Slashdot Mirror
Wolfenstein Multiplayer Test 2 Out
Kallahar writes: "Everybody and their pet will report this, but the new Wolf MP test is out! Get it from Blues News (or many mirrors)." This probably would have been a better submission if it had included a download link of some sort.
First Frag!
meow
buwahaha...wolfenstein good..
oh..and a first post of some sort.
The /. troll HOWTO
:)
/.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...
/. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.
:)
/.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
:)
/. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
/. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.
/. sense rather than the real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /. friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final paragraph.
/. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong - a link to the Perl website should instead point to the Python website instead, and vice versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could never have found on their own :)
/.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point rebuttal of your troll.
/. so that you can play on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving, pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
/.ers all kinds of things. Make broad generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots", "socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you given half a chance.
/.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
/.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide open for response.
/. responses.
/. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
/.ers always post before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
:)
:(
/. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
/. posts, although some are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
/. posters and you would have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls, the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists - mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
:)
/.ers as a rule despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz). With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm, along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider knowledge".
/.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
/.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves by correcting you.
:) This category includes parodies, offtopic weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for this section.
;-)
/. So feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually end up here ;-)
:)
t ml - A List Of Fallacious Arguments - Learn them and use them liberally
t hi ngs.htm - Things Creationists hate
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated
Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking
Timing
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway
Exposure
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies -
Accounts
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on
Layout
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Size
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Spelling
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated
Subject
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
Style
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the
Linking
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the
Feeding
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless
Know your audience
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on
Arrogance
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Offensiveness
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling
Indifference
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Sympathy
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
The common touch
Always accuse
The 31337 touch
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Contradiction
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk
Denial
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Claiming credit
Given that
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember,
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Ending the troll
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll
The cheap $3 crack
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up
Section 2 - Types of troll
The Maniac
Probably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
The Right-Wing Maniac
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
Religion
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst
Ideology
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
Software
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.
Guns
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll
The Expert
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which
Some possible angles to exploit:
Industry knowledge
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that
Helpful hints
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that
Offtopic Trolls
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
The serial troll
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
The random troll
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
The vaguely related troll
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that
General tips:
If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on
Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get them eventually.
Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40 posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling links
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
General purpose links
ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html - How to deal with USENET trolls - learn your enemy
www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.h
www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/troll/trollfaq.html - USENET troll HOWTO
www.baiting.org - Baiting.org
www.fieldingtravel.com/df/index.htm - Fielding's DangerFinder - A guide to what and where's dangerous
Religious links
www.godhatesamerica.com/ - God Hates America
www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html - The Creed of Christian Reconstruction
www.demonbuster.com - How to cast out your demons and do spiritual warfare
riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/
www.icr.org/ - Institute for Creation Research
www.xenu.net - Operation Clambake - The fight against Scientology on the net
www.hom.net/~angels/ - Citizens for the Ten Commandments
www.bju.edu/rcnbc.html - The difference between Catholics and Christians
www.geocities.com/prazske00/biblequotes.html - Bible quotes by category
Political/economy links
www.aynrand.org - The Ayn Rand Institute
www.reason.com - Libertarian site
www.freerepublic.com - Right-wing stuff
www.jbs.org - Excellent site for all kinds of right-wingery
www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html - Web economy bullshit generator
Crackpot science links
www.fixedearth.com - The Earth Is Not Moving
www.jir.com/index.htm - The Journal of Irreproducible Results
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
boo frickon hoo
Would you like it if I put you in diapers and made you pee in your diapers?
now we can look forward to lots of gaymers soaking up bandwidth for a week.
*yawn*
Another unimaginative first person shooter. Yay.
I played the demo. It's hardly impressive.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
wolfeinstein test mp2 might be good and all, but it feels like another quake3 mods (after all, it's based upon the q3 engine), and not the best one at that. but i'd suggest looking at some of the other quake3 mods, such as:
urban terror
threewave
(and starting from nov. 14), reAction Quake3.
tell me when the full vesion is out
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
"This probably would have been a better submission if it had included a download link of some sort."
Then you should of got the submission from one of the everybody else.
Or their pets.
Does it seem to anyone else that the gameplay in Return to Castle Wolfenstein seems - or is - Quake 3 all over again, with different weapons? Quake 3 is fun in its own respect, but slapping a World War 2 mod on top of it and marketing it as something brand new is pushing it a little, methinks.
Of course my gameplay has been slightly limited - I certainly haven't logged more than a few hours at most - but I can't help but compare it to the superbly executed (and free) Day of Defeat. I guess it has more to do with realistic damage than anything else; I like the (generally) one shot one kill rules of DoD, and it seems silly that in Wolfenstein I have to shoot you with a Thompson or MP40 many times before you go down.
Anyone else care to confirm or deny my suspicions and thoughts?
Cheers,
levine
Civ 3, or Wolfenstein test...
Wait, I've got two computers!
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
huggies, pampers, luvs, Nuk pacifiers, baby bottles. oh baby, lift up your skirt and let me see your diaper. oh, you wear size 6 now? you're 4 years old and still wearing diapers. do you need a changing? i'll change your diaper for you. i see you just peed in your diaper. oh yeah. *gets an erection* oooh give me a kiss you naughty naughty diaper girl.
oh now you want to suck on your pacifier? i like that too!
?
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: You can type more than that for your comment.
wrong the whole time!!!
/. troll HOWTO
:)
/.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...
/. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.
:)
/.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
:)
/. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
/. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.
/. sense rather than the real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /. friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final paragraph.
/. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong - a link to the Perl website should instead point to the Python website instead, and vice versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could never have found on their own :)
/.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point rebuttal of your troll.
/. so that you can play on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving, pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
/.ers all kinds of things. Make broad generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots", "socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you given half a chance.
/.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
/.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide open for response.
/. responses.
/. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
/.ers always post before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
:)
:(
/. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
/. posts, although some are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
/. posters and you would have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls, the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists - mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
:)
/.ers as a rule despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz). With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm, along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider knowledge".
/.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
/.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves by correcting you.
:) This category includes parodies, offtopic weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for this section.
;-)
/. So feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually end up here ;-)
:)
t ml - A List Of Fallacious Arguments - Learn them and use them liberally
t hi ngs.htm - Things Creationists hate
The
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated
Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking
Timing
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway
Exposure
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies -
Accounts
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on
Layout
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Size
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Spelling
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated
Subject
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
Style
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the
Linking
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the
Feeding
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless
Know your audience
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on
Arrogance
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Offensiveness
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling
Indifference
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Sympathy
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
The common touch
Always accuse
The 31337 touch
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Contradiction
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk
Denial
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Claiming credit
Given that
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember,
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Ending the troll
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll
The cheap $3 crack
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up
Section 2 - Types of troll
The Maniac
Probably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
The Right-Wing Maniac
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
Religion
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst
Ideology
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
Software
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.
Guns
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll
The Expert
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which
Some possible angles to exploit:
Industry knowledge
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that
Helpful hints
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that
Offtopic Trolls
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
The serial troll
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
The random troll
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
The vaguely related troll
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that
General tips:
If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on
Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get them eventually.
Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40 posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling links
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
General purpose links
ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html - How to deal with USENET trolls - learn your enemy
www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.h
www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/troll/trollfaq.html - USENET troll HOWTO
www.baiting.org - Baiting.org
www.fieldingtravel.com/df/index.htm - Fielding's DangerFinder - A guide to what and where's dangerous
Religious links
www.godhatesamerica.com/ - God Hates America
www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html - The Creed of Christian Reconstruction
www.demonbuster.com - How to cast out your demons and do spiritual warfare
riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/
www.icr.org/ - Institute for Creation Research
www.xenu.net - Operation Clambake - The fight against Scientology on the net
www.hom.net/~angels/ - Citizens for the Ten Commandments
www.bju.edu/rcnbc.html - The difference between Catholics and Christians
www.geocities.com/prazske00/biblequotes.html - Bible quotes by category
Political/economy links
www.aynrand.org - The Ayn Rand Institute
www.reason.com - Libertarian site
www.freerepublic.com - Right-wing stuff
www.jbs.org - Excellent site for all kinds of right-wingery
www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html - Web economy bullshit generator
Crackpot science links
www.fixedearth.com - The Earth Is Not Moving
www.jir.com/index.htm - The Journal of Irreproducible Results
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
Oh well, it seems I have been doing it wrong the whole time!
/. troll HOWTO
:)
/.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...
/. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.
:)
/.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
:)
/. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
/. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.
/. sense rather than the real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /. friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final paragraph.
/. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong - a link to the Perl website should instead point to the Python website instead, and vice versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could never have found on their own :)
/.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point rebuttal of your troll.
/. so that you can play on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving, pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
/.ers all kinds of things. Make broad generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots", "socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you given half a chance.
/.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
/.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide open for response.
/. responses.
/. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
/.ers always post before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
:)
:(
/. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
/. posts, although some are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
/. posters and you would have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls, the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists - mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
:)
/.ers as a rule despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz). With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm, along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider knowledge".
/.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
/.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves by correcting you.
:) This category includes parodies, offtopic weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for this section.
;-)
/. So feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually end up here ;-)
:)
t ml - A List Of Fallacious Arguments - Learn them and use them liberally
t hi ngs.htm - Things Creationists hate
The
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated
Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking
Timing
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway
Exposure
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies -
Accounts
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on
Layout
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Size
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Spelling
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated
Subject
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
Style
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the
Linking
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the
Feeding
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless
Know your audience
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on
Arrogance
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Offensiveness
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling
Indifference
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Sympathy
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
The common touch
Always accuse
The 31337 touch
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Contradiction
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk
Denial
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Claiming credit
Given that
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember,
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Ending the troll
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll
The cheap $3 crack
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up
Section 2 - Types of troll
The Maniac
Probably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
The Right-Wing Maniac
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
Religion
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst
Ideology
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
Software
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.
Guns
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll
The Expert
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which
Some possible angles to exploit:
Industry knowledge
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that
Helpful hints
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that
Offtopic Trolls
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
The serial troll
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
The random troll
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
The vaguely related troll
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that
General tips:
If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on
Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get them eventually.
Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40 posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling links
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
General purpose links
ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html - How to deal with USENET trolls - learn your enemy
www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.h
www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/troll/trollfaq.html - USENET troll HOWTO
www.baiting.org - Baiting.org
www.fieldingtravel.com/df/index.htm - Fielding's DangerFinder - A guide to what and where's dangerous
Religious links
www.godhatesamerica.com/ - God Hates America
www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html - The Creed of Christian Reconstruction
www.demonbuster.com - How to cast out your demons and do spiritual warfare
riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/
www.icr.org/ - Institute for Creation Research
www.xenu.net - Operation Clambake - The fight against Scientology on the net
www.hom.net/~angels/ - Citizens for the Ten Commandments
www.bju.edu/rcnbc.html - The difference between Catholics and Christians
www.geocities.com/prazske00/biblequotes.html - Bible quotes by category
Political/economy links
www.aynrand.org - The Ayn Rand Institute
www.reason.com - Libertarian site
www.freerepublic.com - Right-wing stuff
www.jbs.org - Excellent site for all kinds of right-wingery
www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html - Web economy bullshit generator
Crackpot science links
www.fixedearth.com - The Earth Is Not Moving
www.jir.com/index.htm - The Journal of Irreproducible Results
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
I remember running Wolfenstein 3D on my Tandy 1000RLX (286/10MHz XT, yes, a 286 with an 8-bit bus and 256k VGA graphics). Man, that was *the* shiznit back in the day. I have a feeling the latest versions will fail to capture the awe I felt when seeing what was actually possible with the processing power of a 286. Quite a legacy to have to live up to, if you ask me.
To relive the experience, a newer Wolfenstein would have to again push current hardware beyond what is currently viewed as possible. It's quite a shame this is unlikely to happen - Makes me feel like "future generations" of computer users are missing out on something.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
RiGhT: -- (note 31337 writing...)
/. troll HOWTO
:)
/.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...
/. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.
:)
/.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
:)
/. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
/. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.
/. sense rather than the real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /. friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final paragraph.
/. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong - a link to the Perl website should instead point to the Python website instead, and vice versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could never have found on their own :)
/.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point rebuttal of your troll.
/. so that you can play on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving, pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
/.ers all kinds of things. Make broad generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots", "socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you given half a chance.
/.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
/.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide open for response.
/. responses.
/. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
/.ers always post before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
:)
:(
/. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
/. posts, although some are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
/. posters and you would have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls, the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists - mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
:)
/.ers as a rule despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz). With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm, along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider knowledge".
/.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
/.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves by correcting you.
:) This category includes parodies, offtopic weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for this section.
;-)
/. So feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually end up here ;-)
:)
t ml - A List Of Fallacious Arguments - Learn them and use them liberally
t hi ngs.htm - Things Creationists hate
The
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated
Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking
Timing
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway
Exposure
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies -
Accounts
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on
Layout
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Size
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Spelling
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated
Subject
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
Style
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the
Linking
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the
Feeding
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless
Know your audience
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on
Arrogance
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Offensiveness
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling
Indifference
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Sympathy
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
The common touch
Always accuse
The 31337 touch
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Contradiction
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk
Denial
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Claiming credit
Given that
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember,
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Ending the troll
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll
The cheap $3 crack
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up
Section 2 - Types of troll
The Maniac
Probably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
The Right-Wing Maniac
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
Religion
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst
Ideology
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
Software
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.
Guns
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll
The Expert
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which
Some possible angles to exploit:
Industry knowledge
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that
Helpful hints
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that
Offtopic Trolls
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
The serial troll
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
The random troll
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
The vaguely related troll
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that
General tips:
If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on
Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get them eventually.
Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40 posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling links
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
General purpose links
ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html - How to deal with USENET trolls - learn your enemy
www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.h
www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/troll/trollfaq.html - USENET troll HOWTO
www.baiting.org - Baiting.org
www.fieldingtravel.com/df/index.htm - Fielding's DangerFinder - A guide to what and where's dangerous
Religious links
www.godhatesamerica.com/ - God Hates America
www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html - The Creed of Christian Reconstruction
www.demonbuster.com - How to cast out your demons and do spiritual warfare
riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/
www.icr.org/ - Institute for Creation Research
www.xenu.net - Operation Clambake - The fight against Scientology on the net
www.hom.net/~angels/ - Citizens for the Ten Commandments
www.bju.edu/rcnbc.html - The difference between Catholics and Christians
www.geocities.com/prazske00/biblequotes.html - Bible quotes by category
Political/economy links
www.aynrand.org - The Ayn Rand Institute
www.reason.com - Libertarian site
www.freerepublic.com - Right-wing stuff
www.jbs.org - Excellent site for all kinds of right-wingery
www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html - Web economy bullshit generator
Crackpot science links
www.fixedearth.com - The Earth Is Not Moving
www.jir.com/index.htm - The Journal of Irreproducible Results
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
And now, the mad rush.. who can download first! Who can get in queue! It'd be interesting to see a traffic schematic to see if releases like this actually produce significant bandwidth bottlenecks... Or is the internet flexible enough that just those wanting to download the file are being hassled?
Polluting the Internet since 2003...
http://percep
Ok to me, the updated networking code has some bugs. As a medic I need to see your health level quickly. It used to show me your health level instantly, now there is a wait :( Is this purposful?
On the topic of weither this is just another Q3 mod.
1. Yes it is.
2. The full version is going to include a very expansive single player/co-operative game, plus many muliplayer DM modes.
The single player game will be played carefully/tactically as opposed to run around and shot everything you see Q3.
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
m(long i) ipinion b:
/. troll HOWTO
:)
/.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...
/. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.
:)
/.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
:)
/. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
/. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.
/. sense rather than the real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /. friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final paragraph.
/. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong - a link to the Perl website should instead point to the Python website instead, and vice versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could never have found on their own :)
/.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point rebuttal of your troll.
/. so that you can play on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving, pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
/.ers all kinds of things. Make broad generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots", "socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you given half a chance.
/.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
/.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide open for response.
/. responses.
/. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
/.ers always post before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
:)
:(
/. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
/. posts, although some are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
/. posters and you would have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls, the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists - mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
:)
/.ers as a rule despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz). With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm, along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider knowledge".
/.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
/.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves by correcting you.
:) This category includes parodies, offtopic weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for this section.
;-)
/. So feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually end up here ;-)
:)
t ml - A List Of Fallacious Arguments - Learn them and use them liberally
t hi ngs.htm - Things Creationists hate
The
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated
Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking
Timing
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway
Exposure
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies -
Accounts
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on
Layout
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Size
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Spelling
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated
Subject
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
Style
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the
Linking
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the
Feeding
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless
Know your audience
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on
Arrogance
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Offensiveness
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling
Indifference
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Sympathy
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
The common touch
Always accuse
The 31337 touch
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Contradiction
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk
Denial
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Claiming credit
Given that
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember,
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Ending the troll
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll
The cheap $3 crack
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up
Section 2 - Types of troll
The Maniac
Probably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
The Right-Wing Maniac
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
Religion
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst
Ideology
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
Software
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.
Guns
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll
The Expert
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which
Some possible angles to exploit:
Industry knowledge
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that
Helpful hints
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that
Offtopic Trolls
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
The serial troll
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
The random troll
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
The vaguely related troll
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that
General tips:
If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on
Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get them eventually.
Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40 posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling links
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
General purpose links
ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html - How to deal with USENET trolls - learn your enemy
www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.h
www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/troll/trollfaq.html - USENET troll HOWTO
www.baiting.org - Baiting.org
www.fieldingtravel.com/df/index.htm - Fielding's DangerFinder - A guide to what and where's dangerous
Religious links
www.godhatesamerica.com/ - God Hates America
www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html - The Creed of Christian Reconstruction
www.demonbuster.com - How to cast out your demons and do spiritual warfare
riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/
www.icr.org/ - Institute for Creation Research
www.xenu.net - Operation Clambake - The fight against Scientology on the net
www.hom.net/~angels/ - Citizens for the Ten Commandments
www.bju.edu/rcnbc.html - The difference between Catholics and Christians
www.geocities.com/prazske00/biblequotes.html - Bible quotes by category
Political/economy links
www.aynrand.org - The Ayn Rand Institute
www.reason.com - Libertarian site
www.freerepublic.com - Right-wing stuff
www.jbs.org - Excellent site for all kinds of right-wingery
www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html - Web economy bullshit generator
Crackpot science links
www.fixedearth.com - The Earth Is Not Moving
www.jir.com/index.htm - The Journal of Irreproducible Results
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
ftp://ftp.bluesnews.com/rtcw/demos/wolfmptest2.exe
http://www.shacknews.com/files/fileshack.x?wolfens tein/wolfmptest2.exem os/wolfmptest2.exe
http://www.3dgamers.com/games/returnwolfenstein/
http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?file=69443
http://ftp.fragzone.se/index.php?s=&p=rtcw/
http://files.ausgamers.com/?agn=details&id=1016
http://www.planetmirror.com/pub/bluesnews/rtcw/de
Not karma whoring, moderate with moderation. =P
I am not a hacker, and I like seeing diapers.
,would the What is happening I am not a diaper wearing 7 year old bedwetter . Oh no! I just pee peed in my diaper. I'm cold. Oh. This feels good. Zmodem.
Microsoft Chief Financial Officer John Connors, speaking at a press conference in San Francisco after the operating system was launched, said Product Activation was never intended to be unbreakable, but that it would help protect the company from losing out on a chunk of its revenue.
"Our intellectual property, similar to the music and motion picture industries, should be paid for," Connors said at the time. "[Product Activation] makes people aware of what our licensing plan has always been."
Windows XP is the first software release from
Microsoft in fifteen years.
One day Superman was feeling a bit horny. So, he began to ask his
superhero friends for ideas on where he could get a bit of action. "Hey
Batman! Who's good in the sack?"
"Well Superman, everyone knows that Wonderwoman is the best sex
in comicland. Why don't you try her?", replied Batman.
I'd love to, but Wonderwoman and I are friends. So I don't
really want to take advantage of her."
"Darn shame," said Batman as he waved goodbye to Superman and
drove off.
Ten minutes later Superman was flying low over a city when he
saw the Green Lantern patching up a building. He flew down. "Hey
G.L., I'm looking for a little action. You're a swinging bachelor, who's
the best babe in comicland?"
"Hey, Superman! Everyone knows that Wonderwoman is far and away
the best lay in comicland, why don't you try her?"
"Well, we're sort of friends," Superman said, "but I didn't
realize she had gotten around so much" and he flew off in frustration.
Twenty minutes later he was flying over a field when he saw
Wonderwoman lying naked, in the middle of the field, with her legs apart
and up in the air.
Superman was tempted. " MAN !!!" he thought to himself, "I'm
faster than a speeding bullet, I can be in and out of there
before she even knows I'm here." So with a blur and a sonic boom he was
down, in and gone.
Wonderwoman stared up into the sky with a dazed expression.
"What the hell was that??" she exclaimed.
"I don't know," said the Invisible Man as he rolled off, "But
my ass is killing me."
