- Joined
- Jan 30, 2013
There's a lot of discussion about trolling in general and I feel like chiming in.
I see that some people are upset there was essentially an "Inner Circle" on here. What initially happened was some of the people involved in the trolling would PM staff members, though who they PMed frequently changed, and it made sense to have a board than to go back and forth in PMs. I didn't set up the board but I was okay with the idea with it as it was mostly restricted to staff, so they could discuss how material was to be dropped on the forum, Alec and Marvin, as they have experience and can discuss how to do things smartly, and then the people actually involved in the trolling.
Here's the issue though - a lot of people came very late to Chris. A lot of people on here probably didn't find Chris until at most 2010, when Chris was pretty much in his last breaths. There are people who might see how there was a time when Chris was releasing multiple videos a day and doing comics every day or so and wishing they could have been there. I think some of the staff wanted to get in on it and so their role was more than just discussing logistics of releasing content. I think most people here would like to be in that position if it was allowed to them. In any case though, it was not an arbitrary process of selecting who got in and it was mostly on a need-to-know basis.
Re: the trash thing - here's what bothered me about it. It wasn't so much the actual act of digging through Chris's trash, but rather posting what they found on the Internet and people fawning over it. It's the desperation that some of us have for new content that leads us to think a crumpled worksheet from high school as being as valuable as a video would be in Chris's prime.
Also, a few thoughts:
Remember - BlueSpike was a 13 year old who was in a group of 18-22 year olds, people significantly older than them. I'm not saying what he did was right, but I feel like he was trying to impress us and some of his anger on Chris was from him being egged on to get stuff like the various audio from him. At the time, it was sorta funny to think what Chris would be like masturbating and that maybe he would be embarrassed but that certainly wasn't the case. I think that's the last time they went with nudes or whatever.
I think Liquid would have been enough, but at the time, it was okay to be mean to Chris and people wanted to see Chris cry and be belittled. Threads on /cwc/ used to be like "Someone needs to finally put Chris in his place!" and that was a common opinion, and Kacey sort of did that. I don't quite recall what happened with her, I think either it was decided to throw in a sweetheart to get some more stuff out of Chris or I think she tried to wedge herself in.
This is the tactic that I really disliked, to be honest. It's incredibly easy to impersonate someone Chris knows because he usually never questions the validity of the person or he sets a low standard of identity (like "show me a photo" and you send them a photo you did a Google image search on). It doesn't always work, like when Chris is talking to three different people claiming to be Megan, but I think it can have bad repercussions. Like I said, I know Mimms was getting pissed off that someone was impersonating him when he just wants to move on and do his own thing.
I realize that some of you upset this happen. I apologize for that, I feel like there were places I should have set my foot down to stop some of the behavior that went on. It was just my attitude though that I didn't want to be a buzzkill and cockblock people from trolling Chris. I know a lot of you wish Chris released more content and I figured that these people were willing to take a risk trolling, and they were smart enough to ask for assistance so why stop them? I feel like I didn't want to be an asshole who refused to allow someone to get content when they were willing to cooperate. I realize that people are upset this was secretive but I think it's worth applauding Null for bringing this out into the open, when it easily could have been done without any sort of public notification, so we can have these sort of discussions so we don't repeat our mistakes again.
I see that some people are upset there was essentially an "Inner Circle" on here. What initially happened was some of the people involved in the trolling would PM staff members, though who they PMed frequently changed, and it made sense to have a board than to go back and forth in PMs. I didn't set up the board but I was okay with the idea with it as it was mostly restricted to staff, so they could discuss how material was to be dropped on the forum, Alec and Marvin, as they have experience and can discuss how to do things smartly, and then the people actually involved in the trolling.
Here's the issue though - a lot of people came very late to Chris. A lot of people on here probably didn't find Chris until at most 2010, when Chris was pretty much in his last breaths. There are people who might see how there was a time when Chris was releasing multiple videos a day and doing comics every day or so and wishing they could have been there. I think some of the staff wanted to get in on it and so their role was more than just discussing logistics of releasing content. I think most people here would like to be in that position if it was allowed to them. In any case though, it was not an arbitrary process of selecting who got in and it was mostly on a need-to-know basis.
Re: the trash thing - here's what bothered me about it. It wasn't so much the actual act of digging through Chris's trash, but rather posting what they found on the Internet and people fawning over it. It's the desperation that some of us have for new content that leads us to think a crumpled worksheet from high school as being as valuable as a video would be in Chris's prime.
Also, a few thoughts:
Remember - BlueSpike was a 13 year old who was in a group of 18-22 year olds, people significantly older than them. I'm not saying what he did was right, but I feel like he was trying to impress us and some of his anger on Chris was from him being egged on to get stuff like the various audio from him. At the time, it was sorta funny to think what Chris would be like masturbating and that maybe he would be embarrassed but that certainly wasn't the case. I think that's the last time they went with nudes or whatever.
I think Liquid would have been enough, but at the time, it was okay to be mean to Chris and people wanted to see Chris cry and be belittled. Threads on /cwc/ used to be like "Someone needs to finally put Chris in his place!" and that was a common opinion, and Kacey sort of did that. I don't quite recall what happened with her, I think either it was decided to throw in a sweetheart to get some more stuff out of Chris or I think she tried to wedge herself in.
This is the tactic that I really disliked, to be honest. It's incredibly easy to impersonate someone Chris knows because he usually never questions the validity of the person or he sets a low standard of identity (like "show me a photo" and you send them a photo you did a Google image search on). It doesn't always work, like when Chris is talking to three different people claiming to be Megan, but I think it can have bad repercussions. Like I said, I know Mimms was getting pissed off that someone was impersonating him when he just wants to move on and do his own thing.
I realize that some of you upset this happen. I apologize for that, I feel like there were places I should have set my foot down to stop some of the behavior that went on. It was just my attitude though that I didn't want to be a buzzkill and cockblock people from trolling Chris. I know a lot of you wish Chris released more content and I figured that these people were willing to take a risk trolling, and they were smart enough to ask for assistance so why stop them? I feel like I didn't want to be an asshole who refused to allow someone to get content when they were willing to cooperate. I realize that people are upset this was secretive but I think it's worth applauding Null for bringing this out into the open, when it easily could have been done without any sort of public notification, so we can have these sort of discussions so we don't repeat our mistakes again.
