it?

Solution 2 - Disclaimers - Put disclaimers before and after anything you write. This way, if anyone reads it and gets the disease, it's all their fault.

Solution 3 - Apathy - As the above, but don't bother with disclaimers. If the readers aren't cautious enough, they deserve to be infected. They'd be the first to die in a zombie invasion too.

Solution 4 - Embracement - We are legion. We are one. We are the smiley zombies. Spread the disease and use more emotes than ever. You will be rewarded aptly, with the ire of your friends and strange looks from all others not clued in.

Done. =)

Oh, and you're infected now....

Come and aid me in my fight!

I AM SO ANGRY!!!111!!1 (aka Annoying Internet Denizens Pt.2)

In this post, we look at a minor subset of AIDS (Annoying Internet DenizenS), the caps lock rager.

Caps lock ragers are often characterized by LARGE, OBNOXIOUS, TEXT ALL IN CAPS (AND PROBABLY BOLDED, FOR GOOD MEASURE.), typos, and chains of 1's following exclamation marks, and left out apostrophes.

Sample: OMG I CANT BELIEV YOU BELIEEV THAT YOU IDIOT!!!!!!!11111

While not as major offenders as other groups of AIDS, they do exist. Thus, this post does as well. (And you didn't even have to open a box to see!) These AIDS are mostly overly hormonally charged teens with too much time on their hands, 8-year olds who don't understand that spawn camping is A-OK, or those who are backseat admins.

Hey, just a word to all of you...sound doesn't carry in text. No matter how loudly you bang your keyboard (NO NOT IN THAT WAY!), it won't make your text louder. (It only breaks your keyboard faster.) We don't think you're more outraged when the number of spelling mistakes increases. And strings of 1's are meaningless, unless you're cursing at us in binary.

So, these AIDS are pretty easy get rid of, or at least, combat. Apart from ignoring them - always a viable option - one can defeat them with logic.

Example:

Rager: OMG I ARE CAPS LOCK RAGING ABOUT SOME MINOR UNIMPORTANT ISSUE!!!1!11

You: Why is your text in all caps?

Rager: IT IS AL IN CAPS CUZ IT MAKES MY TEXT LOUDER!!!!!

You: Umm....no it doesn't.

Rager: YES IT DOES AND IT MAKES MY OPINION WORTH MORE!!!111 HA I AM RIGHT!111

You: It only shows that you are either tripping so hard you can no longer differentiate between sight and sound, or that you didn't understand the concept in the first place.

AIDS #2 Subset - Shift key rager

These AIDS are a mutation of the above, in that their pinkies are permanantly stuck on the shift keys, and thus have immense trouble typing periods, commas, question marks, a, q, and z. They manage somehow. I'd like to know how, in case I ever superglue my fingers to the shift keys by accident.

Z0MG R t3h 1337!!11! (aka Annoying Internet Denizens, Pt.1)

Yeah....no.

Before I plunge in, for those of you who have no encountered this internet archetype before, be glad you haven't. The 1337's (Elites), as I shall refer to them from here on in can be easily picked out from a group of forumites or gamers by their distinctive overuse of numbers and exclamation marks, the lack of vowels, and CAPS LOCK RAGING (which I will go into at a different time). There are many other identifiers, but those are the most prominent definers.

Sample: ZOMG!!!!11 DID J00 see me PWN TH@ n00b!?!??! I T0TALLY 0WNT HIM!!!!111

A little piece inside me just died typing that.

1337's often contribute little to forums, chasing "n00bs" away for asking questions, or responding with just "LOLLL!!!!!!" to an ode to someone's recently deceased dog. When faced with rational arguments, or criticism, they spew something along the lines of "LOL n00b!". Note the repetition in their statements. So how should one react to a 1337?

Before going into solutions, we must first go into their psychology. For some reason, 1337's have got it into their heads that having excessive numbers in their posts makes them superior to others.

In which case, wouldn't a post in binary (or base 1, for that matter) be even better than 1337?

I would think so.

On to some possible actions. Note that some of these may be wiser than others.

The Gamer Way: Challenge the offender to a clan war. Then get your ass handed to you while you spew profanity.

The Rational Way: Respond with a post which makes sense to those not acquainted with 1337, followed by a three page essay as to why 1337 should not be used. With MLA'd sources.

The Mod Way: You're an admin. Banhammer....

t3h 1r0n1k w4y LOLZOR!!1!111ONEONE!!: Post in 1337, except, well, ironically.

The 01100101 01101100 01101001 01110100 01100101 Way: Use binary and get on an even higher horse than those 1337s.

The Best Way: Walk away from your computer, shaking your head sadly at what humanity has become.