If I ran a Linux BBS in Detroit
mary tyler moore is still so freaking hot. god damn she has the prettiest smile ever.
my mother left for my grandpas this morning to paint, so amy and amanda came over for a bit. we took pictures and watched the movie Wicked. uhmm im not going to comment on it because quite frankly im still in awe.
for some reason i took the balloon last night from ruby tuesdays and rubbed it on amandas hair for like 10 minutes. i dont know why but that was the most amused ive been in quite some time. geeeze. i was then going to move on to do the same to amy, but amanda said 'you better not, from looking at her hair it will probably blow up' oooooooh good times my stomach still hurts from laughing.
robert downey jr. is so freaking hot
i have a lot of papers to write so i suppose i will get started and my pampers is wet.
anyone have any news of whether this one will also be ported to linux? if so, then it would be almost 100% chance that the final version would be out for linux too. If not, well, thats one less game which takes me away from Half-life and Alpha Centauri
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
We have positions open at mcDonalds all over the world. The perfect dayjobs for open source developers.
Before I waste 20 minutes looking for a mirror, can anybody tell me if they've included any new maps? That one they have really sucks after like the 10th time you play it so I haven't touched the game since the week it came out.
Really needs more maps.
rooooar
The German in me would love that. Are the diapers leather or latex?
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
forgive the intrusion. this is a test.
While this job is equal to the mental abilities of most OpenSource developers, it would require them to leave their parents basement and interact with people, a task far beyond their abilities. Good try though.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
forgive the intrusion. this is a test.
There goes another two weeks at least of my life. Damnit, I was just kicking my Diablo II+ addiction.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email jamie@mccarthy.vg.
/. troll HOWTO
:)
/.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...
/. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.
:)
/.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.
:)
/. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.
/. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.
/. sense rather than the real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /. friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final paragraph.
/. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong - a link to the Perl website should instead point to the Python website instead, and vice versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could never have found on their own :)
/.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point rebuttal of your troll.
/. so that you can play on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving, pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.
/.ers all kinds of things. Make broad generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots", "socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you given half a chance.
/.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.
/.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide open for response.
/. responses.
/. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)
/.ers always post before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.
:)
:(
/. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.
/. posts, although some are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)
/. posters and you would have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls, the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists - mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.
:)
/.ers as a rule despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz). With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm, along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider knowledge".
/.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.
/.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves by correcting you.
:) This category includes parodies, offtopic weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for this section.
;-)
/. So feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually end up here ;-)
:)
t ml - A List Of Fallacious Arguments - Learn them and use them liberally
t hi ngs.htm - Things Creationists hate
HAHAHAHAA fuckers! I am not ssooo wrong I can't recover! All your trolls are belong to... forget it...
The
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated
Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking
Timing
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since
Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway
Exposure
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies -
Accounts
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though
The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on
Layout
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.
Size
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.
Spelling
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated
Subject
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.
Style
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the
Linking
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the
Feeding
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless
Know your audience
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on
Arrogance
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.
Offensiveness
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling
Indifference
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.
Sympathy
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.
The common touch
Always accuse
The 31337 touch
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.
Contradiction
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse
Clues
If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk
Denial
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."
Claiming credit
Given that
As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember,
There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.
Ending the troll
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll
The cheap $3 crack
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up
Section 2 - Types of troll
The Maniac
Probably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent
Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article
Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:
The Right-Wing Maniac
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.
Religion
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst
Ideology
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.
Software
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.
Guns
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll
The Expert
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which
Some possible angles to exploit:
Industry knowledge
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that
Helpful hints
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that
Offtopic Trolls
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here
Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:
The serial troll
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.
The random troll
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.
The vaguely related troll
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that
General tips:
If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on
Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get them eventually.
Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40 posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling links
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.
General purpose links
ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html - How to deal with USENET trolls - learn your enemy
www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.h
www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/troll/trollfaq.html - USENET troll HOWTO
www.baiting.org - Baiting.org
www.fieldingtravel.com/df/index.htm - Fielding's DangerFinder - A guide to what and where's dangerous
Religious links
www.godhatesamerica.com/ - God Hates America
www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html - The Creed of Christian Reconstruction
www.demonbuster.com - How to cast out your demons and do spiritual warfare
riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/
www.icr.org/ - Institute for Creation Research
www.xenu.net - Operation Clambake - The fight against Scientology on the net
www.hom.net/~angels/ - Citizens for the Ten Commandments
www.bju.edu/rcnbc.html - The difference between Catholics and Christians
www.geocities.com/prazske00/biblequotes.html - Bible quotes by category
Political/economy links
www.aynrand.org - The Ayn Rand Institute
www.reason.com - Libertarian site
www.freerepublic.com - Right-wing stuff
www.jbs.org - Excellent site for all kinds of right-wingery
www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html - Web economy bullshit generator
Crackpot science links
www.fixedearth.com - The Earth Is Not Moving
www.jir.com/index.htm - The Journal of Irreproducible Results
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
What's changed between Multplayer Test 1 and the latest test? Below you'll find some of the more notable changes.
1) Hud
- On the compass, Engineers can see which direction their dynamite objectives are in the world.
- You'll see a shield icon in the lower left, above your health letting you know when you're invulnerable (when you first reinforce and when revived by a medic)
- Messages have been moved around
- Assorted changes
2) Beach
- The Axis team will no longer have the option to spawn in the forward bunker. They can deny the Allies this spawn position by taking the flag from them and returning it to a "null" state.
- Dynamiting objectives has been tightened up. It's always best to plant the dynamite if you see the dynamite icon. If you hear the "Dynamite planted.." message, your objective will be destroyed.
3) Weapons
- MG42's take more damage
- Ammo count modified for many weapons (depending on class as well)
- Flamethrower's damage tweaked and movement speed reduced
4) Classes
- When revived by a medic, you revive with the amount of ammo you passed out with
- Medic's now get 10 revives. Good for altered max lives games as well as Stopwatch matches
- LT's can no longer pick up the Soldier specific weapons
- Engineers now get 8 grenades and another clip
- Engineers must now arm the dynamite they place. When you toss out a dynamite, you will automatically switch to the pliers.
5) Networking
- WolfMP is now using full TA networking.
6) Stopwatch Mode
- Stopwatch mode can be played in one of two ways. ABBA, or ABAB. We recommend playing in ABBA mode as this allows both sides a chance to set the clock.
- Stopwatch is played in two rounds. Which round you are in is displayed on the HUD, atop the Stopwatch icon. Try to beat the other teams' time!
7) Max Lives
- Added max number of lives/reinforcements. When this is set, you will only get as many lives/reinforcements as set by the Server. Once you are out of lives/reinforcements, you will only be able to follow the view of other team members. Once a team is out of lives/reinforcements, the round, or match will end.
- We suggest only running with max lives changed during Tourney Mode.
- We suggest playing with an unlimited number of lives during net play.
- Setting max lives to a different value can produce some hectic and frantic gameplay. We suggest practicing safe max lives with only those you know.
8) Tourney Mode
- When playing under this mode, there is an infinite warm-up time.
- Once all players in the game decide that the match should start, someone can callvote for "Match Start", if passed, the game will begin.
- Optionally, you can set the minimum number of clients for this mode. This option can be found on the Advance Server Setup screen. Once this number of people have joined the server, the game will automatically force a Match Start, allowing 20 more seconds before the game begins.
- Once the game begins, you will not be able to switch teams.
- If a player tries to connect with this enabled and the game is outside of the warmup phase, they will only be able to join as a spectator.
