What is it about this forum that attracts so many lunatics?

[SignOfZeta]

I'm not sure how many posts I've started in the Chit Chat section. Possibly none. I prefer to stick to the games, mainly. You guys are better at that. This is a serious question though, and I guess PCEFX people are the only ones who will want to talk about it. Why is it this forum has so many crazy people on it?

Every few months or so, when the sign up approvals go through, we get a batch of new people. You get, maybe one normal guy, and the rest of them are people wanting to dump US games us at eBay prices, crazy people, and 4 guys from New Jersey who are actually all Nintenga 16, or whatever the fuck his name is.

After a few weeks...the craziness of these people comes out. They start threatening physical violence, they scam some people, they attempt to scam some people, they are furies, or, usually, just MASSIVE attention whores that inevitably start a thread explaining why they are leaving, but then never do, until they are eventually banned. Then they come back when the new accounts are approved.

Its really fucking weird, IMO. Are the NES forums like this? I mean, Neo-geo.com is full of The Drama, but I don't quite see the constant flow of new people who %80 of the time just turn out to be complete nut jobs. Assholes, wannabe players, sure, but not so fucked up that PCEngineHell is normal by comparison.

Theories?

One thing I've noticed is that the regulars, the guys that have been here of years, are pretty normal...or at least they can put up a pretty good front. Its the new people who are cuckoo in the cocoanut.

[HercTNT]

I think it also depends on your definition of normal. Every forum I have been in has its drama. Some people just want to take advantage of what the forum has to offer, but may not be dedicated to the forums theme.  Some just want to find new people to argue with. Others are curious weekend warriors dropping in from time to time.  Except for the ones that just wanna watch the world burn, everyone should be welcome regardless of their level of dedication.  With the exception of the last two weeks craziness, I would have to disagree with your assessment of recent sign ups. Most I have seen have been polite, and a few have held raffles. Why your letting a few rotten eggs marginalize the rest of us i'm not sure. Thats your opinion and your entitled to it, but i see alot of good stuff going on.
Please don't take my post personally, you asked a question and I gave my opinion. I can also see how the recent flame wars and the fact you have been here much longer than me would influence your point of view. You have seniority over me due to your time here and I respect that. I just think that the number of good things going on and good people coming in outweigh a handful of crap now and then.

[blueraven]

Having one repeat troll of this magnitude certainly puts things in perspective. From my experience, other forums dedicated to consoles (with the massive exception of neo-geo.com) have been anywhere from relatively lightweight like sega-16 to downright stupid like risingstuff.com. The funny thing is, there are trolls everywhere, but I haven't seen a situation other than Ninny comes by with a repeat vendetta against the same members over and over again. It's the same rinse cycle over and over again. The other forums, I guess have spats where people come in and spam and troll briefly, or pass off bootlegs, and then they usually get chased off due to a massive outcry of forumites who are so incredibly pissed, that it results in a ban.

With the exception of Kitsunexis and Validius who dematerialized a few years ago, and RegalSin who has thus far proven that if you type enough while on shrooms that people will eventually respond to your downright wackiness, there really is no comparison.

I know that you're addressing the ninny thing directly, Zeta, so I'll just say that we are unique that we have a total fucking psycho that just keeps coming back to bask in the attention that he gets from everyone.

I have absolutely no clue. I'm here for teh PC Engine.

[SignOfZeta]

RegalSin is unique. I literally cannot understand WTF that guy is, is on, whatever. I think he's pretty awesome though. For now. We'll see.

[Tatsujin]

I'm here for teh PC Engine.

And for periodically lulzes 'n' rolfs.

[bartre]

personally, I think that it has something to do with the growing appeal of the system.
i'm curious as to when the n00b influx and the crazy prices are going to crash...

[Retrocool]

i am fairly new to the forum and I have to say I seem some silly poop going around, but I know I joined this particular forum
because of the love I have for my tg16/Duo and wanting to learn more and share with like minded folks.

Normally, I would just ignore the silly folks on here and just move on to whats more important these days.

