Conversation with an FC troll, on the art and future of trolling, one year after the demise of Fvcked Company

http://www.merryweatherjones.com/content/conversation_with_an_fc_troll,_on_the_art_and_future_of_trolling,_one_year_after_the_demise_of_fvcked_company Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:43:22 GMT Conversation with an FC troll, on the art and future of trolling, one year after the demise of Fvcked Company "Fucked Company is a website created by Philip J. Kaplan as a "dot-com dead pool" which reports dot-com or technological companies having serious or embarrassing problems. The web site also sells rumor listings to subscribers. The site's name is a parody of Fast Company, a magazine that began covering technology companies during the Internet dot-com boom." Lord M'Deentor: "This article is certainly getting more 'concise' daily. Would I be amiss if I just edit it down to, 'FC is a website'?" [reading a comment on the discussion page] FC Troll: Wikipedia has some very perceptive editors working on it. They have objectivity on the issue: they have no special relation to FC, or it's forum. They see that FC has basically come and gone, and was never anywhere near as popular as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SomethingAwful" target="_blank">Something Awful</a> forums. The special attention paid to editing the Fucked Company article by old FC members probably caused some of those perceptive editors to take more interest in the Fucked Company page than they otherwise would have, and made it duly, duly smaller than it might have been had the FC forum members not called attention to it. It (a) made the editors take a closer look at the situation than they ever would have (at what is now a rather obscure subject) and (b) react out of frustration to the constant changes made to the Fucked Company article. LM: I remember a poster claiming he'd been banned from Wikipedia when one of the moderators noticed that the only article on which he'd made any contributions was the one regarding <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Kaplan" target="_blank">Philip Kaplan</a>, and that in the year since he'd registered an account on Wikipedia, he'd edited the Philip Kaplan page nearly every day, often so that it claimed that he and his business partner, Gidon Wise, had died in a BDSM-related accident. FCT: That was probably Pud. LM: Did you ever read that post on <a href="http://www.whofailedtoday.com/forum/viewforum.php?id=1" target="_blank">Whofailedtoday</a>, where the guy confessed to having sent Adbrite execs links to kiddy porn threads on FC? He let them know that child pornography was responsible for most of the traffic they'd been receiving, and two days later, the board was down. He said he was sad the boards were gone, but that he'd do it again. Not because he was opposed to child pornography, but because he enjoyed torturing Pud. FCT: Live by the troll, die by the troll. It's only very fitting that the board collapse under the weight of a massive troll, and even more fitting that the person who created that troll complained as loud or louder than anyone about the demise of the boards, but not before having bragged about having authored the troll, and offered concrete proof. LM: In the same way, they drove off the most amusing and notorious posters among them, stalking and harrassing anyone who posted the smallest morsel of personal information. Would you consider that trolling, or bullying? FCT: There's no hard answer to that question. To some people, a troll is a kind of bully, to others a bully is a kind of troll. LM: But would it not be fair to say that off-net trolling more closely resembles what is commonly known as 'playing a practical joke'? Pranking someone is not the same as stalking them. FCT: Different trolls hold different troll councils. There are many different genres and sub-genres of trolling. I believe the "Bruce Springsteen" troll generally belongs to the catagory of trolling which might simply be called 'creating a hoax;' like that Orson Wells radio broadcast about the alien invasion. Normally, with this kind of troll, someone creates a news article or press release and tries their hardest to convince as large a number of people as possible that it's genuine. Now, if you accept that this is a defined sub-genre of trolling, then the Bruce Springsteen angle can be seen as a parody of that sub-genre, where someone begins with a story, or a fragment of a story, and then mentions a line about Bruce Springsteen, or simply makes the article link to a story about Bruce Springsteen. LM: So that type of trolling would be considered an in-joke amongst the troll culture of FC? FCT: The Bruce Springsteen troll is an example of something very specific to one cell of trolls. Troll cells or troll "pods" are like the swamps of the Internet. There are some issues and topics that are relevant to all swamps across the land, and then there are others which are only specific to certain swamps. In one swamp the brown mushrooms might be edible, in another they might be poisonous. LM: How did you discover the Fucked Company message board? FCT: I found it through <a href="http://www.big-boards.com/" target="_blank">big-boards.com</a>. Of course, you know that big-boards is a website which catalogues the largest, most active boards on the Internet. LM: If you think of servers in terms of real estate, and websites as being a kind of club or restaurant, it would be the Internet's equivalent of the Zagat Survey. FCT: It helps people locate popular boards that will serve to entertain them daily, whether they're participating or just reading. When a website is very active, it means that it's content will be