- This mode can not be played with one person.
- If two people are playing in this mode and one leaves, or joins the Spectators, the game will stop and the match will have to be re-started.
- You can set this mode to be played with all gametypes and settings.
- This is the preferred on-line method to play with Max Lives.
9) Other
- You no longer "time-out" to the Reinforcement Queue. You must tap out. If you are "dismembered beyond repair", you will automatically enter the reinforcement queue.
- If friendly-fire is enabled on your server, when killed by a team mate, the complaint system will pop up. If you vote yes, the team mate responsible for your death will have a complaint filed against them. Once they hit the server's setting for number of complaints until kicked, they will be kicked.
- There is a 30 second delay before you can join a different team as well as the chance of being caught in the middle of a deployment. So maximum time before being able to join another team is 30 seconds +max reinforcement time for the team on the specific level. This is default behavior. By setting Tourney Mode to "Yes", no team switching is allowed. Switching teams for an ill-effect is frowned upon.
- Spectators are now listed on the team/score panel.
- Map_restart functions just as warmup mode.
- Spectators can only talk to each other, not to the Axis or Allied teams.
- There is now a callvote menu option. Voting that is in progress will be displayed on-screen.
- Various quickchats moved around.
10) Resetting to Defaults
If you run into a situation where your config becomes trashed, or you don't like the settings you've created, run WolfMP with the following option:
"wolfmp safe"
This will set all settings to their default values.
It's been out for over a month. WTF?
I really dislike the gameplay, although it has potential. The crosshairs on the sniper rifle suck and the engine is slow.
Oh well..
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
The Diamondbacks Win!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Diamondbacks Win!!!!!!!!!!!
The Diamondbacks Win!!!!!!!!!!!!
and did i mention..... The Diamondbacks Win !!!!!!!!!!!
Who the hell cares? This thing is ugly and behind-the-times. Anyone ever hear of a REAL multiplayer FPS? Something like UT or maybe Q3 or T2?
"This probably would have been a better submission if it had included a download link of some sort."
That is pretty harsh coming from someone whose career has been developed by volunteers who send you submissions on a daily basis.
-Sean
So, you have no free will of your own in the matter? That's so sad. Repeat after me: I am addicted to gaming and I cannot help myself.
I have a compsci exam in 7 days. I spent about 6 hrs on the weekend playing the RTCW multiplayer test...
Now I'll have to d/l the update & do some more "TESTING" damn you slashdot!
I would have been better off not knowing!
You tried your best, & you failed miserably,
The lesson is:
Never Try
Q: What do you call a 30week-old premee?
A: An Appetizer!
Q: What do you call a dead baby with no arms and no legs laying in a ditch?
A: Phil
Q: What is special about a dead baby over all other forms of life
A: You can achieve deep throat from whichever way you enter
Q: How are babies and the elderly alike?
A: Both are fun to throw out of moving cars.
Q: What's red and dances
A: A baby on a barbecue
Q: Whats worse than finding 7 dead babies in 1 trash can?
A: Finding 1 dead baby in 7 trash cans.
Q: What's the difference between a Dead Baby and a tree?
A: One is legal to hit with an AX.
Q: What bounces up and down at 100mph?
A: A baby tied to the back of a truck.
Q: What's brown and gurgles?
A: A baby in a casserole.
Q: Whats the best thing about a siamese twin baby?
A: Threesomes.
Q: What do you get when you have sex with a pregnant woman?
A: A baby with a black eye!
Q: What's blue and flies around the room at high speeds?
A: A baby with a punctured lung.
Q: What's red and goes round and round?
A: A baby in a garbage disposal.
Q: What's the difference between a gay man and a freezer?
A: You can't hide dead babies in a gay man.
Q: What's more fun than strapping a baby to a washingline and then spinning it around at 200km/h?
A: Stopping it with a shovel.
Q: What do you call a dead baby with no arms and no legs hanging on your wall?
A: Art
Q: What do you call a dead baby with no arms and no legs laying on your porch?
A: Matt
Q: What do you call a dead baby with no arms and no legs laying on a beach?
A: Sandy
Q: What do you call a dead baby with no arms and no legs in a swimming pool?
A: Bob
Q: What do you call a dead baby with no arms and no legs in the middle of the ocean?
A: Fucked
Q: Whats worse than smoking pot with a baby?
A: Making a bong out of it.
Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a felt tip marker?
A: you don't get second looks when you're writing with a felt tip marker!
Q: Why did the dead baby cross the road?
A: It was chained to a bumper.
Q: What do you have when you have 4 dead babies, take away two, and add 5 more?
A: An orgy!
Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a table?
A: You can't fuck a table.
Q: How do you make a dead baby float?
A: Take your foot off of it's head.
Q: If a tree falls on a baby in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, is it still hilarious?
Q: What is red and creeps up your leg?
A: A homesick abortion.
Q: What's red and lies in all four corners of the room?
A: A baby that's been playing with a chainsaw.
Q: What do vegetarian dingos eat?
A: Cabbage patch kids.
Q : Whats white and bobs up and down in a baby's crib ?
A : A Pedophiles ass.
Q: What's the difference between a watermelon and a dead baby?
A: A watermelon floats.
Q: Whats the safest way to play with a baby ?
A: With a condom.
Q: What gets louder as it gets smaller?
A: A baby in a trash compacter.
Q: What do you call a baby on a stick?
A: A Kebabie.
Q: What's the difference between a lamp and a dead baby?
A: It's really easy to turn on a lamp.
Q: Whats does a blind, deaf, quadriplegic baby can get for Christmas ?
A: Cancer.
Q: Why are test tube babies the most beautiful ones?
A: Because they're hand made.
Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a trampoline?
A: When you jump on a trampoline, you take your boots off.
Q: What is the definition of revenge?
A: A baby with a dingo in its mouth.
Q: What's the difference between a baby and a bagel?
A: You can put a bagel in the toaster. You have to put the baby in the oven.
Q: What's the difference between a bucket of gravel and a bucket of baby guts?
A: You can't gargle gravel.
Q: Why did the toddler fall off his bike?
A1: A fridge fell on him .
A2: He was quadraplegic.
Q: Why do you unload a truck full of babies with a pitchfork?
A: So you can tell which ones are still alive.
Q: How do you know when you hit a live one?
A: The pitchfork shakes
Q: What's this? (hold arms out and shake them)
A: A live one.
Q: Why do you stick a baby in the blender feet first?
A: So you can see the expression on its face!
Q: What's blue and thrashes about on the floor?
A: A baby playing in a plastic bag.
Q: What is bright blue, pink, and sizzles?
A: A baby trying to breast feed from an electrical outlet.
Q: What's sicker than driving over a baby?
A: Skidding.
Q: How do you spoil a baby?
A: Leave it out in the sun.
Q: How do you stop a baby falling down a manhole?
A: Stick a javelin through it's head.
Q: How do you make a gay men pregnant?
A: stick a dead baby up his ass!
Q: Why did the toddler drop it's lollypop?
A: It was hit by a truck...
Q: What goes plop, plop, fizz, fizz?
A: Twins in an acid bath.
Q: What's red, screams and goes around in circles?
A: A baby with its foot nailed to the floor.
Q: What's the difference between a Cadillac and a pile of dead babies?