[Joe Redifer]

My hypothesis is that since this particular community is so damned small, the crazies stick out like sore thumbs.  They're almost impossible to miss and that in turn is probably attractive to them.  Better chance on getting noticed.  Sega-16 is full of drama, but it gets drowned out pretty well because the community is gigantic.  Reported posts come in almost every day (often multiple posts per day).  People go apeshit over there but it is harder for the crazy people to get the attention that they so desperately need unless they are professionals at being crazy.  Bannings do happen but usually they just go away because there is so much else going on on the forum.  One of the ones banned at Sega-16 (not by me) was RegalSin nearly 4 years ago.  The reason given was "We like stupid people we can laugh at, but patience has a limit."  We'll see if that happens here.

Oddly, another forum I frequent (www.the-magicbox.com) has a similar-sized community as this, maybe a touch smaller or bigger, hard to say.  Drama there is fairly rare.  Some heated arguments take place but it's been a while since we dealt with the crazies.  Though there was one guy who kept promising to change the world.  He said the world would change by such-and-such a date because he was a super celebrity.  I told him that I would ban him if the world did not change by that day and he agreed to it.  The date came and went with no change and I banned him for not changing the world.

[SignOfZeta]

...fucking A.

[soop]

Zeta, you've just described every forum I've ever been to.  Welcome to the internet.  Even RegalSin isn't unique, I'll try and find some crap by Chocobops...

Aww, it's all been archived.  This is probably him: www.myspace.com/chocobops2

He was literally uninteligable.

[guyjin]

There's another forum I frequent where we have a troll with a similar profile as ninny. Attention whoring, enemy list, keeps trying to come back under other aliases, etc. I'm afraid to say they've been dealing with him since before we started dealing with ninny, and he still keeps coming back.

Such a person probably doesn't have any social outlets other than internet forums.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The problem is that other forums have an immediate approval system.  The jackoffs get themselves banned within a week and are quickly forgotten. 

Here, we get them occasionally, out of nowhere, and then go WTF WAS THAT.  We're not used to it because it happens irregularly.

If we had a faster (immediate) approval system, the idiots would show up immediately, be idiots, piss people off, and be lolb& before you know it.

Plus most other forums blow and the people on them are idiots anyways, so, fuck em.

[Senshi]

I think we're all nutz  

Oddly, another forum I frequent (www.the-magicbox.com) has a similar-sized community as this, maybe a touch smaller or bigger, hard to say.  Drama there is fairly rare.  Some heated arguments take place but it's been a while since we dealt with the crazies.  Though there was one guy who kept promising to change the world.  He said the world would change by such-and-such a date because he was a super celebrity.  I told him that I would ban him if the world did not change by that day and he agreed to it.  The date came and went with no change and I banned him for not changing the world.

Charlie Sheen?  

I think it also depends on your definition of normal. Every forum I have been in has its drama. Some people just want to take advantage of what the forum has to offer, but may not be dedicated to the forums theme.  Some just want to find new people to argue with. Others are curious weekend warriors dropping in from time to time.  Except for the ones that just wanna watch the world burn, everyone should be welcome regardless of their level of dedication.  With the exception of the last two weeks craziness, I would have to disagree with your assessment of recent sign ups. Most I have seen have been polite, and a few have held raffles. Why your letting a few rotten eggs marginalize the rest of us i'm not sure. Thats your opinion and your entitled to it, but i see alot of good stuff going on.
Please don't take my post personally, you asked a question and I gave my opinion. I can also see how the recent flame wars and the fact you have been here much longer than me would influence your point of view. You have seniority over me due to your time here and I respect that. I just think that the number of good things going on and good people coming in outweigh a handful of crap now and then.

+1

[Nazi NecroPhile]

RegalSin is unique. I literally cannot understand WTF that guy is, is on, whatever. I think he's pretty awesome though. For now. We'll see.

He's a troll, pure and simple.  His posts are intentionally trying to drive people up the wall.

[Joe Redifer]

If we had a faster (immediate) approval system, the idiots would show up immediately, be idiots, piss people off, and be lolb& before you know it.

I've been approving new members every day for weeks now.  I probably even approved frozenintears.  The only ones I don't approve are the obvious ones like PS3repair@ps3repair.com or some such.  Otherwise there's not much to go by so we're going to be getting them kind of regularly now (it can still take me nearly a day to approve when I'm lazy).  Ninny may already be back or have 2 or 3 accounts already approved, who knows?  In fact I'm gonna go approve whoever is in the cue right now.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Oh.  When did we start getting daily approvals.  That's better than the 3 months it took for me to get approved.

