Hello Darkness! The Official Blog of Helen Keller

Internet Forum Fighting: All the excitement of kicking a smack-talking hobo, but without getting hepatitis C on your shoe...

Folks, granted, it's been a long time since I waded into a good long internet fight night. The last one happened to be the complete boot-fucking I laid down on Dummy Matt including some solid elbow chops to Eyebrock. And then, after that, I was able to beat down Gangstalking AND her army of mental demons with one hand tied to your scrotum.

Don't believe me? Who else could come up with such powerful evidence that none of us even remember what the fuck this article is about?

Most forum fights follow a predictable pattern. Initially, a body will present a point. Either this point is well articulated or it’s a thudding brick dropped from on high. No matter which, eventually somebody will challenge the veracity of the point, either from a factual standpoint or they don’t like the evidence and must destroy that which threatens their broken kaleidoscope world view. Usually, they’ll back up the latter with a bevy of opinions culled from years of knowing nothing. These opinions have all the same authority at settling an argument as writing “me” and “you” on different sides of a manhole cover and flipping it in the air and allowing the guy with the thick moustache and Old Navy sweatshirt who takes his kid’s birthday party to Jumbo Video to eat the free popcorn because “those fuckers at Chuck E Cheese are the real loud-mouthed assholes” be the referee.

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: Opinions mean nothing when compared to facts.

So once you find yourself in an internet donnybrook, what do you do?

Always read their post twice

By reading a post twice, you can usually find more than sufficient error to write an entire response. I’ve seen it all: People who initially start off arguing a point, only to continue on waaaay too long until they contradict themselves later on. By the by, if somebody has two or three edits on their post, they themselves know that particular one is weak. Exploit!

Also, if somebody is going to become an internet seamstress and stitch in a big long outside exposition on the topic, make fucking sure you read the whole damn thing. Oftentimes, what these goobers have done is taken a quick introductory class on the subject at Google U or Wikipedia State College and are becoming whore seamstresses in order to bedazzle with “apparent” proof. Gangstalking or Jaime Souviens, to name two, are examples of people who Xerox work without comprehending it. Nothing’s worse in an argument than having your own evidence fired back at you from the Dummy-Cannon. A tell-tale sign of this is the lack of anything relating the Xeroxed article to the point at hand. If there’s no explanation of the probative value of the article, chances are, they didn’t read it. Exploit!

Click every link

This is more or less an addendum to the above point. Always click the links. ESPECIALLY if there isn’t a relation by the linker of the link to their side of the argument. Nothing screams “bluff” quite like it.

Insults are icing, not cake

If the thrust of your argument or the bulk of your post comes down to insulting the other person, you’ve tacitly agreed you’ve lost. Always, always, always keep arguing the main point. The point of hockey is to score goals, but it doesn’t mean you can’t pull somebody’s shirt up and pound the side of their head ‘till their ear bleeds and they’ve gone Gangstalking dizzy. Just remember to keep popping the puck in the net too.

Beware of common tactics

There are a couple of common tactics employed by the average poster in a flame-war. Firstly, they usually try to maintain the moral high ground for themselves. Remember, maintaining the moral high ground means practising what you preach. That is: hypocrisy always stinks. You’ve got a better chance coaxing a blind fat guy across a busy street by making donut sounds than you do of believing yourself to be Saint Francis of Assisi while making hypocritical statements. So, if your opponent decries insults, you should already know by having read their posts a few times if they’ve insulted you. Fuck, sometimes the dummy will insult you in the SAME SENTENCE as they decry insults. Exploit that. Another example of rampant hypocrisy is when somebody tags themselves into the fight to accuse you of doing nothing constructive. If their was an internet equivalent of tattooing “Punch Here” with a tattooed arrow pointing to their left nostril, this is it.

Secondly, insults are insults are insults. There is no sliding scale of degree of insult. Saying that somebody still lives in Mom’s basement (and don’t ever use that; it insults the poster more than anybody else…) is no better than saying somebody date-rapes cripples. Believing in a sliding scale or allowing somebody else to push that agenda allows them to keep the moral high ground. Not because they deserve it, but because you’ve allowed it.

Thirdly, another common tactic (usually a gross example of back-pedalling) is to assert that THEIR insult is really an observation but YOUR insult is just childish. You should be able to beat on them for this one on your own. However, I suggest something that shatters teeth but leaves the roots dangling from the gums. It’s an interesting sight.

Look out for the poster that cuts and pastes insults, especially in the form of little pictures with pre-packaged insults. If somebody has gone this route, they’re reaching worse than George Clooney did to pat himself on the back during his Oscar acceptance speech.

If you’re Wrong, Admit it

The bolded statement says it all. It elevates your standing as fair, especially when you compare yourself to them. Have they conceded anything? Besides, what’s the point in arguing a point that’s wrong?

Post Length

The average internet fighter assumes a World War I mentality. You know, the start of World War I. That is, they’ll be able to fight, bluster and win with what they believe to be decisive blasts from the Wiki-Cannon in a few short posts. No fight ever really goes that quick. There’s too much pride invested by people to allow a decisive anything. You’ve got to be prepared for the years of entrenched warfare. At the start, the other poster isn’t aware of this yet and you can tell by their post length. Frequently, initial posts are long. However, as the flame-war drags on, they’ve frequently abandoned their initial position, their insults have become stale and weak, the moral high ground is a mountainous turd in no-man’s land and their posts become shorter and shorter and shorter until…

The Suicide Post

It’s at the suicide post that the long sought-after victory finally comes into sight. A suicide post is that post by the defeated person wherein they claim that the fight has become silly, they’re better than it and they’re moving on to greener pastures. The conciliatory speech is quite self-complimentary and often times, fucking hilarious when compared to what they’ve been posting through out the flame-war. However, the suicide post is easily neutered. Since they’ve claimed to have bowed out of the fight, you can do the biggest smear deconstruction of the argument. Have at it. If they thought they were self-complimentary, you can lick your own genitals in the hallowed light of victory. Essentially, your deconstruction should also serve as bait to drag them back, but not advertise itself as such.

Because, if they take the bait and do come back, you’ve got a whole new stick to smash their faces right in the ass. They’re hypocritical, liars and when they said they didn’t care, you can easily highlight that they do. Now’s also the time to show that you give them relevance. Otherwise, why would they be back?

The above tips are just some of the tips you can use to win more fights than a drunken bastard at a bowling alley wedding in Alabama. Keep them close to your heart dear reader, for they shall be your guiding light.

Yeah, I didn’t have an ending for this one. Fuck it.