Slashdot Mirror
You Look Like You Need a Guinness
prestidigital writes "This is a great fictional advertisement (high bandwidth) for Guinness. I say "fictional" because it is from the movie Minority Report. You may recall that Steven Spielberg is known for heavy branding in movies ala the opening scenes from Back to the Future (Burger King and Pepsi plastered all over). Well, apparently he has taken it a step further by weaving it into the very fabric of the plot in Minority Report. Cool ads if you can afford to wait for them. Lexus is good."
A while back Don Henley created an album called Building the Perfect Beast His first solo album it surprised many with tracks like Sunset Grill All She Wants To Do Is Dance my favorite Driving With Your Eyes Closed and Jon Katzs favorite Boys of Summer I was listening to this album on illegallyripped MP3s while reading the Slashdot trolls and started brainstorming what would make the perfect troll This article serves as a directed introduction to building the perfect trollFirst we need to define trolling This is harder than it sounds because everyone has their own definition of a troll or better their own definition of a good troll I am going to use multiple definitions to create a very broad ideal of the term troll Any post that meets ONE of the definitions below is considered a trolla A message widely regarded as an annoyanceb A message which insults the editors with no regard to meritc A message which flames another user for their viewsd Any message which is designed to enrage the standard slashdot userFor the purposes of this post a good troll is one that spawns many angry responses There are other sides of trolling such as crapflooding which do not generate any responses usually These sorts of trolls are out of the scope of this articleThere are 6 dimensions of a good troll annoyance arguability subtlety topicality logicality and permeance By NO means should a good troll use only one dimension although some dimensions are inherently contradictory using as many as possible will result in a good trollAnnoyanceThis is the allstar of the troll spectrum Racial comments page wideninglengthing misinformation deragatory comments etc all are considered an annoyance But be careful The common pitfall is the annoyance is used to frequently and too loudly Subtlety is a necessity if you are going to use this with any sort of success read more about this below Here are some examples of good and bad annoyancesBad You stupid fucking nigger Im going to kick your faggot ass if I ever see you you shitface cocksucking animal This will be modded down immediately and will probably not be responded to This message will largely be ignored thus limiting the troll affectPosting factual inaccuracies is great when combined with annoyance the Slashdots will fall over themselves correcting your every moveGood Its posts like these that question the education system of America If you were paying any attention at school you would know that the South won the Civil War because of their views no slavery It was Abraham Lincolns last stand at Gettysburg that caused Slavery to go awayMaking references to your education as proof that you are right is excellent especially when in your troll you make it obvious that you dont have anyBad I studied this topic in great depth when writing my PhD thesis at MIT As it turns out the limiting factor of sorting function with completely randomized data Good Oh I took a class about this at the DeVry Institute According to the reseptionist notice intentionally bad spelling the integral of ex2 is ex so its got to be rightArguabilityPosts such as You fucking faggot Im going to kill you has no element of arguability You want to post a view in an inflammatory way that will incite a great argument There is a right way and a wrong way to doing this Usually if you are outright cursing at the poster or editor its the wrong wayExamplesBad You worthless piece of horseshit Your views are wrong jackassGood This study post link to mostly irrelevant and offtopic study indicates there is a strong correlation between deviance and Linux usersDrawing illogical conclusions based on incorrect statements is a great way to instate a nerd riot ExampleGood When ESR said that Windows is losing clientelle he used intentionally bad grammar which is inherent proof that his ideals are flawedPermeanceQuestion If a troll posts a troll and no one reads it is it still a troll Answer NoA troll can only have so much longevity I call this principle permeance Permeance is judged by the number of people who will see and read a post and to a lesser extent respond to it Good formatting grammar and spelling all contribute to a posts permeance but the real factor is contentMost of you spend a lot of time reading at 1 presumably so you will know that a fair amount of racist and antisemetic comments are posted Most Slashdot users will not see these because they are at 1 klercks PLP and PWP are ultimately a failure because few see themTo maximize permeance you have to 1 Sound like you now what you are talking about 2 Sound like you have a stake in your point of view maening you care about what you think and 3 Express it without homophobia any sort of racism and discrimination You will see that trolls at 1 and even 2 use this principle You will see that trolls at 0 and 1 do not use this principle This brings us toFirst Fundamental Theorem of Trolling Anonymous Cowards by definition rarely succeed in posting a good trollSecond Fundamental Theorem of Trolling If an AC succeeds in a good troll it would even be better if it were posted at 1 or 2 by default SubtletyCertain posts SCREAM This is a troll Please ignore it These are not successful trolls As a troll your every urge is to scream YOU FUCKING FAGGOT HOW CAN YOU THINK THE WAY YOU DO to the Slashbot homos Resist this at every cost You need to diplomatically insult them Its hard I know but it will result in success GOOD PHRASESYou should know by now that Havent you learned anything from eventWhat a stereotypical viewWas this post sarcasticI cant believe the level of ignorance of that point of viewTopicalityThis is a nobrainer and therefore Im not going to spend much time discussing it Why do you think BSD is Dying trolls rarely get responses when they are posted under one of Jon Katzs articlesLogicalityDid I make that word up Probably But its principle is still important use every logical fallacy that you know of when writing trolls Jump to illogical conclusions Misquote or misrepresent parents posts when responding Make references to studies linking them to a 404 not found page You get the idea This one isnt hard to introduce but its wildly successful in getting Slashcock responsesThis is a brief introduction to the good trolling Soon I will post an article about combining dimensions and look at some good and bad trolls in the past
-pwpbot
Excellent troll btw. People flock by the half-dozen (so far) and counting !