I almost forgot I registered, to be honest lol

[Joe Redifer]

When the forum went down Nat made some suggestions to Aaron and we were bestowed with slightly more power after he (surprisingly) brought the forums back.  That's really the only new power I think...  Well it looks like we can change people's ignore lists, avatars and censor certain words on the forum, not sure why that stuff was added.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Make Magical Chase censor into "Overpriced Bullshit"

[PunkCryborg]

Nah most forums get their fair share of crazies. It gets worse the more niche the hobby is too. On Sega16 there is so many trolls and bannings, it's like one person banned every other day. The mod there Balloo is really quick to weed out trouble makers. They don't pop up as often on here but hang around longer than most forums so we get to have a lot of fun and the banning is way more dramatic.

[HercTNT]

I really like Joes attitude on this. You really have no reason not to approve someone unless their name is obvious like the example given. After that, its up to the mods to keep an eye out then

deal with them if they don't behave. Like he did with Frozenintears.  After that its up to us to not let the crazies dictate our forum. In that regards I would say we do just fine. Fighting street

is an exception of course, we are supposed to have it out over there.

[soop]

I really like Joes attitude on this. You really have no reason not to approve someone unless their name is obvious like the example given. After that, its up to the mods to keep an eye out then

deal with them if they don't behave. Like he did with Frozenintears.  After that its up to us to not let the crazies dictate our forum. In that regards I would say we do just fine. Fighting street

is an exception of course, we are supposed to have it out over there.

I remember when I registered I had to wait at least a week, and I was desperate to join.  I had to go over to Sega 16 and find someone to nudge someone else.

I was very sad when the forum closed, even though I'd not been around for a bit.

[nectarsis]

I do think a large part of it is the smaller size here...Joe made some good points.  The nut jobs do stick out like a sore thumb.  Add to that the lack of the shoutbox, we get more inane crap in posts that would normally have been answered/shut down in shout.   

Aside from the Ninny retardation, and Regalsin's obvious trolling, and stupidity....there's always been an influx of the scammer/attempted scammers/one and dones (just here to sell..many at EBay+ prices), etc.   Though there def seems to be a higher than normal (per capita) asshat population here.   Throw in the influx of some of teh most thin skinned/whiny/can't take a joke people we have EVER had on here....yet sadly little lulz occur.

[SignOfZeta]

I didn't include "whiny bitches" because that sort of thing is very acceptable in society, although not so much with myself. I tell people here to fuck off, they get pissed...that's normal, even if the reason I told them to fuck off is that they are jerks and should know it since they've been hearing it all their lives.

And yeah, "size" probably is the answer then. If they see that there are only a few dozen regulars here, then they know their exhibitionism will be noticed.

Since this question has been answered I will now re-quote you guys, edit the quotes to my liking, delete the originals, and lock the thread. Thanks for participating!










I was kidding about that.

[xcrement5x]

Make Magical Chase censor into "Overpriced Bullshit"

OOOh!  We should do like woot where they wordfilter BOC (Bag of Crap) into all sorts of things like Bandolier of Carrots, or Briar of Cheese and so forth.   My suggestion for MC (Magical Chase) would be Mangina Crabs 

[Ji-L87]

I came for the tech-support and stayed for the knowledge, lulz and obey. Oh and sweet deals and raffles.

...also 'cause I'm not registered at any other retro game forum

I support the close-community-sore-thumb idea as well. It doesn't take very long to start recognizing the most active posters and idiots/troublemakers gets scorned quickly and without remorse. I think they might like that.

[Gogan]

Jus be glad Japhei hasn't ever graced us with his prescence. Or has he?

[Joe Redifer]

Just for fun I made it so that Ys is always transformed into Ys.  We'll see how well it works.  

MacYs.

Well, shit, I guess I can't do that.

[Tatsujin]

Nah most forums get their fair share of crazies. It gets worse the more niche the hobby is too. On Sega16 there is so many trolls and bannings, it's like one person banned every other day. The mod there Balloo is really quick to weed out trouble makers. They don't pop up as often on here but hang around longer than most forums so we get to have a lot of fun and the banning is way more dramatic.

Should I enter the world of Sega16?

