Project 5

If you look around on forums long enough, you’re likely to find someone saying just about anything you’re looking for. My first concern was that I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I thought about the uniqueness that can be found on some of these message boards, and the conversely bland posts that make up most of the stuff I dredged from these forums. The original idea was to find examples of people acting uncharacteristically rude or aggressive, presumably because they were hiding behind the façade of their online alter egos. I hoped I could simply find conversations that had gotten out of hand, resulting in threats or verbal attacks. My last resort would be to “troll” the forum, or instigate the type of activity I was trying to find.

I was pretty disappointed with the first phase of this project (Project 4) because I didn’t feel like I had enough time to get all of the material I wanted, and I couldn’t find any message boards with both a high volume of posts and poor moderation. Both of these caused problems. A low volume of posts on a message board means a lot of time waiting for someone to respond to any trolling. A sight with active moderators means that any attempts at trolling are stamped out fairly quickly, and moderators will often go so far as to revoke trollers’ memberships.

By the time I was ready to submit Project 4, I had concluded that anonymity didn't play as much of a role as I initially thought it would. More often than not, people post pictures, hometowns, and real names on their profiles. If one were so inclined, finding someone who said something offensive wouldn't be difficult. Maybe the distance plays a role? Or maybe people don't act so differently online than they would otherwise. As the project moved along, I started to care less and less about what caused people to act the way they do on these forums, and began to appreciate all of the conversations that might otherwise have been lost entirely. Most of them are profane.

Some of them were actually insightful, well-articulated, and thought-provoking.

I chose not to include the latter.

I used MySpace forums for one of the pictures I attached to Project 4, but I apparently had not fully realized the potential of the material on the site. I started there for Project 5, and didn't find any reason to move on to other sites--MySpace, as it turned out, was the mother lode.








This is Project 5--my extension of Project 4. I wanted to call it "Welcome to Cuntville," but I thought putting that into the title might be too much, too soon.

I know, it's a dirty word. That's partly the point. The internet is a verbal and visual free-for-all, and in no place does that seem more apparent than on these message boards.

Some people, however, take exception to how callous the dialogue can become:

Most of the people who post, though, have very little sympathy for complaints about aggressive or insulting posts. Particularly in a forum where the participants have been unencumbered by strict moderators, the "trolling" is just another component of the argument, and most users think the ones who feel like they've been abused in some way usually did something to deserve it:



Above all, it's only text. Vulgarity knows nearly no bounds on the forums, although users can be found acknowledging the indecency of what they say:





The lewdness is a big part of the draw. In fact, it's even encouraged:





**To clarify: ruby red and grape slushy are the same person. The user changed the name of his profile between posts. The post from Tanner del Norte is a response to ruby red's post.



These are places where people can say what they want with considerably lighter consequences than they would experience in most social settings. Debate is totally open, more so than in any formal debate. No argument is left out, regardless of its logic or validity. The forums are meeting places where the debate doesn't take place face-to-face. Spittle flying from the lips of an enraged participant vehemently arguing his or her point never lands on the face of his or her adversary. Body language and tones of voice never come into play. Without these, the violent possibilities that are usually implicit in volatile debates don't exist in the same way. An angry backlash is typically a chain of tempestuous filth, pock-marked by typographical errors missed or ignored by the author in his or her fury:




And if you read Ren Reinvented's post closely, you'll notice the lines of text at the bottom of the window--users call this a "sig," or a signature. "[I]f they aren[']t bitchin[g] about you in the t[h]read cleaner[,] you ain[']t doin[g] it right." Fittingly, TrollingP is the name of the user that posted it. It's a big reason people go onto the forums in the first place. After all, if you want to have a proper, civil debate, you can always do that in person.

To cap it off, a few other gems from the MySpace forum stacks:




This one is a holdover from Project 4. I'm not sure why it still makes me laugh.

Project 5 Idea

For project 5, I think I'm going to do a continuation of project 4. My efforts at trolling weren't successful at all, but since I have more time now, I think I can just try to be more subtle--semi-trolling, if you will. I found quite a few good forums from doing project 4 in the first place, so that phase of the project can pretty much be skipped. Even if my modified trolling efforts don't succeed, I should be able to find some good examples of people acting differently than they otherwise might. If you find the right forum, abusive language is pretty common, and I would imagine it even escalates to threats from time to time. I'll also try, like I did in my 4th project, to find examples of everyday/forgotten type of posts. Since it's basically just a long record of online conversations through the proxy of forums, the common stuff is really easy to find, which makes me want to focus more on inconsequential conversations that are nevertheless really unique. If I can find any really profound posts on some of the forums, I might even evaluate those.

I still don't know what I'm going to do for project 5. At all. The frogger idea is the only one I've had so far. This is the sort of thing that takes just planting it in the back of my head for a while and letting the ideas come to me over time.

When I was dredging forums for the last project, I came across some comments from people who apparently thought Barack Obama was the antichrist. That was pretty interesting, and it mixes with real life. I'm not sure how that could be made into a project, either.

