The Mindless Poster
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Hehe, I found this article from Wired quite amusing. The author has a rather nonsensical sense of humor, but its entertaining nonetheless.
Here's my paraphrasing of the article:
Four Foolproof Tips to help you fake an intelligent opinion on Message Boards
- The One-Issue Poster
You may not have an opinion about the current issue, but everyone has an opinion about something, whether it's international trade, domestic education or the way cakes in the grocery store look really good but taste like frosted teddy bear fur. Luckily, everything is connected on some tenuous level, so there's no reason to talk about things you don't care about.
The easiest approach is to blame a current or former politician for everything that goes wrong. But even if there's no conceivable connection, you can always take the digression express: "The war between Belgium and Finland only adds chaos to a world already torn by the lack of good delivery pizza in the East Bay."
- The Enigma
Don't want to take a stand on a controversial issue, but are dying to contribute to the conversation anyway? Just share a single, vaguely pertinent fact. Context-free data is to an online discussion as raw meat is to a cage full of starving Rottweilers and indignant vegetarians. Say you're looking at an article about gun control. Just pop in and say, "Over 10,000 unarmed people are shot to death by criminals each year."
Are you in favor of gun control or against it? You're not saying, but people on both sides will leap to the attack. You'll be the belle of the brawl. By the way, I just made that statistic up. You can go ahead and make up your statistics, too. It just gives people more to argue about.
- The In-Joker
At any given moment, approximately 400 catch phrases are circulating on the web. You don't need any actual wit to adopt one. Even if you're not up on the latest gags, you can always fall back on these standbys: "I, for one, welcome our new (subject of article) overlords." "Needs more cowbell." Or simply "Pwned!"
This serves two purposes. First, it establishes you as a hipster and wry lover of textual hi-jinks. Secondly, these jokes sometimes appear to the casual observer to be making a keen satirical point.
Note: "All your base are belong to us" is a tempting catch phrase, but resist. This phrase will mark you as dated and out of touch, at least until November 2008, when the phrase will become meta-ironically hip.
- The Cynic
This is one of the easiest techniques, and one of the most powerful. Just remember this handy phrase: "What did you expect?" Did the president get caught trading endangered tiger skins for high-grade heroin? "What did you expect? Politicians are all corrupt." Did tornadoes grind Topeka into a fine, wheat-scented powder? "What did you expect? It's in the middle of tornado country." Did alien amphibians descend upon Canada and devour everyone amid bilingual pleas for mercy? "Come on, there are 100 billion stars in the galaxy. Did you really expect that not one of them would be home to carnivorous toad-people?"
You can pick just one of these techniques, or cycle through all of them. Either way, you'll have something to add to any subject, no matter how esoteric, complex or boring. Enjoy.
Posted byCharles Ang at 8:54 PM
