Adequacy

My favourite part of Slashdot was the trolling. Some classic trolls there like "egg troll", "The Turd Report", etc. with their quite absurd yet entertaining posts. Then there was the rather ruder trolling, like not knowing if the link you were about to follow was yet another Goatse Man. Or the more helpful trolls, such as ones taking music requests to spam as the first post. There was even a 'hidden SID' forum, trolltalk, which was rather amusing (and somewhat disturbing) until it was overrun by some Markov chain bot. And spinoff trolling sites like http://adequacy.org - satire to rile uptight nerds and amuse the rest. I think the bizarre trolling subculture, amidst the righteous frothing of Linux fanaticism, was what really made Slashdot. Anyway, good times.

Eggtroll was, and still is, possibly the best troll I've ever seen. He carried it over to the newsgroups with elaborate multi-page trolls and crossposts. Whoever you are eggtroll, thank you for providing so much entertainment. Here's one of the archives: http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2002.5.10.153857.142.html

There were (at least) two distinct subfactions of trolls. One were the purely destructive, who'd started out on slashdot posting goatse and gnaa vileness. This faction has basically continued, in spirit if not in personnel, to be the pro-abuse faction wherever things are discussed on the internet. The other faction were people fed up of what they percieved as groupthink, who ran a much more subtle and 'traditional' trolling campaign culminating in the foundation of Adequacy.org . I still refer people to their great general-purpose essay "Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics". http://adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html

Wait, you're saying Medium is the new http://adequacy.org/ ? Finally, I understand!

It takes more work than just trolling forums, but I think there's an open niche for long-form trolling, in the vein of the early-2000s site http://www.adequacy.org/. Perhaps think of it as a cross between linkbait-style journalism and The Onion.

Like graffiti, trolling can be impressive when it's done especially well. My favorite troll of all time is the guy from comp.compression last August: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.compression/browse_thread/thread/6… followed by the famous "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" troll from adequacy.org: http://adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

Did he really unironically post a link to adequacy.org? [edit] For those less familiar, feel free to browse adequacy.org, or just read this gem: http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

>The second sign would be refusing to hand over passwords or let you look through their phone. This is only tangentially relevant, but somehow it reminded me of this very old joke list "Is your son a computer hacker?" http://adequacy.org/diaries/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

They should have just copied http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2002.1.28.153048.268.html and replaced 'Intel' with 'ARM' and 'AMD' with 'RISC-V'.

I believe that originated here: http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html Scroll down to point 8. More context: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequacy.org

Almost certainly yes. If it's not then this person is very unlucky. It's listed on urban dict and used in http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html where it says Linux is a virus (ironically a translation of this was my first information about Linux ever when I was a gullible teen.., I clearly remember the 'LILO' part, since when I was starting to get into it Linux was already using GRUB).

I guess it's probably closer to creative writing than debate on the internet, but I'd say this is pretty creative: http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

Sounds familiar... * Has your son asked you to change ISPs? * Are you finding programs on your computer that you don't remember installing? * Has your child asked for new hardware? * Does your child read hacking manuals? * How much time does your child spend using the computer each day? * Does your son use Quake? * Is your son becoming argumentative and surly in his social behaviour? * Is your son obsessed with "Lunix"? * Has your son radically changed his appearance? * Is your son struggling academically? http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

This reminds me of another article http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

Yes, lunix is soviet hacking tool, along with "Comet Cursor", "Bonzi Buddy" and "Flash". http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

What a good laugh the article http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html mentioned on the link.

"I know he is a linux user and I worry he will hack me." For this I must share with you: http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

That post is a joke. The author later clearly states that he is not "Reginald Gibbons", but someone else. Here is his apology (3 days later): http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.5.152712.125.html Notice the date: This was published more than 7 years ago This is not "Hacker News".

This reminds me of the terms of service of an old trolling site, adequacy.org, which forbade port scans, OS detections, right clicking to view source, etc. "Adequacy.org gives permission for its servers to be accessed by HTTP clients specifically designed to represent the logical structure of the served documents in a user readable format, or by mail transport agents legitimately transporting email relevant to the site. Protocol handshake information generated by our servers in a network transaction with your computer and client program, including but not limited to HTTP headers or SMTP handshakes, are Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Adequacy.org; disclosure of the contents of such protocol exchanges is strictly forbidden. The HTML source to our web pages is also Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Adequacy.org, and is only licensed to you for the purposes of reading and responding to Adequacy.org content, not for direct examination of said HTML source. Disclosure of the HTML source of any Adequacy.org page beyond the perusal of article and comment content is strictly forbidden. Any means of accessing Adequacy.org which violates these permissions, including but not limited to telnet access to any port, port scans, operating system detection programs, or any client or client feature specifically designed to display HTTP header information in a normal network transaction with our servers, or to display or store the physical structure of the HTML documents served (as opposed to generating a…