I personally try to avoid reading blogs when it comes to any information that's really relevant to my life. I read sports blogs from time to time, because they usually have people on location that are privy to some stories before all the other sportswriters are, but it isn't necessarily important information, even when the reporters make it out to be.

Blogs just aren't held to as high a standard as printed material, and because of that I question the quality of the information that I get from them, even if it's through a reputable source. They're certainly more participatory and democratic than printed news, since comments can usually be added underneath the stories, but I don't feel like that really enhances it for the most part. The people who comment usually don't have much to add, and when they do, it usually either isn't correct, or it is articulated horribly.

I'm not really into reading blogs.

5th Project Idea

The first thing that comes to mind about this project, since we were discussing gaming again today, is frogger. I'm always surprised at how daring people in Morgantown are about crossing the roads, especially when there isn't a crosswalk. Coupled with game days, when probably 1/3 of the people driving are drunk, and there are so many people are walking around with no regard for traffic laws, I'm pretty surprised more people don't get hit by cars.

That said, I wouldn't want to actually try to do a live-action version of frogger. That's pretty dangerous.

Project 4

For my project, my main purpose was to find examples of people acting differently than they normally might, assumingly because they can enjoy the distance afforded them by an online identity. The main settings for the project are online forums, also called message boards, where people typically post items related to a main topic. These message boards require membership, which allows the people who use them to assume online personas, which may or may not be similar to their actual, real world personas. In some cases, like MySpace or Facebook, the users’ online identities can be very intricate. Pictures, contact information, and biographical information very often give other users a more realistic idea of what somebody’s actual identity is. These types of “profiles” are usually legitimated through contact with other users through the ubiquitous “comment” or “message” sections that are typical of those particular interfaces.

In other cases, message boards are more anonymous, requiring only a valid e-mail address to confirm membership. While there is still a rudimentary template in place for users to post pictures and personal information, these users do not typically represent themselves as realistically as they would through an interface like Facebook. Real names are rarely used, and pictures are typically less personal, giving way to animations and other types of artwork to make the user’s template more distinct. These are the forums through which I assumed people would argue more aggressively. In these types of forums I included the comment sections often found at the bottom of the page in online news articles.

I only considered trolling as a method of last resort, since almost everyone who regularly uses the message boards is familiar with the practice, and in most cases either do not respond to the instigation, or report it to forum moderators. On sites where trolling was not well-moderated, the volume of posts was not substantial enough to generate the long, multi-party arguments that I had in mind. Instead of actively manifesting arguments, I first tried to locate forums where the members were likely to be aggressive and/or the subject matter was controversial. I thought this would increase the likelihood of finding some good material for the assignment.

What started as an effort to satisfy the elements of “unspeakable” and “scandalous,” however, turned out to be much more forgettable than I would have liked. Of course, the other avenue was to do the assignment on the “everyday” and “forgotten.” Particularly in the well-moderated, large-volume forums, scandalous posts are removed within minutes or seconds. Left behind, however, are literally miles of text consisting of opinions, and arguments, both logically supported and not, that are of virtually no consequence, even to the people who wrote them.

Some of them, I thought, were pretty funny:













Others were more typical of the type of dialogue I expected to find:














On the whole, I was surprised to find that my assumptions weren't clearly correct. The amount of anonymity didn't seem to matter much to the people posting, although I still think the factor of distance emboldens people to say things they wouldn't say to someone on the street.

Project 4 draft

So my first idea, about anthrax and the dollar bills, I've scrapped that. As it turns out, that's really time-consuming and hard to record. Plus, it's gotten pretty cold over the last few days, and I don't want to wait, shivering, for someone to pick up one of my obnoxious messages. I want to work with something that I can control a little better, and doesn't require enduring any kind of bad weather if I can help it.

This weekend, people at the game were being assholes. There's something about game time and being fairly anonymous in the stadium crowd that has that specific effect on some people. That got me thinking.

The way people are emboldened by anonymity seems like a good starting point for another idea for this project. Have you ever read an online news story with a comment section at the bottom? Gone to a message board to try to find some piece of information, and instead found pages of inconsequential tit-for-tat? It doesn't take much to instigate a cyber-quarrel, and people usually aren't as reserved as they would be otherwise.

I think there is also some inherent comedic value in seeing a discussion escalate to the point of a shouting match once all the logic has been bled from it. I don't have any immediate examples to post here for the draft, but there are online forums for virtually every topic. Most of them have no bearing at all on the tangible world, but posters still find enough meaning to bicker.

This project's success probably depends on both the content of the forums I use and my own ability to focus participants on arguing with each other. I have this cutting tool on my computer that can capture screenshots, so I'll be able to show forum avatars and signatures to give some visual representation of what's going on. Some people really take forums and online message boards seriously, and they display really elaborate artwork on their postings to identify their profiles/usernames.

I'm considering the role of instigator wherever necessary. And since it's a graded assignment, the unabridged opinions of some of these online rabble-rousers may finally count for something.