[Joe Redifer]

Only if you like Sega stuff enough to talk about it.

[nat]

I tried SEGA-16 a bunch of years ago and I made a comment about how a TurboGrafx-CD port of a game compared to the Genesis port and was overrun by a bunch of idiots claiming you can't compare TurboCD games to Genesis games because the TGCD "BIOS" and "hardware enhancements" make it an unfair comparison. I wish I could recall and recount the exacts statements that were made, they were quite amusing. The "wall of noise" I was assaulted with was so overwhelming, I gave up then and there. I like SEGA stuff quite a bit, but I can't deal with a community quite so biased. I'm sure Joe will be quick to chime in and say we're just as biased the other way here, but I'll preemptively disagree and say the majority of the people here love SEGA stuff and aren't under any delusions about the technical ramifications of the SEGA hardware. We've had plenty of intelligent discussions and game comparisons between the two platforms over the years.

Based on my 30-second encounter over there, Tatsujin, I'd say unless you have a tolerance for people that vehemently hate the PCE/Turbo for no tangible reason and are unable to quantify said hatred without resorting to made up "facts" (such as the TurboCD's CPU and graphical enhancements), you probably ought to not bother. I still go there sometimes and read select threads, but I don't participate.

Actually, you'd probably do OK if you only talk about SEGA stuff and never mention the Turbo or propose any sort of comparison between the two platforms.

If we had a faster (immediate) approval system, the idiots would show up immediately, be idiots, piss people off, and be lolb& before you know it.

I've been approving new members every day for weeks now.  I probably even approved frozenintears.  The only ones I don't approve are the obvious ones like PS3repair@ps3repair.com or some such.  Otherwise there's not much to go by so we're going to be getting them kind of regularly now (it can still take me nearly a day to approve when I'm lazy).  Ninny may already be back or have 2 or 3 accounts already approved, who knows?  In fact I'm gonna go approve whoever is in the cue right now.

I perform one extra step before approving new accounts here: I always Google the email address provided (assuming it passes the obvious visual check) and see if it turns up any indication the person has had a sordid history with any other forum or website.

I'm pretty sure I was the one who approved RegalSin, because I do remember Googling his email address and coming across lots of, uh, interesting stuff from other forums. I never saw anything that indicated I ought to leave his account inactive, though.

[Joe Redifer]

I tried SEGA-16 a bunch of years ago and I made a comment about how a TurboGrafx-CD port of a game compared to the Genesis port and was overrun by a bunch of idiots claiming you can't compare TurboCD games to Genesis games because the TGCD "BIOS" and "hardware enhancements" make it an unfair comparison.

I think I may remember that one.  Someone was saying that because the Turbo game was on CD, it was able to use extra CPU power.  Tom or somebody came on to say that the CD unit doesn't add any extra horsepower other than extra RAM which is essentially used as a cartridge would be used, not as video RAM or CPU RAM, etc.  The counter-argument to that one was "Well, since the game is getting its music from the CD it doesn't have to worry about wasting CPU by processing the music, therefore it is an unfair comparison.  You can only compare HuCards to Genesis carts when looking at system performance".  Shit was classic, I tell ya.  You'd find it harder to say things like that over there now as we have a few people who will get in your face if you say something idiotic like that.

[SignOfZeta]

English speaking Sega fandom is upside down. Sega's most popular system in the US and UK was and is the MD/Genesis, and that is easily the worst system they made in their history. The entirely of Sega fandom is a house built on sand because of this, IMO. It leads to all sorts of dunks bullunkus, backward rationalizations, denial, etc.

To be fair though, the Mega/Sega CD games really did get a lot of extra horsepower from the add-on, so maybe that's the direction they are coming from. Ie: all those scale-happy euro games, BC Racers, etc.

[nat]

I tried SEGA-16 a bunch of years ago and I made a comment about how a TurboGrafx-CD port of a game compared to the Genesis port and was overrun by a bunch of idiots claiming you can't compare TurboCD games to Genesis games because the TGCD "BIOS" and "hardware enhancements" make it an unfair comparison.