A: I don't have a Cadillac in my garage.
Q: How many babies does it take to paint a house?
A: Depends how hard you throw them
Q: Whats more fun than feeling up a dead baby
A: Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples
Q: What is the differance between a dead baby and a VHS tape?
A: The VHS tape don't stink when you leave it out in the sun
Q: How do you prepare a dead baby for Valentine's Day?
A: You shove a box of chocolates down his throat and a boquet of roses up his ass.
Q: Why did the Baby fall out of the Tree?
A: Because he was DEAD!
Q: What's grosser than gross?
A: A garbage can full of dead babies.
Q: What's grosser than that?
A: The one at the bottom is still alive.
Q: What's grosser than that?
A: He has to eat his way to freedom.
Q: What's grosser than that?
A: He goes back for more.
Q: How do you get a baby to run faster?
A: Chase it with the lawn mower.
Q. What's the difference between a dead baby and an onion.
A. You don't cry when you chop up a dead baby.
Q: What has 4 legs and one arm?
A: A Doberman in a children's playground!
Q:What does a baby and a Pinto have in common?
A:They're fun to ride until they die.
Q: What happens when you burn baby's face off?
A: It makes weird noises and crawls into walls.
Q: what's funnier than a dead baby?
A: a dead baby sitting next to a kid with down syndrome.
Q: What do you get whan you dislocate a dead baby's jaw?
A: Deep Throat.
Q: What's blue and bloated and floating in your beer?
A: A dead baby with fetal alcohol syndrome!
Q: Whats white and red and hangs from a telephone wire?
A: A baby shot through a snowblower.
Q: How do you know when a baby is a dead baby?
A: The dog plays with it more.
Q: What does a bum call a dead baby in a dumpster?
A: A Freeloader.
Q: What do you get when you put a dead baby in a blender?
A: Hold on. I'll tell you in a second.
Q: What is better than a dead baby?
A: The revoked child-support.
Q: Whats the difference between a baby and a grandmother?
A: Grandmothers dont die when you fuck them in the ass
Q: What's the difference between a dead baby and a peanut butter cup?
A: The dead baby won't stick to the roof of your mouth.
Q: Why didn't they crucify baby jesus?
A: I dont know why they didn't either.
Q: What's the difference between a truck full of bowling balls and a truck full of dead babies?
A: You can't unload a truck full of bowling balls with a pitchfork.
Q: What's the worst thing about fucking a dead baby?
A: Wiping the blood stains off of your clown suit!
Q: What's the best sound in the world?
A: Hearing dead baby's hips crack under pressure!
Q: what wiggles spits and is covered in shit?
A: inside out baby!
Q: What's blue and orange and lies at the bottom of a swimming pool?
A: A baby with burst armbands.
Q: How do you make a dead baby float?
A: Two scoops of ice cream, one scoop of dead baby.
Q: Whats worse than a having sex with a dead baby?
A: Having sex with a dead baby filled with razor blades.
Q: What's 18 inches long and makes women scream all night ?
A: Crib death.
Q: Why is there always hot water at childbirth?
A: In case of a stillbirth, soup.
Q: How do you stop a baby from choking?
A: Take your dick out of its mouth.
Q: What's red, bubbly, and scratches at the window before exploding?
A: A baby in a microwave.
Q: When is the best time to bury that baby you killed?
A: When it starts talking to you again.
Q: How many babies does it take to make a bottle of baby oil?
A: It depends on how hard you squeeze them.
Q: What's more fun than stapling babies to a wall?
A: Ripping them off again.
Q: What do you call a dead baby with its skin peeled off?
A: Sexy.
Q: What's funnier than a dead baby?
A: A dead baby in a clown costume!
Q: What's blue and flies around the room at high speeds?
A: A baby with a punctured lung.
Q: What do you call a dead baby pinned to your wall?
A: Art!
Q: How do you get 100 babies into a bucket?
A: With a blender!
Q: How do you get them out again?
A: With Doritos!!
Q: What is pink and red and sits in a corner?
A: A baby chewing on razor blades.
Q: What is green and sits in a corner?
A: The same baby, six weeks later.
Q: What is red and pink and can't turn round in a corridor?
A: A baby with a javelin through its throat.
Q: What is more disgusting than a pile of 100 dead babies?
A: One live one in the middle is eating its way out.
Q: What's blue and sits in the corner?
A: A baby in a baggie.
Q: What's present do you get for a dead baby?
A: A dead puppy.
Q: What's purple, covered in pus and squeals?
A: A peeled baby in a bag of salt.
Q: What sits in the kitchen and keeps getting smaller and smaller?
A: A baby combing it's hair with a potato peeler!
Q: What's pink and red and silver and crawls into walls?
A: A baby with forks in its eyes.
Q: Why did the baby cross the road?
A: It was stapled to the chicken.
Q: What do you get when you cut a baby with a straight razor?
A: An erection.
Q: Why did the baby fall off the swing?
A: Because it had no arms or legs.
Q: What's got four wheels, smokes and squeals?
A: A bus load of babies on fire.
Q: What's harder to do than nailing a baby to a tree?
A: Nailing it to a dead puppy.
Q: What's grosser than ten dead babies nailed to a tree?
A: One dead baby nailed to ten trees.
Q: What's pink and chunky?
A: A baby with leporacy.
Q: Why do babies have a soft spot in their heads?
A: So you can pick them up five at a time.
Q: How many dead babies does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: As many as it takes to climb on top of them in order to reach the socket.
Q: What's pink and spits?
A: A baby in a frying pan.
Q: What's worse than finding a dead baby on your pillow in the morning?
A: Realizing you were drunk and made love to it the night before.
Q: What's more fun than a barrel of dead babies?
A: Sticking pins in their eyes.
Q: How do you make a baby cry twice?
A: Wipe your bloody cock on his teddy bear
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
I believe you meant to say "First Fag", for that is what you are.
Something went seriously wrong with their update here I think. In RTCW test v1 I could run it fine at 1024x768 at 32 bit textures, now anytime I push the rez over 640x480 I lag obscenely. My ping times remain decent, but the game is unplayably slow. Especially when I dare to leave the confines of the bunker. I wonder if there are any v1 servers left.
Notice it's Multiplayer Test _2_. This is an update.
Doesn't anyone read anymore?
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
The culture that has seeped from the underbelly of slashdot is by and far more enjoyable than the articles themselves. Truely.
Do not grow faint.
Suck it, Trebek. Suck it long, and suck it hard.
This person has a perfectly valid and on-topic comment on this topic. Why is it that he was labeled as a troll?
"Moltar, I have a giant brain that is capable of reducing any complex machine into a simple yes or no answer."
Well i think multiplayer might be same as quake 3 but single player hopefully the AI is good, it better be, the movies make it look good but we can only hope
I loved wolfenstein 3d - it was the first computer game I ever really played. I spent hours totally immersed - the sounds, the german, everything made it a totally great game.
:-)
I did cheat slightly though - I could tell if there were a lot of guys in the room ahead before I opened the door. If I walked up to a door (before opening it), my hard drive would grind and the LED light would flash like crazy if there were germans in the room ahead.
This version though doesn't seem to be as groundbreaking or entertaining as most other games currently on the market. Quake 3 took the first person shooter as far as it could go. I think that genre has perhaps reached it's peak.
