Welcome to the Internet.

[wado]

Welcome to the Internet.

No one here likes you.


We're going to offend, insult, abuse, and belittle the living hell out of you. And when you rail against us with "FUCK YOU YOU GEEK WIMP SKATER GOTH LOSER PUNK FAG BITCH!1!!", we smile to ourselves. We laugh at you because you don't get it. Then we turn up the heat, hoping to draw more entertainment from your irrational fuming.

We will judge you, and we will find you unworthy. It is a trial by fire, and we won't even think about turning down the flames until you finally understand.

Some of you are smart enough to realize that, when you go online, it's like entering a foreign country ... and you know better than to ignorantly screw with the locals. You take the time to listen and think before speaking. You learn, and by learning are gladly welcomed.

For some of you, it takes a while, then one day it all dawns on you - you get it, and are welcomed into the fold.

Some of you give up, and we breathe a sigh of relief - we didn't want you here anyway. And some of you just never get it. The offensively clueless have a special place in our hearts - as objects of ridicule. We don't like you, but we do love you.

"How dare you! I used to beat the crap out of punks like you in high school/college!" You may have owned the playing field because you were an athlete. You may have owned the student council because you were more popular. You may have owned the hallways and sidewalks because you were big and intimidating. Well, welcome to our world.

Things like athleticism, popularity, and physical prowess mean nothing here. We place no value on them ... or what car you drive, the size of your bank account, what you do for a living or where you went to school.

Allow us to introduce you to the concept of a "meritocracy" - the closest thing to a form of self-government we have. In The United Meritocratic nation-states of the Internet, those who can do, rule. Those who wish to rule, learn. Everyone else watches from the stands.

You may posses everything in the off-line world. We don't care. You come to the Internet penniless, lacking the only thing of real value here: knowledge.

"Who cares? The Internet isn't real anyway!" This attitude is universally unacceptable. The Internet is real. Real people live behind those handles and screen names. Real machines allow it to exist. It's real enough to change government policy, real enough to feed the world's hungry, and even, for some of us, real enough to earn us a paycheck. Using your own definition, how "real" is your job? Your stock portfolio? Your political party? What is the meaning of "real", anyway?

Do I sound arrogant? Sure ... to you. Because you probably don't get it yet.

If you insist on staying, then, at the very least, follow this advice:

1) No one, ESPECIALLY YOU, will make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

2) Use your brain before ever putting fingers to keys.

3) Do you want a picture of you getting anally raped by Bill Clinton while you're performing oral sex on a cow saved to hundreds of thousands of people's hard drives? No? Then don't put your fucking picture on the Internet. We can, will, and probably already HAVE altered it in awful ways. Expect it to show up on an equally offensive website.

4) Realize that you are never, EVER going to get that, or any other, offensive web page taken down. Those of us who run those sites LIVE to piss off people like you. Those of us who don't run those sites sometimes visit them just to read the hatemail from fools like you.

5) Oh, you say you're going to a lawyer? Be prepared for us to giggle with girlish delight, and for your lawyer to laugh in your face after he explains current copyright and parody law.

6) The Web is not the Internet. Stop referring to it that way.

7) We have already received the e-mail you are about to forward to us. Shut up.

Don't reply to spam. You are not going to be "unsubscribed".

9) Don't ever use the term "cyberspace" (only William Gibson gets to say that, and even he hasn't really used it for two or three books now). Likewise, you prove yourself a marketing-hype victim if you ever use the term "surfing".

10) With one or two notable exceptions, chat rooms will not get you laid.

11) It's a hoax, not a virus warning.

12) The internet is made up of thousands of computers, all connected but owned by different people. Learn how to use *your* computer before attempting to connect it to someone else's.

13) The first person who offers to help you is really just trying to fuck with you for entertainment. So is the second. And the third. And me.

14) Never insult someone who's been active in any group longer than you have. You may as well paint a damn target on your back.

15) Never get comfortable and arrogant behind your supposed mask of anonymity. Don't be surprised when your name, address, and home phone number get thrown back in your smug face. Hell, some of us will snail-mail you a printed satellite photograph of your house to drive the point home. Realize that you are powerless if this happens ... it's all public information, and information is our stock and trade.

16) No one thinks you are as cool as you think you are.

17) You aren't going to win any argument that you start.

1 If you're on AOL, don't worry about anything I've said here. You're already a fucking laughing stock, and there's no hope for you.

19) If you can't take a joke, immediately sell your computer to someone who can. RIGHT NOW.

Pissed off? It's the TRUTH, not these words, that hurts your feelings. Don't ever even pretend like I've gone & hurt them.

We don't like you. We don't want you here. We never will. Save us all the trouble and go away.

[Kitten Champion]

Close the polls. Wado wins.

[Shinku-san]

Yay!!!

[El Bandito]

wado, you have just earned your worthiness (which you already had, this just really, really shows it), thank god this thread is a sticky, maybe newcomers will read it. what? i can hope



EDIT: put this in in the hope that if both of these posts were in the same sticky it might help, but I doubt it

Because I'm feeling especially bored and helpful...

