Slashdot trolling as an art form

What you, the reader, need to understand is that Slashdot is (or was at the time of this writing) a very busy discussion website. The site administrators post links to news items on other sites, with a little misspelled paragraph of explanation. Then the "Slashdot community" argues about it, discusses it, etc.

In the spring of 2000, for a post to draw much attention, it had to be within the first twenty or at most thirty posts in one of these "discussions". There might be twenty posts in the first five minutes.

Therefore, trolling Slashdot was like speed chess. You'd sit there reloading the front page regularly. When a new story was posted, you'd start writing like mad. I myself never wasted any time following the link to the news items the "discussions" were about. I'd just read the little explanatory paragraph and wing it, trying to come up with some angle on it that would infuriate people. Sometimes I'd guess right about what the story was about. Sometimes I'd guess wrong, but in a particularly infuriating way. Sometimes I'd fall flat on my ass and nobody would respond to what I wrote.

Stupefied at the accuracy of the moderation system, Slashdot's trolls have taken to a kind of moral and artistic high ground, exemplified by posts like this one, a response to a story by Hemos entitled "Rambus Slammed for 'Judge Shopping'":
The film opens as we see Jon Katz being sent to hell for being a peeping Tom. There we meet ESR as the gatekeeper and Richard Stallman as Satan. Satan has three sons, Cassius played by the huge Cowboy Neal, Hemos, playing the handsome yet evil Adrian, and Cmdr Taco played by Rob Malda . Taco is a little slow and has speech impediment caused by a shovel to the head from one of his brothers. Stallman is thinking about giving up his thrown after 10,000 years and placing one of his sons in charge.

He calls his sons together to announce which one will take over hell. He announces that none of the three are capable so he will stay on for another 10,000 years.

Malda's two brothers are outraged and leave hell, causing the fiery gates to freeze, not allowing any more souls to enter. This lack of souls causes Stallman to slowly die. (well actually, pieces of his body keep falling off) Stallman is furious at ESR for allowing the two to leave so he has two big breasts appear on ESR's head. This gag provides quite a bit of humor as every time we see ESR throughout the rest of the film he is either having his breasts caressed by other demons or his bra for his new breasts becomes increasingly fancier.

Stallman sends Rob to earth to capture his brothers. They must drink elixir from a fancy flask which will capture the two inside the flask. Once he returns the two, the gates will be opened again and Stallman will be healthy again. Taco appears on earth and is instantly hit by a subway and sent back to Hell. After a few trips back and forth (he keeps getting killed) he finally meets a dog that Stallman sets up to show Taco the ropes.

Taco meets Valerie (Natalie Portman) and the two hit it off. Unfortunately, Adrian discovers Taco on earth and forces Taco to say mean and rude things to Valerie and she leaves.

Adrian and Cassius are posing as the Mayor and a bishop in New York. Together, they are causing all kinds of havoc on earth. They do things like change the city's motto to "I love Hookers" and lowering the drinking age to 10.

While at home, Taco sees a Harlem Globetrotter game and realizes that the referee is Cassius. He goes to the game and gets into a confrontation with the ref. Finally, after outplaying him in a one on one type game, the ref asks Taco how he did it. Taco tells him it's from his magic elixir and the ref (Cassius) takes a drink and disappears into the flask. One down!

Taco gets back together with Valerie and explains everything to her. They launch a plan to capture Adrian. Together, Taco, Valerie and 3 other friends he has picked up along the way, meet Adrian in a subway waiting area. Adrian almost drinks the elixir but figures it out and grabs Valerie and jumps in front of a moving subway.
Taco jumps down and throws Valerie out of the way but Taco and Adrian are killed by the train.

This time however, since he did a good deed, Taco goes to heaven and meets his mother. He had always been told that his mother was a goat but his brothers lied. She is actually an Angel (Alicia Silverstone) and looks beautiful. Angels never age so Alicia is still a teenager and acts like one with her friends as she introduces her son to everyone.

They look down on earth to see what's happening and discover that Adrian has taken over Hell and is bringing Hell to New York. A massive rally is taking place and Adrian is the leader performing nasty deeds everywhere including placing thousands of bees on Bjourne Strousoup playing... Bjourne Strousoup .

Alicia gives Taco a glowing ball and sends him back down to earth to capture Adrian.
A fight breaks out and Adrian wins and he forces Taco to drink the elixir. As Taco is being sucked into the flask, he grabs Adrian and both of them get sucked in. Now all three brothers are inside the flask and a fight breaks out inside. The crowd gathers around the flask cheering on Taco as the flasks flips around on the ground. "You can do it Taco..." shouts Signal 11 in his "Waterboy 'outfit.

Finally, Taco crawls out of the flask and everyone cheers. Turns out however that it is actually Adrian and he taunts everyone as he transforms himself into a bat. The top of the flask is left off and Taco crawls out. He takes the glowing ball and drops it on the ground and the ball turns into Ozzy Osborne.
Any Ozzy fan knows what going to happen next, right...

Ozzy grabs Adrian the flying bat and bites off his head, spitting it back into the flask.
Now that the two brothers are in the flask, Taco can return to hell.To do so, someone must kill him, but first he must do an evil deed so he accidentally doesn't go to heaven. He looks at a swollen Bjourne Strousoup and apologizes. Another swarm of bees attack Strousoup . Valerie smacks Taco on the head with a rock, killing him and sending him back to hell. He saves his father and all is right with Hell again. Stallman takes the flask with Adrian and Cassius in it and shoves it up Hitler's butt.
Taco returns to earth, marries Valerie and they have a son, Lucifer II.

Thank you, and good night!


-by Anonymous Coward on 08:49 PM November 15th, 2000 EST

As you can see, on Everything, this would have been cooled at least twice. Do not be surprised to see Slashdot trolls getting movie deals and attending the Oscars. You heard it here first.

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