Posted by Gremlin on 05 January 2000 at 22:36:58:

Dear Stoopid:
A few minutes ago, I had nothing better to do [I was trapped behind someone who looked a lot like Eddie Deezen, and who was driving a 1974 Vega, at a green light, waiting for him to work out where the accelerator had got off to] so I devoted a few seconds to the unfortunate matter of your existence.
Then I spent another couple of seconds considering the redundancy factor, and decided that there are enough new lurkers to this board to justify this. So: you're an idiot. Yes: you. Not anywhere behind you; turn round and look at this carefully. You: idiot. Imbecile. Moron. A little slow. Means well, but. A complete and utter plebeian.
This is why.
To respond to your most recent delusions: you were banned. If you don't believe that, notice that you're no longer using the same ISP to reach gremlin.net. That's right: someone sneaked in and switched your dialup on you. That's why you were able to return after all this time. You were banned, because you're the only one who wants you here. The rest of us would prefer that you got your own website--even something at GeoCities would do--with a message board--even one of those free thingys they'll give out to anyone with a GeoCities site--and...okay, I'm joking; you already have all that; but, for some odd reason, you're the only one who ever posts anything to your board. Why? To be blunt: No One Likes You.
Now, let's take a moment and notice exactly how dumb BangBang is. It doesn't really matter what brainless system equates BC1 to Zero: there's still no Year Zero, and, if there were, it would--according to this stoopid, stoopid idea--remain in the BC range, designating AD1 as the first year of the first millennium. Two millennia--two thousand years--plus that first year still equal 2001. It's called math. If the sitcoms you fill your life with ever mentioned math, you'd think you were a mathematician. And, of course, no system of measurement has ever produced a year with 365.4 days in it; you're groping for 365.25, Stoopid.
There's still no such word as 'unerudite'.
You're not an alien; you've never met an alien; you have no idea what you're talking about regarding alien life; you're an idiot from Earth who claims to be jewish, yet is neither judaist nor Israeli, judging from your posts. You've claimed to be an atheist, a judaist, a buddhist, and some sort of new spin on a technocrat. Still, you're simply an idiot. That, I think, is clear to all.
For a very long time, I hesitated banning you. For all the EMails, et cetera, that I got from regulars and lurkers alike pleading for me to ban you-even threatening to leave if I didn't ban you, I hesitated. Simply because Jurassosaur seemed to get on with you, for reasons unknown. I waited until he began to complain, on the board, about the flamewars to ban you. Then: I did.
Then you switched ISPs after only two months and found your way banging back.
The question: to ban your new ISP, or to let you post these idiotic things for a while. That's what I spent nearly a minute pondering while I was trapped behind the Guy Who the PostNixon Years Forgot.
And I came to a decision. And you might even be qualified to understand it. It involves television.
Something Swyndle could tell you about, if he weren't so justified in insulting you all the time, is that my expertise runs into unusual genres. One of them is television, and marketing in general. I don't watch television, because it's really very dumb, and utterly predictable. Because every show is the same.
There's a formula to a successful sitcom. It works like this.
A sitcom has to have at least four elements from a list of personality types. The really good, successful shows feature an intelligent guy--Dietrich on Barney Miller, Stires on M*A*S*H, Frasier on Cheers, Flytrap on WKRP, MeatHead on All in the Family, and so on. The show can survive without that character, but it's insurance, since the intelligent people watching the show and the adverts will stay tuned. You also need a crass character, who says outrageous things to inspire laughter from people disqualified from understanding the smart character. For that, we have such personalities as Swyndle and Vigo; they fill that necessary role, and keep the audiences coming back. It also helps to have a nutty character--Johnny Fever, Klinger, and so on--who produces the unexpected. We have that. Superfreak and Hunter post some pretty weird things, to add to the variety.
Two critical personality types remain, and without both of these, no audience will stay tuned at all.
One of them, of course, is EveryMan. Sam Malone, Travis on WKRP, Hawkeye on M*A*S*H, and so on. Without that character, no one will watch. Fortunately, this is an interactive medium, so the audience are the EveryMan in the equation. They can post and respond all they like, and actually alter the plotline. History in the making, as it were.
But even that would fail, if not for the Village Idiot. You. BangBang. JarJar. Yutz. You. Without you, the experience isn't complete. Without you here, posting the dumbest things anyone could ever try to decipher, the rest of the regulars, and even the lurkers, might begin to fear the worst: that, without you, specifically, they might be the dumbest people on the board.
Amazing as it may sound, your presence on the board isn't actually a detriment. It's not actually welcome, but it's not precisely damaging any of us at all.
You, BangBang, are The Global Village Idiot. You are the dumb, loser character which the EveryMen will watch to feel smarter than someone explicitly. You can't hurt this board, this site, or the 'net at all. You merely give the audience something cute and harmless to pity.
You're Woody on Cheers. Strike that: you're Cliff on Cheers. You're Radar on M*A*S*H. You're Natalie on the Facts of Life. You're Applegate on Married: with Children. You're Homer Simpson. You're Brainy Smurf. You're Pinky Mouse. You're Stimpy. You're half the cast of South Park. You're Betty White on The Golden Girls. You're the dumb one who makes the smart one the straightman. You Costello; me Abbot. Dig?
And this is not a secret. No one here takes you or your tantrums seriously. And some of us know a lot more about you than you think we do. You don't simply mistype words. Your misspellings are static. Like Alan1, with his ubiquitous 'typeing out' annoyances, you repeat your own mistakes again and again. Anyone who reads enough of your posts will eventually catch that. You do this intentionally.
For that, I can almost believe that you got a degree in the oversaturated field of computers. Almost. Except that your website--or, to be accurate, the website we know about--is far too remedial to have come from anyone who's ever taken a computer course. You're either lying about your degree, or doing a hell of a lot to make us believe you're an idiot. And I really don't care which it is. And I really don't care whether you post things here. I could ban you again, and you could switch ISPs again. I'd only be buying time. And, really, you bring enough hits to the site, and generate enough interest in our little broadcast microcosm of a message board, that I can allow for your existence, and simply avoid your posts in the same way I avoid television--because I have far better things to do than to remind myself that I'm smarter than average by witnessing the actions of a typecast idiot.
So: there it is. Post; don't post; live or die; I really don't give a damn. I win either way.
And I don't expect you to make a decision and stick to it anyway. You'll always regret whichever you do.
--Gremlin