I think there are some really great games out right now. Games like starcraft, the sims, rollar coaster tycoon and nhl2001 are some of my personal favorites.
I just wish more of those bastard software developers would port their software to linux and/or solaris so I wouldn't have to reboot as much
Fileplanet.com. I have SDSL. Downloaded it at 162k a sec. Of course there was a 4 minute wait... But hey... Lets Slashdot Fileplanet! :)
--------------------------
Is this a sig?
--------------------------
Sure, this is a braindead question, but, where is the answer to this anyway so that the not quite so l33t ones of us can participate..
Thanks.
Where is the .tar/.rpm/etc... for linux? I can't wait to try it out!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The video control panel. Even if you try to adjust the brightness in game (under windows anyway), it pauses, adjusts, clicks back to Windows, then re-enters the game and puts you in limbo, and then resumes. C'mon, even the original Wolf 3D could adjust brightness easier!
wow...no download link...how sucky can some people be?
"First you bitch about the baby, then you bitch 'cause we're not married...."
I've downloaded from 3 DIFFERANT MIRRORS now and the filesizes are all the same, yet in Windows 2000 it breaks at the END of the installer on the mp_pak0.pk3 or whatever... (the pak file). One of my friends on IRC downloaded the same file from the same mirror (also same filesize), and his worked in windows98. So I guess my question is, has anybody out there got the new demo installed in Win2k yet? If so HOW?!@ :D
I'll tell you what hasn't changed: Nobody has bothered to tell server admins exactly what is and isn't different (console-wise) from running a Q3A server. What's worse is that folks new to Q3A or Wolf3D will have trouble finding any coherent docs on running a server if they've never run one before. What's worsest is that guys who've never run a Linux-based Q3A server will have a very hard time finding Linux-specific docs about running a dedicated Wolf3D server.
Can someone, somewhere bother to tell us mere mortals what all we need to know in order to run a ded server safely (which includes kicking people, banning people, stopping cheating, etc)? Don't be like those Tribes2 guys and hide all the console commands from us. Just let us know what it is we need to know. Anything you can type at a console and its effect is what we're after. A simple list would be fine.
Yeah, I've tried searching Google. Every 15 year-old on the planet has a Wolf3D/Q3A site. None of them are useful. It makes searching for only Wolf3D info very hard. And as to searching any of the popular gaming sites... forget it. They're all paid to sell you Win32 games...
I'm aiming to run a Linux-based Wolf3D ded server on a very beefy (and dedicated) machine with lots of bandwidth. But only if I can find info about running that server. It would be in id's best interest to make the ded server info available to guys like me. The public servers run by private folks are what made id what it is.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Natalie Portman is Jew.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is Jew.
Jews produce the hottest babes in this world
I w4n7 70 fux0r j3wi5h gir1
man, thanks for the trolling advice. is there
some place i can reach you? IRC? e-mail? etc.
i really think that you have a valid point, having seen you
put that much effort into your writing.
well done.
I better like UT. The reason to this is that to my oppinion has better playability, and speed. I personly tried running both Q3 and UT on my old computer(166MMX,96 MB SDRAM, 3DFX Voodoo). UT ran perfect flutuent with me and 5 both and grafics set to mask, Q3 ran like shit with minimal detail and 1 bot. I also thik that the grafics in UT is looking way better then in Q3. But after im fninished school today, i'm going home to try Tactical Operation (CS addon to Unreal Tournament)
Infiltration (extensive "realism" mod of Unreal) is the best fps out there IMHO yet nobody has even heard of it. If you're sick of crosshairs and are man enough to use iron sights, if you're tired of bunnyhopping and other such sillyness, check out infiltration. it does have some problems (some unrealistic rushing is still possible without community-made mutators and it still lacks original mp modes) but it's the best thing out there. i'm also waiting for Hostile Intent which has the same objective ie.: as close as you can get to real with a mouse and a monitor.
The game look great and runs above average on my computer, but it looks to much like axis and allies for halflife, well if that's good is up to each person to decide, but I don't like, but that's just me, I'm a Delta Force and Operation Flashpoint guy. Now I just need to find the old Wolfenstein again:-)
That poor guy who submitted the story was no doubt delighted when it was accepted, but Michael had to ruin in by complaining about no download link being included... what a bastard.
Maybe some /.ers would be interested, that while of course the "Return to Wolfenstein" storyline is fictional, there is a grain of truth to it.
... At the same time, researchers say, Himmler was hoping to find among the old records "the remains of the heathen, Old Germanic folk culture that one assumed was meant to be wiped out along with the witches." ( Der Spiegel (English)
Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuehrer SS, was drawn to - if not obsessed with - the mystical and supernatural. While I would have to research this thesis, Himmler may really have believed (Sorry, German) to be an incarnation of Herny the Lion (1133-1189). A fact is, that H. wanted to turn the SS into a quasi religious order, based on germanic mythology.
Maybe the most interesting piece here, is that H. installed the "H-Sonderkommando" (German), which was a well funded research project on witch hunts. Himmler viewed the witch hunts as a kind of early modern holocaust inflicted upon the Germanic race
To find out more about the guys you're shooting in Wolfenstein, read Himmler's Pozen speech.
Apart from this, happy gaming
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
In the second test it now looks like its around ten in the morning with the sky all white, I liked it better when it was darker, the 5 am feel. It seems as if the weapons are deadlier as well, I don't know what to think about this. The whole interface has been changed around so it feels like a completely different game.
;). The entire level, not just the sky, seems brighter, and I don't think I like it very much, your opinions of course will vary. I wish they released the much talked about sub-base level, but unfortunatly no dice. Hey, can't complain about something free to much can we?
The default sprint button has been moved to shift from caps lock, so undoubtedly, more people will actually use it. I don't know I kind of liked it when I was the only one on the map that could run fast
In closing, I think I liked the first version of the map more, spawning right in the front bunker as the axis was what made running up the beach at first hard!
Why don't they add bots for single player mode?
This is the Game of the Year in my book. It's only in preview yet, but I am hooked and play several hour allmost every day!
There's one thing missing though; it should be easy for server administrators to set up TeamKiller kicking. Since votekicking didn't work in test1 on linux (didn't try test2 yet), its impossible to get rid of them.
Otherwise; to those that think this is only quake3 with mods; play it, and you'll discover that this is a game with tactics that involve teamwork and skills beyond being able to quickly change from the rocketgun to the railgun, to be able to do rocketjumps and aim perfectly with the railgun etc. This look, feels and sounds like war, and your adrenaline goes up high when the heat turns up.
As a typical woman, I'm not really interested in video games. I am, however, interested in video games as a societal force. The jury's still out as to how much of an effect on our kids this type of violent video game has, but it's safe to say that the effect exists and is significant. I don't see anything being done about this soon, though, simply because these games are already so wide-spread.
This game, however, goes far beyond the usual blood, gore, and gratuitous violence that is the standard today. In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, you don't just fight the Nazis, you can actually play as one. It's troubling to me that, in these difficult times, we have video games that plainly glorify such a manifestly evil group of people. What's next, a game where you act as a lackey to Pol Pot, and must curry the dictator's favor by killing thousands of helpless Cambodians before the timer runs out? Maybe a game where you "role play" a famous serial killer or rapist? Ten years down the road a "strategy" game where you plot terrorist bombings, culminating in the "great work" of flying planes in to the World Trade Center?
