Something Awful, a shining example of maturity and intellectual discouse

[giza]

Oh wait, they're just a bunch of kids who like to break stuff.

Say, did you all hear the one about The SomethingAwful goon who went on a shooting rampage?

Comments

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

Isn't website vandalism a form of terrorism nowadays? ^.^

What're you guys going to do about it?

[giza.livejournal.com]

Terrorism requires some planning and forethought. I think SA comes up a bit short(sighted) in that department.

We'll just keep banning IPs that are used to vandalize. Persistent ones will get reported to their ISP.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Number of furries on every newsgroup and every forum planetwide who have gone off on killing sprees - 0.

Number of SA goons who have gone off on killing sprees - 1.

I, a furry, laugh out loud at the SA folks. My grandmother would say something about roosters coming home to roost.

[danruk.livejournal.com]

Just makes me wonder what SA(goon) is going to try to perpetrate something on Anthrocon 2006? I was around for the last "alleged" SA Goon. Yes, the guy in of himself was doing it more to 'get a reaction out of the con' than to really take anything beyond that. In famous Douglas Adams terms he was "mostly harmless".

I don't anticipate a repeat of Feral 2004 ever happening. The critical failure of the Goon when those of us attending the camp laughed it off even made it that much worse for his wasted time.

Anyhow... just my thoughts.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, the individual who you speak of:

1) Doesn't seem to be much liked by the other SA Goons

and

2) Has been guilty of multiple instances of vandalizing/blanking articles on WikiFur, and even deleting critical comments that other people have left on their talk pages. Once again, his actions prove that SomethingAwful goons simply cannot stand critcism, and will happily censor other people if given the opportunity.

[duncanroo.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but the furry fandom brings the whole SA debacle onto itself.

For every "Fucking furries..." thread that shows up on Something Awful, there are seventeen "We're normal...shut up!!!" replies.

Just let it go, people. Fuel to the fire if you don't.

-- Duncan

[giza.livejournal.com]

You mean that furs actually go onto SA's forums and complain? Wow. That seems like an exercise in futility to me.

I'm fine with the Goons having their own forums. Let them say whatever they want there. It's when they come onto our forums and our Wikis is when I have issues.

[duncanroo.livejournal.com]

But having a "Something Awful" entry on Wikifur is sort of instigating a fight, too. I don't think there's a winning side here.

-- Duncan

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

No more so than all the SA goons going to furry forums and talking crap about people. Respect is a two-way street.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Well, we're trying to keep the article as factual as possible. In fact, personal attacks are against WikiFur policy (http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/WikiFur:No_personal_attacks).

If you see something in the article that doesn't belong there, please let us know!

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

I'm reasonably sure that quite a lot of the material on that page has actually been contributed by members of the Something Awful forums. It wasn't started by them, but the first significant edits (http://furry.wikia.com/index.php?title=SomethingAwful.com&diff=1303&oldid=1293) after that were made by Verix, who is a member (as well as being one of our admins, though that came afterwards).

Furry fandom didn't ask for this...

[xydexx.livejournal.com]

...and folks need to quit blaming the victim and saying furries are instigating this. Well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) folks have been telling us to ignore SA Goons for five years and they'll "eventually get bored and go away."

Interestingly enough, this advice is most often dished out by doodlesthegreat, who after giving this useful advice then went to Further Confusion, took pictures of the attendees, and then posted them to SA for TEH LULZ. So I think we can safely say "ignore them and they'll go away" doesn't work—especially when we've got Goons in our own community happily stabbing us in the back.

For every "Fucking furries..." thread that shows up on Something Awful, there are seventeen "We're normal...shut up!!!" replies.

Indeed, it's pretty obvious that trying to reason with them doesn't work either. So instead, I think the proper response to "Fucking furries" from now on should be "Hey, at least we don't go on shooting rampages."

I mean, let's face it, the one thing SA Goons can't stand is when someone gives them a taste of their own medicine... so since ignoring them doesn't work, and trying to reason with them doesn't work, maybe we just need to use language they understand.

