Saturday is upon us and you know what that means- time for a Friday Night Internet fight:  Extra Innings.  This is Dick Move’s Dethtron here bringing you your second weekly dose of pain, to befuddle you, make you laugh, and piss off GBF.  This week I managed to pull off the impossible and find a pretty short fight, thanks to a hot tip from Stormy about a forum that tends to get pretty nasty.

The UK’s The Warhammer Forum appears to be a hotbed of insanity and trolling, wrapped up with that deliciously dry British wit that I’ve heard so much about.  A look into just about any thread there is pretty amusing.  These blokes can get pretty mean too, which you know I enjoy.  So without further rambling, I bring you 40k as Socio-Political Commentary, a thread that links to a very dull, rambling article, that really isn’t worth reading.  Fortunately, it takes the posters in the thread quite some time to actually get around to talking about the article in question in any concrete terms.  I think you’ll enjoy this.

As always, none of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, but their avatars have been for my own amusement.  I’ve edited the thread into a logical narrative structure, but left it replete with its original spelling and grammatical errors.  Whenever I have something to say, I’ll snowmobile the poster in red.  Let’s get it on…

fairbane- Someone posted this piece on my board gaming website.  ~looks more like it belongs on a bored gaming site Thought you might find it interesting:

http://fortressat.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2027:satirical-parody-without-a-sledgehammer-40000-a-look-at-one-of-tabletop-gamings-most-subtle-political-statements&catid=53:humor&Itemid=100254

Daddy troll- Not really.  ~I like you, because you say what we’re all thinking

Fairbane- Great, thanks for sharing.

Daddy troll- Don’t know what you’re trying to say here but if you post stuff expecting people to comment on what you post, be prepared to not like some of the replies. ~so are you trying to say that posting shit about nothing in particular doesn’t automatically get you drowned in praise?  Did I just type not not type that last sentence with a double negative?

Fairbane- Well, the original article wasn’t by me, so it’s not like I’m going to take offence. But what I was trying to say was that it’s poor form to post such an empty critique of something.  ~now the question this raises is whether or not it is poor form to post something as inane as the linked article If you’re going to take the time to reply, ~typing that 2 word epic probably took up most of his day.  I appreciated the conscientious, well thought out review that it provided you might as well put a bit of effort into saying *why* you felt what you read was a waste of time instead of just metaphorically rolling your eyes.  ~pretty sure that’s not a metaphor

But having just clocked your username, I probably shouldn’t be expecting much else, eh? 😉  ~keep reading to learn that emoticons don’t always show that you’re being facetious or cheeky or whatever…

Zedeyejoe- I am going to disagree.

Someone who posts a link and says “read this” really deserves all they get. ~yeah, there’s nothing like permanently scarring somebody because of e-drama.  Just ask Jessi Slaughter how that’s working out. …and another thing, how is what you wrote disagreeing with anything that’s been said so far?

The net is a nasty place and I ain’t surfing it blindly. ~pro-tip:  if you don’t want to get your mind blown, don’t disable the parental filters on Google image search.  I have never seen so much poop and murder in my life

Thanks to those who went there and saved me the journey.

Daddy Troll- Seeing as we’ve never met (and if I’m lucky, never will)~this is right about where things take a turn for the uglier, attempting to “troll” a suspected “troller” purely on the basis of a user name seems a bit juvenile. ~says they guy with one of the most immature user names out there

Fairbane- Good grief. ~listen, you can be butt hurt about Daddy Troll pulling the football away at the last second before you kick all you want, but that’s no reason to swear I’m not entirely sure how we managed to get from me posting a link you didn’t much care for to a statement that you dislike me enough to hope we never meet in the space of 5 posts but it certainly strikes me as a bit extreme. ~this has made me a believer in loathe at first sight As for my attempting to “troll” you, do you have images turned off, or did you miss the ironic wink smiley I posted next to the comment in question? The commonly accepted meaning of this symbol is to indicate that the poster does not intend the comment to be taken seriously. ~it would appear that you’re unaware that people will misinterpret 99% of what you say on the net, smiley faces or no.  Now before you bitches start questioning my statistics, I’ll have you know that I’ve spent millions of dollars in research grants to bring you the most scientifically accurate information that I could make up

Daddy Troll- If my reply to your original post seemed dismissive ~that’s because it was dismissive then I apologise, I read the article and thought that the author was merely trying to impress people with his attempt at an intellectual interpretation of an aspect of 40k, ie kids younger than 12 are not ready to see the embedded irony in the background and that if they are exposed to a wargame at too young an age it will turn them into future presidents of the National Rifle Association. ~whew I caught up.  Your run-on sentence was moving along at a pretty good clip, but I managed to get myself into gear and meet you at the finish line Whilst the first argument is generally true the second could be called trolling as well, in that he makes a statement in order to garner replies from irate fans of the game. The use of the word “nerd” in the article is clearly inflammatory, accusing more mature players of the game of being bespectacled overweight socially inept but generally more intelligent people. ~all I’m gonna say is that sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason

I’m a fan of the game but I was certainly not affected in the way the author intended me to be. ~I cannot say with any degree of certainty whether or not blind rage was the author’s intent I was amused at his attempted commentary on a game, even by the title of his article which was meant to try and lay out his credentials as someone with probably left wing intellectual aspirations. As such I found his article not at all interesting, merely amusing.

Hope you find this a more informative version of my opinion. ~not really

Fairbane- Yes, thank you. I’m not really sure that I actually disagree with you either although I obviously found the piece more interesting than you did. ~so you do disagree then… A matter of style over substance, perhaps. I like to cross post stuff that I feel has some vague relevance to the GW community, but perhaps ~methinks an article about 40k probably has more than a vague relevance to GW I should vet it a bit better first.

Urban Knight- I have to say I agree with DT when he say’s “not really”

Same here. His rambling monologue didn’t really seem to have a point other than to hear himself talk. ~well, I know how the writer feels.  I love listening to what I type

Silashand- Same here. His rambling monologue didn’t really seem to have a point other than to hear himself talk. ~wait, what?  Did you seriously just copy/paste someone else’s fucking response?  Not cool dude, not cool.

Corrode- There was scope for the article to be interesting, ~if by interesting you mean über pretentious and obnoxious but the author didn’t really say anything ~I found he didn’t say anything at all new or clever and a lot of his analysis was very shallow. I also kinda got a vibe that he was trying too hard to show how ‘fun at all costs’ he was.

theCultOfNow- I read it, I tried to skip to the end but I couldn’t find the point he was making… so I read it all. IMO: Not poorly written, ~just a stylistic tip for all of you that are literarily minded: if you can’t find the fucking thesis in an article it IS, in fact, poorly written but with no real content. The main point in the arcticle is that the rich context of 40k is wasted on 11 year olds. Any irony points were vanishingly subtle…