Kitten Champion's Guide to a Moron's Forum Survival

1. We don't talk about Ninjaburger here. This isn't some twisted outgrowth of Fight Club mentality, it's just fact. Ninjaburger exists, it's all there for you to look at and laugh over at the main page. There's plenty of things on the topic of Ninjaburger, at the actual website, so don't come in here expecting discussions about deliveries, fast food, or anything else. We leave that to other websites who have yet to feel the warm, inviting kiss of a Ninjaburger link, so we're over it on the home front, and will make fun of you for talking about it.

2. We don't talk about martial arts here. There are lots of forums you can go to, if you would like a serious discourse on the best way to clean your haori or tie your hakama or study Niten-Ryu. If you decide to come here and talk about martial arts in a tone neither sarcastic nor ironis, we will make fun of you. If you have trouble finding a website with a forum where you can discuss lofty items such as these, here are three people who will at least pretend to be nice to you about your stupidity and incapacity to open a Google window.

-Wado
-Izeyoi
-Ninja Gremlin

Any of them will point you in the right direction, so you can leave the rest of us the hell alone.

3. We're not very active. You can pretty much count on one hand the number of people who show up regularly. This is because most of the people before you were idiots who didn't follow the first two rules, and because we do have lives outside of a gray box (most of us, anyway, I really don't). If you start to complain about there being so few people here to talk to, we will make fun of you. Your other option is to simply post so much stupidity in inundates the forum and makes you beloved, but in the same way there is a subtle difference between a lover's caress and a ten-man bukkake team, there is also a line between being stupid funny and being someone we'll end up not enjoying.

4. Roll with the conversation. This is a big thing is most forums, especially Ninjaburger. The conversation is very likely to be off-track by the second page, if not halfway through the first. As such, you have to condition yourself to the tone of the posts. Don't get half-cocked and angry at someone when they make a joke or observation you don't like. Unless everyone else is being a jerk, you shouldn't be one either. If you can't tell the difference, we will make fun of you or ignore you altogether. Spontanaeity is king here, a maddening king yes, but it's our king.

5. Be funny. Usually we're all pretty much in joking moods here. Don't log on if you're going to start sermonzing or getting things involved that aren't funny, because we don't care about serious crap like that. There's enough serious horsefeathers out in the world beyond the gray and blue template of DER FORGE, and we don't need it here. Also, if you act serous or offended, we will make fun of you.

6. The Moderators have no middle-ground. There is no warning system here, where Shinku, Ninja Gamer, and El Bandito will send you a stern private message to behave yourself. If you fuck up bad enough, they make one email to Our Lord and Savior Aeforum and you're not coming back. That said, you have to truly and spectacularly fuck up to get sent home. They'll edit your posts and be funny about it, but they're basically pushovers as long as you aren't consistently an idiot to the point no one is liking it. As a matter of fact, the moderators here are especially easy-going due to the nature of the forum. So while you probably can screw around consistently and be a blistering asshole without getting thrown offstage by Sandman, it's best not to tempt them. They don't do much here anyway except have a title, so giving them an excuse to make the call puts a big sick grin on their faces.

7. Pictures good, words better. Eventually, you're going to discover the randomness and sheer bliss of the Google Image Search. And once you've popped your search cherry, you're going to want to show everyone here what you've learned. Unfortunately, we don't care. Random images are okay, especially if they tie in to whatever stupidity we're discussing at the moment, but if you starts posting just images, you will be made fun of, ignored, and told to go away while we talk about El Bandito's penis. The ONLY exception to this rule is cosplay, because frankly, seeing people dress up like Japanese cartoons is funny. Also, hot-girl cosplay is advocated and encouraged even more strongly. random Penny Arcade, 8-Bit Theatre, or other bastions of not-hot-girl-cosplay however, will usually be ignored. Also AIM chatlogs have never and will never be funny in any context outside of the people involved in it. This goes double for things you saw on TV, the internet, flash games, quizzes, and webcomics. These threads die fast and derail even faster.

8. Finally, if for some reason you've stayed here, weathered all the madness, whimsical braindead arguments, and so forth, long enough, you'll become one of us. There's no real hazing here, especially if you follow these rules not to be an idiot, you should have a very easy time here being accepted. Sure, we might like you eventually anyway, but following these rules makes it easier for you.

Also this happy fellow, , is Angry Puppy. Your master, Your light in the ineffable darkness. If you do not know how to use him, don't make yourself look like an idiot by putting it up anyway. The best way to learn is to see how his greatness is employed.

[Sutenki]

ALL HAIL!

[izeyoi]

This sticky kinda takes the fun out of it doesn't it?

Let's see what Dave-san has to say

[Ninja Gremlin]

I think I love U!

[Biji-san]

You put alot of work into writing that.
Good job.

[Akira Kato]

NOW THAT IS ONE BIG THREAD!

Good Job Wado... Im gunna go play Tenchu now...

[The Dack]

Ahhhhh, free speech still lives without the presance of the ACLU

[Akira Kato]

That is True...

[izeyoi]

ehhh,,,,, go tear your ACL's.....the both of you

[The Dack]

I don't know what that means so uuuummmmm, please accept this a bowl of fried chicken

[Twelfth]

It being well written was a nice touch.

Something, perhaps, that any pending critics should take notice of before responding with rants ending in multiple exclamation marks and a string of unimaginative and hopefully accidental binary code.

[panheadgirl]

OMG LEIK WTF R U SPAK3ING OF?!!?! TTALK3INGG LI3K THIS ISS T3H GR3AETST1!! OMG LOL!!!1!!one