So a few decades back, I started to participate in the local computer bulletin board (or BBS) scene. This is what we had before general qccess to the internet, and an alternative to larger commercial enterprises like Prodigy, Compuserve, and AOL. Hobbyists would set up BBS software on their own computers, and with a dedicated phone line or two to allow users to dial in with their own computers and modems to participate in message boards, play games, download the “warez,” what have you.
It was a fun activity and a creative outlet, and on at least one of these BBSes I ran a dedicated section for comics discussion. This was very early in my comics retail career (or “career”) and several folks on these BBSes were, in fact, customers of mine. It was usually a fun, friendly endeavor and I’m still friends with a number of people from then to this day.
And I say “usually” because there was this one guy — isn’t there always — who was a real fly in the ointment. Going by the appropriate name of “Bozo” (appropriate not in the Larry Harmon way, but in the more derogatory sense), this person would rant and cajole and insult with misspelled screeds and usually unwarranted venom. Hostile and homophobic, it was a wonder to me why he spent his time doing this in paces where folks were just trying to have a little fun and relax. (It was also a wonder to me, in retrospect, why he wasn’t immediately kicked off these BBSes…perhaps he was from some, but he certainly seemed to be around a lot.) I tangled with him once or twice, and quickly realized both the futility of this and that this was exactly what he wanted, so I stopped.
This outsized toxic personality had me wondering…just who was this guy? And it wasn’t like today, where some jerk can pop up out of nowhere and he’s, like, on the other side of the world from you. This was probably someone at least relatively nearby, calling into the boards to wreak his havoc. I pictured some cranky dude in his 40s (I was in my 20s at the time) in his stained t-shirt banging at his keyboard surrounded by empty cans of whatever his poison of choice may have been, smoker’s-cough laughing at his latest bon mots.
One thing about these being local BBSes is that there would occasionally be in-person gatherings, at a park or bowling alley or places like that, where we meet face-to-face instead of just typing words at each other. And it was at one of these gatherings that “Bozo” turned up.
And what surprised me was that…he was about my age, possibly younger. A handsome guy, appeared to be completely congenial in person, even perhaps a little sheepish to stand revealed as “that guy.” Though I was a relative newcomer to the BBS scene compared to many of the others at these gatherings, and they seemed to be familiar if not friendly with the fella. As if it were necessary to have a “troll” on the BBSes and this was they guy who happened to take up the job, and, y’know, no hard feelings.
I never did get any actual insight into what “Bozo” thought he was doing, whether this was some form of extended performance art or if he actually bought into all the madness he was spouting. Anyway, it didn’t matter because by the mid-late-ish ’90s the local BBS scene had largely collapsed, as the internet began to expand access and lured users away. And “Bozo” because an artifact of the past, a weird memory from a mostly positive pastime.
But then I was on the internet, where there were plenty more “Bozos” to be had.
I was not a Usenet guy, the message exchange system that primarily dominated early internet usage before the advent of the World Wide Web, but yes, I know trolling was a problem there too. And of course there were all the dedicated message boards on the Web, with their own problematic trolls, but I mostly avoided those as well. But I didn’t really peronally encounter trolling again until blogs began to really be a thing. Especially after I started my own blog.
To be fair, I haven’t had to deal with many over the couple of decades of doing this site. There are the occasional drive-by commenters, who only turn up once to say something insulting to me because they disagreed with whatever. I had a couple of recurring trolls (one of which followed me over from the old Fanboy Rampage blog) who would shout nonsense in my comments sections ’til they tired of it, or I blocked them. I still have one dude who pops up whenever I suggest that maybe people who aren’t white and straight should be treated as humans, to tell me the error of my ways.
But “jerks is jerks,” I guess, and running a site that allows public commenting is alas opening a door for people to do this sort of thing, and that’s just the price paid.
And, hoo boy, there’s social media of course, which is just a madhouse filled with confirmed social deviants just itching to pile abuse onto someone who made the mistake of being, say, a woman. Little different from “Bozo,” they just cast out their hooks and see who they can catch.
A slight variation I’ve encountered more recently on the usual trolling is “the super fan,” someone who is extremely possessive of their specific obsession. So much so, that someone else discussing that obsession in a way they don’t personally approve of is to be attacked and diminished in favor of their superior perspective.
