I have this sort of stigma of a forum troll

One could call this a "rant."

I get it, yeah. I've been banned from a lot of forums for casually antagonizing members. I don't single out people, or run around forums posting porn and meme images, I'm not that kind of guy.

I'm just kind of an asshole, one would say.

If you guys have noticed anything then good job. I'm not exactly hiding my idiotic tendencies on the 'net any more. But there's another reason I made this topic.

I recently bought Minecraft (see minecraft thread in Released Games) and joined up on the forums. I made a few antagonizing posts, but nothing much worse than I would post here. The grumpybutt admin banned me. This is a major inconvenience. The forum is both a major source of information and a way to pass time on slow days or days I was too depressed to move at any speed besides a sluggish mope. Now that that's gone, I'm out a lot of information and have a lot more free time to do nothing with but contemplate life and cry myself to sleep (My record is 36 hours straight sleep without getting up).

My personality and habits are acceptable in some places, and not acceptable in others. I try to find the right balance to keep in good with the forum I frequent most without getting myself kicked off. I poke at members, sometimes in ways that can be misconstrued by an outside party. I casually insult people in a way I feel couldn't possibly hurt their feelings in any significant way. If the admin doesn't want that on his forum, that's fine, but an instant IP permaban for nothing more than being me is not what I would call any kind of justified. I can't even view the forum.

After the sudden and seemingly random permanent IP ban, I messaged the admin asking why I was banned, in a very polite manner, stating that if I bought the game I deserve the right to at least view the forum, and I got this reply.

Quote :

The administrative team reserves the right to bypass any and all incremental stages of punishment and skip right to the fun stuff.

I banned you because when I decided to review your 250 posts, half or more of them were deliberately inflammatory, spammy, contributed little or nothing to the threads they were in and were just generally unpleasant. I also deleted all of your posts.

Technically, ban evasion is an automatic no-forgiveness policy action. What are you trying to communicate? That you're sorry and won't do it again? You don't really seem like the apologetic type.

As to your post in the Support forum, buying the game has nothing to do with whether you can use the forum. If you break the rules here, you're sent packing. We don't get paid for this; the only person that benefits from a sale is the developer.

It's his forum, and I can respect that. But that doesn't mean he should act like a childish douchebag self-proclaimed king-of-the-internet "I'm better than you because I own a big forum" panzy man and ban me without discussing things with me in a polite, sensible, and gentlemanly manner. I'm not a total douchebag, and I respect authority and I can respect him as an individual. Apparently, though, we can't be fucking polite on the internet, and it's just sarcastic quip after sarcastic quip to see who can say "I just bought my thirteenth month of WOW" in the nerdiest voice and proclaim they have the biggest e-penis. It's ridiculous.

I can understand why fifteen year old douchebags running around forums spouting memes would be this way. I was a weird kid too. I wanted attention too. Hell, everyone wants attention. But there's no excuse for a twenty-two year old man to give me a holier-than-thou bullshit attitude and kick me off the forum because he doesn't like me.

If I had a forum I wouldn't have any members but if I had both a forum and members on it I would certainly be a douche and ban people I don't like. Not people like you, because I'd be a douche with you, not at you. People have the right and forums are run by Irish Catholics sometimes, and those forums generally have rules against the useless kind of fun, enticing people to be constructive and on-topic. They normally have a sub-forum for all the silly posts because it apparently has no place in the fancy, impressionable areas.

If I had a forum and it had members, I would ban the people I don't like. I would ban the people who don't like it when people go off-topic to introduce neat ideas, and instead do all they can to keep something in working order by writing mundane muddy shit that no one cares about. Minecraft's forum admin is the opposite of that, I'd guess.

I like to troll, but in a very smart way. For example I posted something like "I'm training my son to be a professional fighter, he doesn't want to, but I make him anyway, that's called tough love. We have two training sessions a day, in the morning we do Muay Thai and Brazilian Jit-Jitsu, and at night we work on his cardio. He's been taking protein shakes and has a very strict diet. I was just wondering if I was being too hard on him and pressuring him too much? and should I wait till he's at least 6?" I just love all the responses calling me a monster.

I'm going to be honest. Yes, you are an asshole, and your posts are often irritating, unhelpful and unreasonably critical though in an indirect manner. But you're semi-tolerable, and some of your ideas are quite good.

That being said, the admin's a dick.