From now on, every time they throw "fucking furries" or "ZOMG FURFAG RUSH" or any one of their stupid, unfunny, and endlessly tiresome LOL INTERNETS catchphrases at us, we can reply with something like this:

Right click, Save Image As...

Indeed, we can reply with this over and over and over and over and over again until they get as tired of it as we are with them dishing out the crap in the first place. And when they jump on the WAAAAAAAHMBULANCE and whine at us and say it wasn't Something Awful's fault and how they're all not like that, we can tell them to just ignore us and we'll get bored of it eventually!

That'll be real Comedy Gold. -=)

(The other option is for Something Awful Goons to stop being asshats who vandalize wikis and instead start doing things that are actually funny, but c'mon... what are the chances that's going to happen.)

Re: Furry fandom didn't ask for this...

[zealianbadass.livejournal.com]

HAH. I remember that one. Nicely snagged.

*saves*

[giza.livejournal.com]

Defunct goons?

Isn't that like "hitting rock bttom and starting to dig"?

[linnaeus.livejournal.com]

The whole "oh, that can't be a real goon. Lowtax (praised be his name) has declared baiting furries to be old meme" is hard to take very seriously, as one of the people I've heard espouse it is the same guy who originally posted "Hay l00k evrybody! A furry wiki! Go look but don't vandalize cuz taht's OLD MEME wink wink." to SA. Which is doubly sad because if someone's going to be a troll, they should at least be honest with themselves about it.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Yeah. If these morons who cause trouble and announce themselves as being from "SOMETHING AWFUL DOT COM!" were really not connected to SA, you'd think SA would take steps to distance themselves from them. When I see someone cause trouble and claim it's on behalf of SA, what reason do I have to doubt that? Certainly not experience.

[thraxarious.livejournal.com]

"these wierdo guys aren't furries, they're just freaks claiming to be in the fandom."

Sound familiar?

[giza.livejournal.com]

I don't get it either. Can you elaborate?

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

I believe thraxarious is noting that some furries have said that other people who state they are members of the community are not really viewed as part of it by others in that community, in a similar way to people who state that they are members of SomethingAwful but are rejected by other members. It's the whole "who represents your community, and if they don't represent you, why aren't you killing them?" issue.

[thraxarious.livejournal.com]

I recall hearing about that thing. I think I have some screenies of the forums where they told the guy to go buy guns or how to make things more deadly, I forget exactly...

He was just some kid who wanted to 'fit in' so bad... and due to his attitude got shunned there.

Am I the only one that thinks this is bizarre?

[wildw0lf.livejournal.com]

Why would SA attack this web page? SA has their own strange, wierd images on their website, so why would they go and attack another random Wiki? Is it really someone working for SA, or just someone pretending to be from there? I don't really understand why someone gets off on destroying a web page?

Re: Am I the only one that thinks this is bizarre?

[giza.livejournal.com]

> I don't really understand why someone gets off on destroying a web page?

Probably the same kind of person who gets off on vandalizing someone else's property in real life. At best, it's a basic lack of consideration for others and overall immaturity. At worst, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a substantial number of goons suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000921.htm) or some equally debilitating condition.

Really, I can't help but feel sorry for some of the goons, and hope that they get mental help some day to address their underlying problems.

Re: Am I the only one that thinks this is bizarre?

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

They (and when I say "they", I'm aware that it's only a proportion, but a significant proportion) do it because they can, because they find it fun. You should have seen it when we were chosen as their Awful Link of the Day . . .

On the other hand, this was also the best thing that could have happened in terms of exposure. We got a lot of new users on the above day, helping out to control the vandalism. Many went on to become significant contributors to the wiki. So, swings and roundabouts.

Any popular site with editable content gets this sort of thing sooner or later. Fortunately MediaWiki is resistant to such attacks because it has been designed to cope with them.

[skippyfox.livejournal.com]

That article must be old...all of the links are dead.

[giza.livejournal.com]

The date at the top says November 3rd, 2005. That's ~6 months old.

My contribution to the discussion?

[ionotter.livejournal.com]