One example that continually amuses me is when blogging brother Andrew and I were on Xwitter discussing (WARNING: old people video game references incoming) Coleco’s game releases for the Atari 2600. We’d referenced the fact that many of these games were ports from the more advanced Colecovision, and by pure necessity had to be downgraded to be able to perform on the 2600’s older hardware.
We weren’t denigrating Coleco for this, we weren’t cast aspersions on the people who made these games…we were simply acknowledging the literally undeniable fact that the 2600 games had to less complex than their Colecovision counterparts. The hardware and memory differences demanded it.
Well, well, well, the world’s #1 Colecovision fan somehow found our discussion and injected himself right in there, outraged that we would call these games incompetent trash (we didn’t) and that we’d insult the programmers’ knowhow (we also didn’t). The point of object seemed to be the word “downgraded,” which we meant entirely dispassionately and he thought was an offense of the highest order.
Andrew just blocked the guy right away, which was the wise move, though I think it was my years in retail that made me attempt to reason with the guy and get him to see what we were saying. Because I’m talking about it here, you can probably guess that didn’t work out, even to the point where the guy actually tried to tattle on us to some old former Coleco programmer who also happened to be on Xwitter. (I never saw that programmer make a comment, presumably because he probably rolled his eyes and thought “ugh, this guy again.”)
Since I’ve abandoned Xwitter and moved to Bluesky, I haven’t had to deal with too many problem people, and those that turn up are very easily dismissed with Bluesky’s very solid blocking option. However, there was one case just the other week, one that inspired this very post.
On the occasion of President Jimmy Carter’s passing, I posted this MAD cover, dated March 1978:
Along with it, I included the caption “This was as defining an image of Jimmy Carter for me in my childhood as just about anything else. RIP.” You can see the post right here for yourself.
This wasn’t intended as an overtly political post (even if posting about a former President at all is inherently political). It was simply a comment on the fact that, as a child at the time, my primary interaction with politics on that scale was via entertainment aimed at me (or not necessarily at me, but seen by me anyway, such as Dan Aykroyd’s impression of Carter on Saturday Night Live). To this day, this drawing (by Jack Rickard) exists in my brain as the primary picture in my mind of the man. I mean, they don’t call these the “formative years” for nothing.
I figured, if I were to get any objection to this post at all, it’d be from someone who was annoyed that I didn’t discuss Carter’s full legacy, good and/or ill, or that I reduced him to this goofy image. And I was ready to argue, if I had to, with, well, what I said in the previous paragraph.
What I got instead was this, a straight up objection to me even using MAD at all. You can see my immediate response, and his, um, whatever that is in the image, too:
Not shown is my second response, where I told him 1) I’ve discussed MAD plenty of times on my comics blog, with its own category, and 2) I carry MAD in my store, both new issues and old. And as you can see by his second response, he did see that post and it did nuttin’ a’tall to mollify the guy. So, to Blocktown he went.
Digging a little deeper into the fella, I discovered he was on several Bluesky “blocklists” (lists which, if you follow, block everyone on that list) which tells me this isn’t unusual behavior for him. And a fellow blogger has told me he’s turned up in their comments whenever he uses images from MAD for the same reasons “Alfred” gives above…not liking comic book guys who talk about his favorite magazine.
It’s…amazing that someone puts this much vitriol into complaining about something that, let’s face it, isn’t real. Or at least aimed at the wrong people, to give him the barest benefit of a doubt. As online pal ThisIsBrian said, “That sure is a lot of worrying for a guy who’s using the name of the most famous non-worrier there is.”
Compared to the abuse some folks get online, this is nothing. Some trolls out there can be real dangers, with threats and massive online pile-ons of their victims and showing intentions of (and following through with) real world crimes. The guys I’ve mentioned here are just minor annoyances, bemusing at best, and easily dealt with. They aren’t much different from the “Bozos” of yore, spitting out anger and insults, just more specific about their particular triggers. I’m betting that in person, they’re also just like “Bozo,” unassuming and bearing sheepish grins when outed for their behavior, their rage curtailed in fear of actual consequences.