Well gemtleman.
I don't want to offend you but troilling IS bad.
It's a new way to express your sadistic nature in our time, or to show your unstable character when you suck at life and want to bestow your pain and other stupid "loser" shit on others.
To play on other peoples emotions and fears is...bad.
And i don't think that any one of you want to be trolled.
Prank is a prank, and trollinng is a trolling. Don't mix up this 2 thinks, they are different.

P.S. Art...stop whining like a crybaby for god's sake, I respect you man, but seriously...find your balls.

Well, it's a tough call. Ultimately it comes down to personal judgement.

At the end of the day, the best thing a forum admin can do is to make everyone very aware of what the rules and expected behaviour are for people who join. I realise the irony in me saying that, because I haven't done that here. Why not ? Well, because the forum is small, and at this stage it's easy to communicate with everyone on a personal level. If the forum were much bigger, say twice the number of regular posters it has now, then I doubt it would be possible to run it on such a basic, individual way and some real rules would need to be posted. Unfortunate, but this is simply how larger groups of people operate. The 'Just don't be a prick' system stops working.

So the admin messed up by not making at clear and especially for the insta-ban without first warning you. But on the other hand, I'm guessing you have a pretty clear idea of what you were doing that provoked the situation.

The way I look at it, the internet is just like any other type of community. You have certain rights and freedoms, and you shouldn't feel too constarined by the community imposing it's will on your personality and actions. But on the other hand, you have a responsibility to behave in the community in a way that doesn't impinge on their rights.

In real life, I'd love to walk down to 7-11 in the nude on a hot summer's day. But I pull on a pair of shorts so I don't frighten the children and get thrown in prison. Because they have a right to exist safely on the street without having to look at my massive cock dragging along the asphalt.

Likewise, we have to weigh our responsibilities on the forums. Let's say we had a new member who was French, and let's say I hate the French. One the one hand I could exercise my personal freedoms to call them a fucking Frog and tell them to piss off. But I think most of us would agree that there's also a social responsibility to allow everyone to feel comfortable and exist in peace. And I think most of us would also agree that this responsibility outweighs my right to freedom of expression and tell eveyone what I think about them. So basically, I should leave them alone. Unless I run the forum, in which case I should post 'No French' in the rules.

I see so many people on the internet acting in ways the you simply know they wouldn't have the balls to do so in real life. I doubt most of the internet trolls we see would have the guts to spout off the words 'nigger' and 'faggot' directly to people's faces, especially if the person really were black or gay. It's the cowardice that makes it worse. So that's another guideline - imagine us all sitting in a room together. If you wouldn't say it there, don't say it here.

At the end of the day, unless you're autistic or a bona-fide sociopath I think everyone knows when they're being aggressive and making other people feel uncomfortable. Throwing your hands up in mock surprise when you get called out never really convinces anyone. The question is where the 'ban' line lies, and that's up to the admin to make clear.

So ... I'm off to post something like that in the Forum Concerns.

EDIT : Done. If anyone has any other important ideas then let me know, but the less rules the better. I don't think any of us particularly want an admin-heavy forum.

By the way, I fucking hate Russians. Casted, Вы запрещены.

I am an asshole in the real world. I live in America. I have the right and ability to walk up to a 400lb woman and call her a fatass if I want. That's not to say that I do, but I can. I can't do that on every forum on the internet. Rules be different.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1923125,00.html

The internet isn't the USA though.

blehdit:
Of course I am unpleasant in my own ways. But that's not to say I am more unpleasant than anyone else, and I am certainly not the most unpleasant person on the internet. I found a few people to be VERY rude and unpleasant on the minecraft forums that didn't get the same treatment I did. The fact of the matter is the Admin didn't like me personally, and so I was deleted.

There were people on that forum that were un-necessarily straight-out insulting to me and others that didn't get handed the same treatment. I never started an argument, and if somebody tried to start something with me I ignored them. I'd like to say I was a pretty damn good citizen.

It's just that none of that matters. The internet doesn't have a constitution, bros.

art wrote:

The internet isn't the USA though.

I thnk you'll find most places aren't the USA. Including the countries where most internet users live. Which is why the USA isn't used as a 'base line' for setting rules.

art wrote:

It's just that none of that matters. The internet doesn't have a constitution, bros.

No it doesn't. But individual communities on the internet do. It's like saying 'the world doesn't have laws'. Sure it doesn't, but individual countries do. So if people are going to go into those countries, online communities, whatever, then they need to respect the local rules.

When the local rules are "What I say goes" from a grumpybutt admin and I can be banned regardless of whether or not I break one of the written laws (rules) I have a right to cry a little bit on the inside