What Type of Web Commenter Are You?

“The Corrector”. I spent too much time in detention getting my English grades up and learning to get basic punctuation correct. Basic grammar mistakes just jump out at me when I read anything. It’s my curse.

I came across this website years ago, and this article reminded me a lot of it.

http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/index.htm

It is an illustrated list of different kinds of internet flamers. Hit the “begin” button on the right to go through the list.

Im a troll…

LOL me 2!

@LisaL

Not an underware gamer? Hmm, you should try it sometime.

Great post! The ‘Great Post’-er commenter is everywhere.

These discussions always require reference to Gene Spafford’s 1992 quote about Usenet (just substitute Internet, blogs, web, etc. for Usenet):

“Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea — massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.”

I’m so sick of the unacknowledged expert.

Is a “troll” anyone who disagrees with the majority?

If 95% think one way on a controversial topic, and the “troll” thinks another way, that will almost always “provoke a furious reaction” no matter how respectful the post is.

One-sided blogs are generally intolerant of opposing views. They like to have their own website without input from the other side. Anyone who comes in is viciously attacked until one side gets tired of posting.

But the “troll” in this case is blamed, with almost no responsibility on the many posters who attack him.

I must be a Parser because I mentally screamed at the rationalization “the Web is designed to be fast, fresh and sloppy.” Dammit, no! Nothing is going anywhere in the extra minute it would take to spell-check something!

dogrun81, as I understand it, the “troll” designation is for those who make deliberately incendiary comments just for the sake of stirring up trouble. However, many people apparently have difficultly distinguishing between that behavior and sincerely voicing an unpopular opinion (though to be fair, trolls often try to appear as the latter type).

Yes… And then there is Oomi.

What about the one who always points out that we’ve seen this done before and better?
There was a link once at Neatorama that had cartoons of Internet character types. It was cute.

@Mytake

You know what’s worse? The people that listen to them and do nothing but complain about them.

They forgot “The Marketer” – that’s the fake person on the boards who’s really there to either (a) hype the product or (b) be a ‘real’ person and correct bad press, via blogs. Deceitful!