consistently replenished. LM: And yet, despite it's viewership, FC wasn't as widely known as some other forums. FCT: It was never used by as many people as Something Awful or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan" target="_blank">4chan</a>. Even during the height of it's popularity, it probably didn't have a fraction of the active members SA had. It had a lot of registered names but I think many of them were being registered by the same people. The name of the message board itself never became a catch phrase like 4chan or SA. For example, you would sometimes see on other websites a poster saying something like "You're behaving like 4chaners." You would never see someone post "You're behaving like FCers." It just wasn't that well known. I would say also that it's relative obscurity owes something to the fact that FC was further removed from the juvenilia of either of those sites. It began as an e-biz board, a resource for news and rumors about tech layoffs. LM: Do you think it was a difficult board to post on? FCT: The answer is obviously yes. It was a very raw forum. Anyone who'd spent time on those "play nice" boards would be uncomfortable posting on FC. If you saw anything like the troll threads on FC on another site, those trolls would have to be so deft as to be unidentifiable as trolls. Otherwise, that person would be banned and their thread deleted, because those boards had no tolerance for trolling. They saw trolls as being something very foul and dirty, like a wolf in the hen house. The moderators of those forums felt like shepards who had to valiently swoop down to protect their flock from the evil trolls, preserving their innocence, their child-like glare. You just realized very quickly that there was a culture of trolling that was unique to FC: they were troll tolerant. LM: Over the years, the board became more and more like a den of thieves, with popular monikers being passed from one person to another in Dread Pirate Roberts fashion. Was FC the "Harvard" of Internet trolling? FCT: More like the "Mensa" of trolling. The members thought very highly of themselves: they thought the average net user was quite stupid. The point of the trolling you're talking about was largely an experience in demonstrating the perceived stupidity of these other forums. LM: Like the famed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormfront_(website)" target="_blank">Stormfront.org</a> take-over, where members of FC transformed the white nationalist forum into an interracial, homosexual dance party. FCT: Yes, that is one the most frequently observed horror stories. Like every other issue associated with FC or FFC, the facts or the truth are completely irrelevant. LM: So you don't believe it happened the way old FCers tell it? FCT: I'm saying it may or may not be true. LM: Both Something Awful and FC claim to have pioneered the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx" target="_blank">goatse</a> troll. Is it possible that this was another FC invention? FCT: The goatse troll orginated with the man who took the photograph. I do not know whether he was a member of either of these forums. Whether or not the goatse website was discovered and popularized by members of either of these forums is also up for debate. LM: Do you see Pud as a shrewd businessman, or a dork who got lucky? FCT: First of all, his name was not "Pud." His name was Philip Kaplan. And the rumor I heard was that he stole the idea for FC from his college roommate, that he's never had an original idea in his life, but that he did have rich parents. Fandalism, Image Dump, the diet website, seem to confirm this. LM: Why do you think he took FC offline? FCT: As successful as FC was, Adbrite was more lucrative. The jester jumped onto the throne and put the crown on his head--the FCers went out to dance but they never got the chance. LM: Do you believe the increased accessability of the Internet in recent years has made trolling more or less interesting? FCT: Well, let's compare trolls of the Internet to the pick pockets, drug accdicts, and perverts one might find in a large city park. If the city experiences a large increase in growth, with many newcomers and out of towners (especially naive and trusting out of towners), is it good for the unsavory park element outlined above? LM: You don't feel the increased censorship is a bit stifling? FCT: Trolls are obviously against the regulation of the Internet, in the same way that they avoid and do not thrive on closely monitored and heavily moderated Internet forums. Of course, the troll is the consumate cockroach. I'm sure they will find pathways to the mischief and disorder they desire through the strictist regulation thrown at them. LM: Do you see FC as having been the last of the thriving free-speech forums--do you even see it as having been a free-speech forum? FCT: It probably came as close as any board to being totally uncensored. The Internet is a big place. There could be other boards out there like that, I'm not sure. I do know that there are many message boards out there that consider themselves to be free-speech boards until some actual trolls show up. Then they become moderated forums. LM: On many popular message boards, there is confusion among moderators and posters alike as to what a troll actually is. How would you define being a "troll" in the brieftest terms? FCT: Premeditated troublemaking. Intellectual terrorism at it's worst. At it's most innocent, some antisocial goober who gets a thrill out of giving someone the wrong directions. LM: Do you have a favorite troll? FCT: It would be impossible to relate a troll to a common audience without reproducing the entire thread, as there is no standard repertoire of