Step 1:
Come up with a title for your post. This should obviously be about something you feel strongly about. It is customary for this to be a personal opinion expressed as statement-of-fact. This will make other readers worship your massive intellect. Abstain from using wishy-washy compromises like “perhaps”, “may” or “I think”. Remember, there is no opinion more important nor absolute than your own, and civil discourse is for sissies.
Step 2:
At this point, your goal is to increase your personal standing in the eyes of the other easily-cowed sheeple. Ideally, you should be channeling the reincarnation of Jim Jones. It is useful to express your contempt for the team of trained monkeys that comprise the development team.
Be vocal, assertive and demand a response. It may sometimes be useful to make veiled threats. Remember – Cassandra was ALWAYS right.
Step 3:
At this point, minions of the Evil One may infiltrate your precious thread and post something called a “contrary opinion” (which is obviously stupid). Do not allow them to go unanswered! There is only black and white and they are only doing so because they are obviously either ignorant or stupid. It is a known fact that ignorant and stupid people are incapable of formulating any valid opinions. Since everyone who doesn't share your opinion must therefore be mentally disabled or evil, they must discouraged from forming any opinions for themselves. Immediately identify them as malicious "trolls" that only thrive off creating strife.
If their post is somewhat lengthy, in order to prevent anyone from reading it (as most sheeple will merely perform a quick scan using a scroll-bar), it is customary to reply to every single point they made with quote tags. The quote tag is your best friend, because it insinuates content by volume and inhibits a reprisal in kind as few people (except for the excessively rabid) will embed quotes in quotes.
If anyone starts making repeated rebuttals to your gems of wisdom, it is vitally important that you do not concede to them the last word. That would be synonymous with defeat. Canvass for people who share the same o̶p̶i̶n̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ facts with you and populate the thread with sophomoric browbeating and personal attacks. Use the “Like” tag frequently and coerce other people (Your friends, your parents, your dog) to “Like” you. People are more inclined to agree with publicly-sanctioned o̶p̶i̶n̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ facts and everyone looks up to intelligence.
Another popular way of displaying intellectual prowess is to insert obscure words into your post. Nobody will think it odd that you could have such a brobdingnagian vocabulary, yet not understand the difference between the worlds “affect” and “effect”, nor “fatuous” and “facetious”.
Step 4: At some point, you may be required to justify yourself. This is easy because everything you know is factual and absolute, logical truth. There is no higher authority than your logic. Unfortunately, people may come up with pesky requests for “evidence”.
The good news is that on forums, proof doesn't necessarily require any scientific testing! Heck, even circumstantial evidence is completely unnecessary! Anecdotal evidence is as good as gold, particularly if it's personally observed – after all, who could be a better judge of fact than yourself? Even if you don't actually have any anecdotal evidence, just make it up or promise to conduct an experiment (People won't ever ask you to show proof of your results, so you can just fabricate data. It's a respectable process – many scientists in large corporations do it too!) - Besides, theoretical reasoning is exactly the same as solid data, except without all that messy and tiresome effort.
Step 5:
At some point, your glorious ivory tower will span more than 10 pages in length. At this point, no reasonable person will read through the entire thread (and unreasonable people are easy to tear apart) and the evil minions that disagree will likely have tired and moved on. Any newcomer to your thread will therefore probably just read a few pages at random. As a result, it is vital that you inflate the thread's postcount with supportive posts from other people who share the same ̶a̶g̶e̶n̶d̶a̶ righteous cause, even if this largely consists of back-and forth quoting of entire posts with the additional line “Seconded”.
As creator of the thread, your blinding insight dominates the thread title and volume merely adds emphasis to how important your point is, even if a sizeable portion of the posts are detractory (they're just the minority, after all). One topic of caution is that your cause may be somewhat diminished if it is presented in a hostile environment, so it is important to create multiple threads promoting different aspects of the same agenda (at least different enough to let you equivocate yourself out of a thread-lock). You don't necessarily have to do this yourself, although sock-puppeting is not beyond consideration.
At no point should you ever develop any form of respect, courtesy, nor understanding for people who disagree with you. However, do not hesitate to point out these flaws in other people. Hypocrisy always invalidates any valid argument, except when it applies to yourself.
Follow these rules and you have a good chance of creating a cult of nubile virgins that follow your every word on the forums. What's to lose?
How to post on the General Discussion forums
Printable View
-
10-11-2011, 10:42 PMCatharsisHow to post on the General Discussion forums
-
10-11-2011, 10:49 PMKiriA500Fixed that for you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catharsis
-
10-11-2011, 10:51 PMAvraym
It feels like the majority of "Useless thread is useless" are being spewed forth from Rabanastre. Is it unofficially the troll server?
-
10-11-2011, 10:53 PMKiriA500Rabanastre is a city from Final Fantasy XII, the best single player Final Fantasy. They want more people to be aware of this, so they're the most vocal on the forums.Quote:
Originally Posted by Avraym
-
10-11-2011, 10:55 PMAvraymSoooo the only way to be vocal is to troll?Quote:
Originally Posted by KiriA500
Can't people post opinions without pissing on threads?
FFXII was my least favourite of the final fantasy's between VI-XIV, so your point makes a lot of sense.
Hell, I think i enjoyed FFXIV upon launch more than FFXII. -
10-11-2011, 11:09 PMAlkoun
A+ OP. Made me smile.
-
10-11-2011, 11:10 PMQuesse
I think you just broke most of your own rules.
-
10-11-2011, 11:10 PMoptionsMust be. I love the OP. Keep up the good work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Avraym
-
10-11-2011, 11:16 PMSav
This thread made my day, and I've only just woken up.
-
10-11-2011, 11:18 PMIlethius
bah quotes wont work :S
+1 to OP -
10-11-2011, 11:25 PMBetelgeuzah
I have posted so many threads that don't have strong views concerning a subject.
But those kind of threads just don't pick up. That's the reality. There will be no discussion, maybe few "good post" replies at best. The thread will get few likes at best, and will be forgotten in an hour.
To get a good discussion going, you need to provide sufficient tools for the discussion to spark. That more often than not means going slightly or more than slightly overboard with your opinion.
So if you want to blame someone, don't blame just the OP's. The whole community encourages said behaviour, because no one gives a damn about reasonable and well thought-out arguments if they don't have any edge to them. -
10-11-2011, 11:36 PMLucinda_Lecore
Thankyou OP for that very well put together post.
Still smiling from that :)
Lucinda xXx -
10-11-2011, 11:48 PMRazor
Can we get this stickied? Every new user needs to read this first!
-
10-12-2011, 01:36 AMGeesusThis made me literally LMFAO! You know why Avraym? Because what you just wrote up there is exactly what YOU did to another OP's perfectly positive post! "Hey pot, the kettle wants it's black back." Thread in question is hereQuote:
Originally Posted by Avraym
-
10-12-2011, 02:08 AMDallie
Trolling the trolls is bad? I thought the enemy of your enemy is your friend?
-
10-12-2011, 02:15 AMGeesus
HAHAHA Dallie, that would be so true if that's what was intended. But it wasn't; just pointing out a fact that I noticed from the other thread prior to this one. Ironic though is it not? ;)
-
10-12-2011, 02:20 AMGramul[SIZE="6"]~Meta Treads~[/SIZE]