Category: Trolling

Fawning

Usually it all starts with a sickly transparent appeal for the acceptance and affection of a group by a complete outsider. Often the fawning stage is baldly disguised as self-deprecation, but more often it begins as a contrived yet frank attempt to become part of a group. The endorphin rush of acceptance accompanies the act of fawning rather than the acceptance itself.

Denial

Suffering from the contradictory feelings of total rejection and overwhelming delusional acceptance, the rejected outsider’s ego snaps and he or she inevitably posts jocular comments under many different names, always usurping the identities of those who refuse to validate his or her fawning. This is a sad attempt at “play” from an outsider in complete denial of the obvious rejection. I have seen this stage last for months, and the number of handles used by the same individual, “Geo,” reached a record of 63 different “identities.” This list is incomplete, however, and dates from July of 2011. Since then, “Geo” has repeatedly continued through this cycle and added countless nicks to his trophy case of shame.

Aggression

Having finally reconciled the rejection, the subject goes on the attack. The most common statement is something like, “I used to like your group, but you’ve gone way downhill recently.” This stage may also last for months, and often the use of transparent alternate identities will persist, even though the repetitive and absurd comments follow an all-too-easily recognized pattern.

Ragequit

The famously obvious Ragequit is often extremely dramatic, but always entirely meaningless. Sometimes it’s really just a part of the aggression stage and it doesn’t necessarily signify a reset in the cycle. Often saying absurd things like “I’m quitting the Internet” or “I’m never visiting this website again,” the rejected person might even try to portray their rage as a quiet and sad admission to the failure of their fawning, only to revert back to the fawning stage within a few days. (Or a single day in THIS case)

I recently posted a very long work to the secretive and prickly SubGenius newsgroup at the suggestion of a SubGenius friend. Many supporters and detractors of Anonymous found this work a valuable analysis of the stagnant discourse plaguing the nascent Anarchic movement, and much of it was obviously inspired or borrowed from the Book of the SubGenius. Some SubGenii, however, immediately identified this as an act of fawning, and set to the same kind of public shaming I’ve dealt out to “Geo” for the past year. My ironic wit immediately engaged in a rapid-fire parody of the vicious cycle of rejection, but this “Satire and Parody fan club” seemed to have succumbed to dementia and failed to recognize the sarcasm. Sadly, I am now trapped in this cycle and any move will be interpreted as one of the four stages of Internet rejection.

“Keep telling yourself that, pinkboy.” ~ Rev. Ivan Stang

In a highly charged article by Frank Mason, executive editor for the Internet Chronicle, questions were raised about an Anonymous “moralfag” known as MotorMouth, who runs the MotorMouthNews twitter feed. MotorMouth might be described as one of many leaders within Anonymous, but he considers himself more of an educator. His self-styled role in Anonymous is purportedly to keep new members in line with the principles of freedom of press, freedom of religion, and freedom of information.

In Frank Mason’s article, MotorMouth is depicted as a “bounty hunter.” While MotorMouth has confirmed that the pastebin referenced in Mason’s article was legitimate, he says the statements were taken out of context. “I said I was a bounty hunter as a part of an experiment to see how [Jamie Corne] would react. And she took the bait,” MotorMouth stated.

This disinformation campaign against MotorMouth allegedly started over MotorMouth’s refusal to support the Stratfor hack. MotorMouth suggests that the smear campaign against him might have even been Sabu’s idea.

While this is all very interesting, this cyberwar bullshit must be taken with a grain of salt. In the heavily edited words of Frank Mason: “So remember anons, if you see this man[/woman/ANYONE WHO CLAIMS TO BE FROM ANONYMOUS], do not divulge information to him[/her]. He[/she] could be a bounty hunter hooking up crooked cops, so better safe than sorry. Like we used to say back in the World War II days: ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships!'”

In the post Sabu era, this is more true than ever.