I think I may remember that one.  Someone was saying that because the Turbo game was on CD, it was able to use extra CPU power.  Tom or somebody came on to say that the CD unit doesn't add any extra horsepower other than extra RAM which is essentially used as a cartridge would be used, not as video RAM or CPU RAM, etc.  The counter-argument to that one was "Well, since the game is getting its music from the CD it doesn't have to worry about wasting CPU by processing the music, therefore it is an unfair comparison.  You can only compare HuCards to Genesis carts when looking at system performance".  Shit was classic, I tell ya.  You'd find it harder to say things like that over there now as we have a few people who will get in your face if you say something idiotic like that.

Yes! That was it, exactly. I couldn't even wrap my mind around the arguments these people were making. I was truly bewildered, and I made a hasty exit.

If you say it's better now, I may make another attempt at participation one of these days.

[HercTNT]

They Pier solar forums had a similar blowout. I like the PS forums, they have a ton of really good people. You can't mention any other system other than the MD or MD-cd or you get into

trouble.  Not all people are what I would call "fanatic" but they seemed to have a few rules that you did not want to violate:

Nintendo is garbage, end of story!

Turbo is not garbage, but not worthy of compare.

MD has the best sound and has the fastest cpu of any of the 16 bit systems!

If you could live within those rules you were good to go. Violate them and you were bound to get jumped. I like the Genny alot so i did not have any problems, I was just careful not to

mention the other systems to often.

[Joe Redifer]

With their stupid new "investor" thing, Watermelon had the TurboGrafX (sic) as one of the options to choose as a platform for them to develop their next game.  You pay them real money and then you get to vote.  There is discussion of this in the Pier Solar thread elsewhere.  Of course, nobody voted for it or the Neo Geo, but some people voted Xbox 360.

[HercTNT]

Yea i read about that. I'm not sure of the mindset behind that decision. I appreciate their attempt reach out to the public, but what happens when someone pays money then does not get the feature they ask for?  Way to much control to the people, not nearly enough to the developer.

[blueraven]

Just for fun I made it so that Ys is always transformed into Ys.  We'll see how well it works. 

MacYs.

Well, shit, I guess I can't do that.

YOU MADE A FUNNY!!

No, but seriously. This is not pejorative.

Me sounding like lunatic:

The situation, Joe, its that you're sardonic sense of humor (at least here) makes it near-impossible to tell when you're kidding, and when you're just trying to be a Joe Red for the sake of being Joe Redifer. Part of the charm. I liek GameSack, which has great production, good film cuts and mis-en-sciene, and is, after all, PCE Related shit on a PCE forum. I think you and you're co-host do a damn good job despite the obvious teleprompter"ness" which I have always taken as part of the act. And I'm saying you do it well. It's like listening to Kevin Smith/Scott Moser's "Smodcast" in a way. They talk about the craziest stuff on the planet but still maintain a level of authority that makes everyone go "Man, that some pretty cool shit."

Master Splinter makes the demand that you remain especially fair and balanced being that this is a PCE forum, and make even more of an effort to engage the members of this forum in a more formal shitstorm of OBEY solidarity, instead of being RAMMITINYERTHROAT SEGAMAN.

Like, for example, you could tell me to fuck off.

[Tatsujin]

Only if you like Sega stuff enough to talk about it.

I raik much. Not as much as PCE stuff (obvioulsy). But I have most of the sega console ever made..lol. And tons of games for 'em. I like MD, SMS (markIII), Saturn the best.

Sega stuff comes directly after PCE stuff. Is that raik enuff?

[Joe Redifer]

You could try it.  Nobody will force you to stay and if you don't like it, you can talk smack about it!

Blueraven, that example was half serious at least.  I did "censor"Ysinto Ys and by typing Macy's I got MacYs.  I turned the censoring off and then edited the post.  I suppose I could go back and try it with a space so thatYswould have to be by itself but I'm just too busy!  I mean I need to finish typing this post!

EDIT:  OK I'm back.  Macy's. Ys y's.  Shit.  I need to have one with a period or comma.  Oh well.

[Arkhan Asylum]

LOL, I'd love to see the Pier Solar people dev for the PCE CD.

That whole investor thing is a goddamn joke.  I don't have much respect for that group at this point.  Turning gaming into investing is retarded and wrong.

Pier Solar is good shit, but now it's going to be overshadowed by their stupidity.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

Like, for example, you could tell me to fuck off.

Help me with LoX or fuck off! 

[Arkhan Asylum]

LOX OR GTFO