Ridiculous Forum Comments

Bob Leggitt | Thursday 7 July 2011
I’m sure you won’t need me to tell you that lots of people make ridiculous comments on forums and message boards. There are, however, several recurring ‘classics’, in relation to which the word ‘stupid’ doesn’t seem quite strong enough. Rather than specific quotes, the examples coming up shortly are paraphrased generalisations of the kind of comments I’m referring to, but if you do read or use a lot of forums, doubtless they’ll ring a few bells.

One thing forums appear to promote in particular is a blindness to hypocrisy. You can see it as a visitor. But once you log in that goes straight out of the window and you gain an almost pathological compulsion to gripe about what everyone else is doing, whilst not only doing it yourself, but doing it to the fullest excess humanly possible.

It’s always, for instance, the member who’s posted essentially the same thing about 2,000 times in the space of three months who launches a crusade against spam. Similarly, the member who perpetually responds with a single emoticon and no actual text at all, is the first to complain about a lack of proper communication. It just seems there’s something about forums per se, which instills stupidity in people and makes them say ridiculous things. You go on there with a relatively calm, normal, and even vaguely intelligent personality, and the next minute you’re hurling four letter words at newcomers who’ve barely introduced themselves, and publicly diagnosing the forum team with a range of certifiable mental disorders. No one’s ever explained it. That’s just the way it works. Not everyone becomes a hypocrite, of course. Some simply lose all sense of… well, sense. Here are some of the classic ridiculous lines you might commonly find…

“How can I set up a site/blog which will make me loads of money without me having to do a stroke of work?”

“I can quite honestly say I’ve no idea why the sly, corrupt, biased, halfwitted imbeciles running this forum would want me banned!”

“I’ve spent literally all day today trying to tell you I’ve got better things to do than mess about on a forum talking to people who don’t listen!”

“Why would anyone bother posting on a forum like this?”

“Stop trying to tell others what they can and can’t do!”

“You need to learn not to judge people! Only idiots judge other members on a forum – and you are definitely an idiot!”

“If you can see this post, I just wanna say that the mods are deleting literally everything I write! If you can’t see it, please contact the mods and ask why they deleted it!”

“If anyone has actually bought this software, can they PM me the product key so I can use my illegal free version please?”

"Why keep repeating yourself? It’s pointless. There’s no point to it. What use can there possibly be in constantly repeating yourself? If you’re just going to go on and on and on and on and on and on saying the same thing over and over and over and over again, people will get bored. They’ll lose interest. They’ll just end up totally and utterly disinterested and bored out of their minds. So why do it? Why repeat yourself again and again and again and again and again? I just simply don’t understand why anyone would do something so pointless, and just keep going on and on and on and on and on until everyone’s bored. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Anyone who’s thinking of coming on here and repeating themselves should think again, because it’s not clever – it’s just boring. I repeat, if you’re just going to repeat yourself, think again!”

“CALM THE F*** DOWN AND STOP BEING SO F***ING AGGRESSIVE!!!!!!!!!”

And my personal favourite?… It can only be the immortal: “Get a life!” Ah, what it is to be on your own in front of a computer, being called a prick for three hours by people you’ve never met, and arriving at the conclusion that you’re in a position to accuse them of not having a life… Yes, that’s a forum. That’s what they do to you.

If you still think joining a forum is a good idea, you can access some more serious posts on the subject, via the following links...