I think it's time we put a collective foot down, and let the software industry know that this kind of greedy, amoral, capitalization on the horrors of history is not acceptable. Our children deserve a chance at growing up into good, kind, people, without the obvious and irreresistable corrupting influence this game presents.
"it's safe to say that the effect exists and is significant" Oh really? How exactly did you come up with this?! I thought the "jury" was still out but you've decided that it's "significant"? All on your own? Show me some data not produced by some self serving objective organization and maybe I'll start to believe this. You're one of those people that want to wrap their kids in cotton before sending them to school aren't you? No violence ever, nothing but soft sounds, can't let them live a little can you? Yuck.
:-). Do I run around with a shotgun shooting at people in real life? Nope! I can tell the difference between right and wrong. Do some people have trouble with that concept? Sure, lot's of them do. Now what makes you think those same people wouldn't find something else to screw them up if it wasn't computer games? I'm sorry, I just don't buy this idea that games are screwing people up. Do you protest WWF Wrestling too? Paintball?
:-)
You're not interested in video games, you admit that, perhaps you simply don't know squat about them? It's about competition and fun, pretend it's a fancy game of tag. I've played video games for as long as they've been out for computers and on consoles before that. I got faster reflexes, spatial reasoning improvements for finding my way out of maps, and was forced to learn more about my computer when I screwed it up
Hrm, and as for playing as a "Nazi" you don't. You play as a German Soldier - did it occur to you that they were people too? We sent KIDS to fight in that war and so did the Germans. Do you REALLY think all of those KIDS were out there goostepping and believing in everything Hitler said? Kripes, they wanted to live just like our kids did.
Come bitch to me about a new game centered around running a concentration camp and I'll be right there with you but I see no reason to get upset with simply playing on one side or another. Flight sims have allowed you to fly German planes and bombers for YEARS - why did no one bitch about that?!
Quite honestly, the VERY worst in-game scene I've ever seen was the one where you play an AMERICAN soldier who encounters some of his own men captured in jail cells. Shooting them gave you AMMO and HEALTH points! That was an iD game too as I recall and I thought the idea of being rewarded for shooting your own men in their jail cells was disgusting. The men were supposed to be in pain and you were "helping them" but I found that FAR worse than anything I'd seen before or I've seen since. Sad, I can't even remember which game that was but I remember how much I did NOT like that scene. Multiplayer game play was fine though
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I have one question. I've been running Windows XP and it doesn't like allowing me to run anything OpenGL on my lil Riva TNT. Can this version of the test be run in Direct3D?? Please God?? I'll try anyways but I figured if anyone would know you guys would ... thanks.
Sure we wang, can.
Bit of a clarification. Half-life wasn't out before Team Fortres. TF was an old classic mod for the original Quake. Back when people with a 33.6 were LPB's to those of us trying to get into QuakeWorld with a 14.4. When 640x480 and hardware 3D was considered a godsend. And a huge advantage.
-Steve
Just to let mod's know, that was funny. It was an SNL reference. But nevermind.
I wouldn't say it was a side project, infact its a completly different project. 3 different companies are working on RTCW.f aq .shtml
Id software - Overseeing the entire thing especially any engine modifications, mainly they are making sure to protect the name.
Gray Matter Studios - Developing the single player.
Nerve Software - Is developing the Multiplayer
http://www.3dactionplanet.com/wolfenstein/info/
Though I'm curious as to why very few of the docs mention Nerve.
Ok like I would make a comparison between the health showing times of the old test and the new ones, if I've never played it before. :)
Second I like the game alot, I wasn't insulting it alot. People were saying that this is just another boring Q3 mod. I was saying, yes, it is a Q3 Mod (because it is a modificaiton based on the Q3 engine), but it also has an exensive single player game to it also.
Does it seem to anyone else that the gameplay in Return to Castle Wolfenstein seems - or is - Quake 3 all over again, with different weapons?
I highly disagree that the gameplay is similar. Yes, using the same engine ensures that some things will look and feel similar, but I don't see how Wolf's goal based, team oriented gameplay is similar to Quake 3 Arena's "pure arcade deathmatch".
Quake 3: Encourages quick hands, great response times, solo fighting, good knowledge of locations for available power ups, jumping, fast shooting, etc.
RTCW: Encourages knowledge of map routes, countering player classes, teamwork, reloading, delayed respawns, protecting land areas instead of power ups, strategic plans of attack, etc.
To people who hardly ever play 3D shooters, I can see how they would think the games were similar, but I doubt you or I are in that category.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Anybody got any information about when it will be available or, if it's available now, where to get it?
cygnuhchur
Anyone have a list of ipchains rules / ports that need to be forwarded to play RTCW from a IP masqueraded / firewalled lan? I've got a linux box running ipchains / masquerading and can't seem to get RTCW going with ipchains up.
I know RTCW uses udp ports in the 27950-60 range, but simply port forwarding these across the lan doesn't seems to work. I didn't have to do anything fancy to get Unreal Tournament working, so I'm wondering if RTCW did something wierd with their networking code.
i use this bot on my server. It works fairly well. It needs some work done on it, but it is still being developed. http://www.baz.com/quark/software/wab/
I can't find an x86 linux version - it looks like you'll need
to run out and purchase a copy of Microsoft (R)
Windows(TM) to test this version. If you ask me, Wolf
costs to much.
-craig
Hey guys, after waiting like 2 hours for my download, and then another hour and a half to download it... I threw it up on my server... college is cool. Get it here
In the first test with FF turned off, a german could fly over the wall by being hit by a rocket(or grenade).
Check Linuxgames for more info and another mirror.
http://www.bluesnews.com/files/idstuff/wolf/linux/ wolfmptest2-0.9.20.shtml
Shouldn't there be a /. filter that would not post comments that have something like 98.5% the same content as previous posts? The dead baby jokes (if you can call most of them funny) and the /. Troll Guide come to mind 8-)
I was looking on linuxgames and they had a link to the port of the test 2 for those of us without windows, here is the link: ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/wolf/linux/ There is the full and no media versions as was the case for the last test.
Let's make it simple -- id is not, and may never be a good game development company.
Hold those flames, though. id is an *incredible* game *engine* development company. id work has gone into all sorts of amazing games. Their engines still blow me away. But really, the "game" that comes out with each new engine (quake, doom) is nothing much more than a glorified tech demo without much gameplay. Other companies take these incredible engines and make polished games with them.
I really am serious. quake had no story, not a lot of variety, mediocre multiplayer (yes, deathmatch was novel when it was invented, but it's hardly been as long-lived as, say, Team Fortress). The reason quake was so popular and so long-lived was because of the great mods that came out and quake-engine games that came out. *Those* are actual, complete games. Quake is just an engine with a demo on top.
Every time a new id comes out with a new "game", though, it advances the state-of-the-art in 3d gaming, so I like seeing the Quake logo in stores...
Ragnar
Excellent point. That's pretty much happened with most generes
Might be that plot structure is already happening...Half-Life, Max Payne, the older and unfortunately not-widely-played Marathon all have actual, immersive plots.
Here's a small mirror site for those of you who are interested:
http://tuxbox.by-a.com
Robert Duffy and Graeme Devine. Looks like an OSX build is coming down too, cool.
or linux ?