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It's from a while back, but has age hurt this, by Jack Penfold? Franz Kafka might have proud to be the author.
So, I was bored. I thought I'd create a character on Millarworld that was a bit over the top like a poster they have there named Archonis. I wanted to come across as "stupid american thinks he's a cowboy" and to get people to really hate me and challenge my character's beliefs.
I used the name Steven Walker, as they require real names, and I thought maybe on a subconscious level, being familiar with comics, combining Steven Rogers, the original Captain AMerica, with John Walker the USAgent Captain America, would give me the gungho edge.
So what to post first? What was so over the top that people would be up in arms? My first topic in the news section was when using nuclear force is correct: why we should nuke iran. Honestly, I don't even think Bush and his guys would actually nuke someone. I ran into my first moral dilema on this topic. I needed to show a strong dislike to Iran and the middle east in general, but even in character I didn't want to use a racial slur no matter how much it helped the character. SO I thought of a great one. I said something along the lines of Do we really want a barbarian, religious fanatic war mongering country to have nukes? C'mon, what a setup! In the same thread suggesting America should use nukes. I thought it was good. Many people were largely annoyed and pissed off. I did sense one or two who seemed to share a mindset with Steven Walker, but didn't want to come out and say it. I even used the old America is the world's policeman bit.
Then I saw our beloved Cameron Stewart in a thread about legal something-or-other and likeness rights where he mentions Bryan Hitch. Hah! Let's get the most hated guy on the board to attack Cameron and get him some praise. Again, I didn't want to actually think of a serious insult to his art, so I said it was "Sunday Newspaper Cartoony" and that he was jealous of the realistic artwork of a Bryan Hitch. I started to wonder if that was too serious, so I went over the top and said that his artwork was similar to Rob Liefeld's but less energetic, and not with half as much of the background work. (in reality the 1st 5 pages of Seaguy has ten times as much background detail as Liefeld's collected works)I figured that if the 1st insult was too intense and actaully made Cameron feel bad, that this new Liefeld comparison would at least make him chuckle and show him that Steven Walker was no art critic.
I emailed Cam and let him in on my mischief, and he seemed both amused and bewildered. He had trouble trying to understand Steven Walker's art criticism he said and wished me good luck on the experiment.
And then the end. I went into the chat area and was immediately insulted by everyone there. While they insulted Steven Walker I managed to work in a couple of good character comments. The one where you could collectively hear them through their computers yell "I knew it!!" was when someone asked me which comic creator I liked. Steven Walker's answer John Byrne's pretty cool. It was very very funny.
Eventually one of their mods said "Hey Jack Denfeld". The gig was over. I had been busted. I was banned and the insults continued. I tried to assure them before I left that they could sleep easy knowing that no one person on this planet wanted to nuke another country, hated Cameron Stewart's art, and was a huge fan of John Byrne's(writing nonetheless) simulataneously.
So I was banned. It was a day full of chuckles for me though. And I know that technically it was trolling and that messageboards would be in chaos if no rules were enforced (actually the only rule Steven Walker broke was not using his real name, but Steven Walker was his real name because he wasn't real). Will I miss it? Not really, I had only posted on there a handfull of times in 2 plus years. Barbelith is my home anyway |
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