With the honourable exception of the PC Advisor Forums, online discussion forums are magnets for some of the jerkiest people on the web. We profile a dozen of the most common and annoying forum pests.
There's no doubt that online forums give the general public a voice on the web. However, they also create ample opportunity for behaviour of such extreme jerkitude.
You know what I'm talking about: the know-it-alls, fight-starters, and doctrinaire zealots who seem to frequent every message board on the entire web, using any and every topic as a springboard for their sociopathic gratification.
We've sifted through pages of forum messages to find the most absolutely asinine tactics. So get ready to cringe: on the pages that follow you'll meet our nominees for the 12 biggest pests of the web's online forums.
1. The FIRST! Guy
Maybe we should have saved this character for last, but our first offender is the FIRST! Guy - the mental marsupial whose contribution to the great discussions of our online times is to post the first response to any given topic, consisting of the comment 'FIRST!'.
Clever? No. Original? No. Ironically self-mocking in a postmodern deconstructionist kind of way? Uh, no. Puerile? Now you're getting close.
And yet there seem to be multiple FIRST! Guy clones lurking around every forum, ready to share a very important message. Here's hoping that all of these net nuisances find another source of personal pride by their 15th birthday.
2. The self-promoter
The self-promoter is a message board classic: this bore meanders across the web, leaving thinly disguised comments designed to pimp his own project.
Sometimes, he'll take a stab at making the promotion look incidental: 'Man, that new iPhone software does look fab! You should check out my blog about Windows Mobile here!' But just as often, he'll ditch the preamble and launch straight into the link without even trying to tie it to the subject at hand.
Shameless self-promotion really is the worst. The only thing that irks me more is behavioural ad targeting.
NEXT PAGE: The Sermonator and Mr Credentials
Comments
davidb said: whatever
Wolfie3000 said: I know some people that fit a few of theseI must admit im a self promoter and not ashamed to admit itIf theres a thread about a particular game then more often than not il step in to whore my modsgame saves for that gameAlso iv been known to promote games i find interesting and most importantly FREEIm a sucker for free stuff lol
Smarty Pants said: I think theres two missing here1 The Forum Girl A person who signs up with a suggestive username and annexes x on the end of every post Because she claims to be a girl she will instantly be befriended by several male users who will defend her rabidly as she assumes the identity of anyone previously mentioned in the guide2 The Leet guy Someone who replaces letters with numbers in everything they say and assume moral superiority as a result I am cool because I am leet you arent cool because youre not
ZB said: You forgot about superior normal unaffected person I hate those guys
Tweakster said: The Tandy 1000 8086 did come preshipped with the operating system on a ROM chip Bought mine in 87 or so with DOS 30 but booted up with a disk to bypass it and run DOS 50 Smaller footprint I could run programs that were actually not quite 600k Of course I had to buy a new 720k 35 drive and a meg of RAM Used 640-1000k for a RAMDISK to speed things upAdd 700 for a US Robotics 56kbaud modem for blinding speed and the system cost 3000 It was fun to cut my teeth on and no crashes