Originally Posted by
MikeAurelius
I ran across this today, thought we might have some fun with it.
1. The FIRST! Guy
Maybe we should have saved this character for last, but our first offender is the FIRST! Guy--the mental marsupial whose contribution to the great discussions of our online times is to post the first response to any given topic, consisting of the comment "FIRST!" Clever? No. Original? No. Ironically self-mocking in a postmodern deconstructionist kind of way? Uh, no. Puerile? Now you're getting close. And yet there seem to be multiple FIRST! Guy clones lurking around every forum, ready to share a very important message. Here's hoping that all of these Net nuisances find another source of personal pride by their 15th birthday.
2. The Self-Promoter
The Self-Promoter is a message board classic: This bore meanders across the Web, leaving thinly disguised comments designed to pimp his own project. Sometimes, he'll take a stab at making the promotion look incidental: "Man, that new iPhone software does look rad! You should check out my blog about Windows Mobile here!" But just as often, he'll ditch the preamble and launch straight into the link without even trying to tie it to the subject at hand.
3. The Sermonator
A close relative to the Self-Promoter, the Sermonator trolls various comment forums to find some way to divert the conversation to his favorite subject--most often something related to morals, religion, or a particular political view.
4. Mr. Credentials
Mr. Credentials likes to cite his authorities by the bushel--quoting them at length, and often adding further excerpts detailing his authorities' authorities. In fact, his messages are frequently more heavily weighted toward text from famous figures, user manuals, or Wikipedia entries than toward his own original thoughts or opinions.
5. The Antagonizer
Comment forums are made for divergent viewpoints and intelligent, spirited debate. The Antagonizer, though, takes things to another, more primitive level, resorting to personal attacks and insults in what may be a nostalgic flashback to carefree bygone days as a third-grade bully.
6. The Moderator
Taking a slightly subtler approach to making visitors feel unwelcome, the Moderator maintains an air of superiority as he bunkers down each day on a particular site's comment section or message board for another 16-hour stint as archivist-in-residence. He's the cool kid--the site vet who's been around for a long time and knows what's what. Leave a message that repeats something someone else said 16 months ago, and he'll let you know about it within minutes. To keep each discussion safe and pure, he will treat any commenter who has fewer than 200 messages to his name as an undocumented invader who doesn't deserve a spot on his beloved forum. All of this, we assume, from the comfort of his parents' basement.
7. Peacekeeper
Another long-standing character common to forums is the Peacekeeper. This guy has been a regular at a particular site as long as the proprietor, but his goal as a participant has somehow devolved from saying something interesting to keeping the peace--and he has no problem peppering every thread with his efforts to intervene as Mr. Manners.
8. Smarty Pants
If the Peacekeeper is on a search-and-destroy mission against offensive content, the Smarty Pants' goal is to find and expose inaccuracies--no matter how insignificant--solely as a means to demonstrate his intellectual superiority. A Smarty Pants constantly runs a fine-toothed comb through both a site's original articles and its comments in search of nits to pick: factual errors, grammatical errors, typos--it doesn't matter.
9. Fanboy
The Fanboy defends a particular product under any circumstances, no matter what the scenario. He is fervently aware that the Ford Pinto was an excellent car as long you avoided rear-end collisions in it.
10. The Conspiracy Theorist
This edgy fellow detects conspiracies (or the shadows of conspiracies) in everything he reads, and he has no compunction about publicly sharing his off-kilter su****ions. The Conspiracy Theorist is often convinced that he's under constant surveillance by the government--for some reason they've singled him out (and even more mysteriously, they haven't bothered to terminate him yet, despite his constant blabbing)--and he sees signs of schemes in the strangest places.
11. The Signature Dork
The Signature Dork appends a 14-line signature to the bottom of each of his posts to the forum or comments section. The boilerplate often consists of the dork's name and titles, followed by a (lengthy) quotable quote, system specs, possibly a grocery list, more quotes (usually from Einstein or Isaac Asimov), followed by a straggling line of crappy-looking, home-made animated GIFs.
12. Johnny One-Word
This character seems to hate everything about the publication whose forum he frequents, and yet he seemingly never misses a chance to read and comment on a story. (He gets his name because of his tendency to express his dismay in comments of a single word: "Lame." "Whatever." "Wrong." "Fail.")
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