trolling. LM: Let me rephrase that--do you have a favorite troll moniker? FCT: My own trolls will always be most memorable for me, because all trolls love their own stone and their own ripples. LM: But if you had to name one... FCT: I liked the trolls that would seriously imitate press releases that reported in a very professional manner that e, c, or d-list celebrities had passed away in a very pathetic way. Like, say, the French Stewart troll. Or that other one about Pat Morita found lying in a ditch, which persisted even after the actor's actual death. LM: Those were your trolls. FCT: Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, those trolls now belong to all of us, like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. LM: If it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you mind explaining to those not in the know, "mapa bacon"? FCT: Mapa Bacon is a secret handshake, for a very dark, bitter, hateful fraternity. Any reader could take the string and follow it to the origin of the statement with a little investigation, if they so desired. LM: If you could meet one FCer in real life, who and why? FCT: The answer to that is the person behind MABS. LM: Mr_Adolph_Bin_Streisand? FCT: Just so I could have a long and hard laugh right to his face, and watch him powerless to do anything. No lost teeth, no Polynesian Kung Fu. LM: You weren't a fan of the Hustlas? FCT: (On the subject of your trolls...) I wouldn't say that. The Hustla posts consistently betrayed wit and wisdom absent from the typical urban rhetoric. At times, they could be quite refreshing. LM: I've seen people try to recreate the language on other boards, totally misunderstanding the joke, using Hustla catchphrases and buzz words, but conducting the troll as just another lowly MTV wigger. FCT: It's like going into <a href="http://www.merryweatherjones.com/content/death_watch:_mario_batali" target="_blank">Mario Batali</a>'s Babo and having a delicious meal and thinking you can go home and reconstruct it. There was a real artist behind that meal, just like there was a real artist behind the MABS troll. LM: Do you think the Hustla posters were poking fun at stereotypical "gangsta" themes, or the people offended by them? FTC: I think it was a double-ended skewer. They were skewering both, you know, obviously the gangster lifestyle, and also the people they were trolling who didn't get it. The joke was pretty much on everyone. LM: Many FCers disliked the Hustla trend. FCT: I suppose they knew it was a joke, but they didn't think it was funny. The older posters probably tended to dislike it, and younger people tended to be more amused by it. LM: Do you believe, as many who claim to be knowledgeable do, that Pud was the first Hustla? FCT: Philip Kaplan should by all rights be too busy to participate in these extensive on-going trolls. I used to think he was Original_Lonely_Guy, but seeing OLG posting on spin-off boards for the benefit of literally seven individuals has crushed that theory. LM: Do you think the average Hustla post was out of his league? He wasn't very intellectually skillful. FCT: I agree. None of the writings that have been attributed to Philip Kaplan show that he was able to produce the pockets of wisdom and humor which were woven into the urban speak of some of the better Hustla monikers. You could tell it was a smarter person in control of those names. LM: When MABS was supposedly "outed" as being an engineer employed by NASA, did you dismiss it as just another troll? FCT: Some bored employee sitting around in front of a bunch of computers all day could easily have used FC to entertain himself. Although in my experience, NASA engineers aren't that witty. LM: What would you say was your favorite reaction to a troll? FCT: It was satisfying when they responded to a post at absolute face value, sometimes spilling out several paragraphs worth of diatribe. For some reason, it was equally funny when someone would post that they knew it was a troll, a bad troll, but they still took the time to tell you. LM: Sometimes the moniker itself can be a troll. That was something FCers did especially well. Any favorites? FCT: Alan_Keyes_is_making_gravey. In case the reader doesn't know, he had a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Keyes_Is_Making_Sense" target="_blank">short-lived</a> program on MSNBC. LM: I'll always maintain a fondness for Honda_full_of_Silver, who supposedly lost it when silver tanked, relocating to Montana with one of my female monikers, where he murdered her and made a woman suit. FCT: The best FC trolls literally sat around wracking their brains for the worst, but also most creative and original ways of shocking their audience. LM: They didn't just go around posting offensive words or comments. There was always a subtle twist, where the reader was lead, unsuspecting, into the bog of the troll's imagination. FCT: Like the guy who tried in his thread title to make people believe the head of deceased Canadian actor John Candy had been robbed from a grave, only to put something completely different in the body of the post. LM: They were masters of imagery. FCT: I'll never forget it. But it was just one small stud in a box of jewels I inherited from my short time on those forums. FC was like the Nexus, and we were plucked from it suddenly and abruptly. And like Dr. Soran, most FCers will spend the remainder of their lives trying to get back, wasting their days on substandard facsimiles. Philip Kaplan, Adbrite, Something Awful http://www.merryweatherjones.com/content/conversation_with_an_fc_troll,_on_the_art_and_future_of_trolling,_one_year_after_the_demise_of_fvcked_company http://www.merryweatherjones.com/viewcomments.php?articleid=154