This is something of a character study on the collective society of the Sci-fi & Fantasy TV chatroom on Yahoo!. While all online environments have their balances and issues, this particular chatroom seems to be an exaggerated example of several major traits. Among these, elitism. Ignorance. Banality.

Basically this is just a collection of quotations organised into some sense of order.

Y'know, something occured to me earlier. It's nothing exactly important, but it's something that's slowly beginning to piss me off immensely. The huge majority of bullshit that goes on in here is just that. Bullshit made up for shock value. Attention seeking if you will. And there's a whole shitload of it going on, more or less 24hours a day.

- Gremmi, Yahoo! Chat session. February 25, 2002.

Nothing's ever seriously discussed. To wit:

Big ol' rant about a chatroom nobody visits. Well..not true..Datazoid visits it..and some of it can compare with the forum. Anyhew. I just proved to myself that the chat room "Sci Fi and Fantasy TV" in Yahoo, is the most pointless and utterly pathetic place in existance.

TYPICAL CHAT TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS

chatter1 says, im so stressed out
chatter2 says, hugs chatter1
chatter1 says, X is late calling me and im getting impatient
chatter2 says, i don't blame you
chatter1 says, he is supposed to call and tell me when he is goign to be on the plane home
chatter3 says, mmm chocolate milk and rasberry newtons
chatter3 says, ha! me.. drinking milk! who knew...
chatter2 says, well hopefully soon chatter1
chatter1 says, im practically turned inside out
chatter2 says, lol chatter3
chatter4 says, choc milk is god

Look at how anal and "fluffy" people are. They don't give a shit about anything resembling actual thought. They'd rather mill about and tell people about themselves. It's the mundaneness of it all. There's no sort of discussion or anything. No debating. No questioning. Just endless banalities.

I tried to start a discussion. I tried to get opinions of people. I got shouted at, insulted, and ignored for trying, and I quote "To sound cleverer than everyone else." Is Cleverer even a word?

Sigh. People are fucking morons, and it's pissing me off quite severely. I'm beginning to loathe mankind. Does no one care anymore? Is everyone becoming so banal and morose as the above subjects? Is the modicum of intelligent conversation that humanity has left designated for political and religious debates?

I hate myself sometimes. Fully expect me to be more expressive on the forum from now on. I had a life-changing event happen tonight. This isn't about segregation, or claimation of property. It's about how utterly morose 90% of mankind is. Parallels from this run into the real world too. It's annoying, frustrating, and it's making me want to physically hurt people.

- Gremmi, HOTU Discussion Forum. Date yet to be dug up.

More of the same, from the same source:

For anyone reading this, yes this is about that fucking stupid Yahoo Chatroom I'm so fond of bitching about. But that's irrelevant. Something twigged in me today, about said place. I realised that I can divide everyone I know from it into 5 equal groups.

There's the people I've met, who are good friends.
There's a few people I haven't met, who are also good friends.
There's people I'm fond of.
There's people I wouldn't want to see hurt particularly.
And then there's people who I completely don't care about at all.

For instance, someone who falls into the bottom category, who I was friends with at some point, (Not massively good friends, but friends nonetheless) said "Hi Chris! How are you? ". My reply was "Fuck off and die in a hole, you utter freak." I didn't feel bad about that. I still don't.

Anyhoo. Conclusion time. It's the society in there. The social ethics are utterly fucked up. Think of the elitist bigostic most self-centred overly-sensitive picky fucking whiny angsty bunch of pricks you're ever likely to meet, and you've got 90% of the "regulars" to that room.

Someone who falls into the fond category asked a question to the room, earlier. "Should I go out tonight? Or should I stay in and chat?"

Does that not seem like a rhetorical question, considering the room she talks in? "Should I go out and have a potentially good time, or should I sit here and listen to the same goddamn crap that cycles through this pathetically mentally-challenged room, probably end up in an argument about something so anal it's pathetic, and carefully avoid saying anything that might provoke someone?"

It's unique, though. That chatroom is the only one I've found which exhibits this behaviour. Sure, there's elitism in some places. Sure, there's a huge amount of angst. And sure, there's some over-sensitive groups. But this is those three combined into one giant flaming ball of hyper-sensitivityangstelitist gas.

After perservering with this type of society, usually quite ignorantly, most people reach a point of critical mass at which they finally realise the way things work, and choose to either leave, tolerate it, accept it or defy it. Having chosen the latter option, possibly without directly knowing it, Gremmi and myself (among others) formed the following opinions and whatnot:

People go on about emotional detachment from chat being how you hate everyone, and don't give a shit about anyone's feelings. That was Red's mistake. Emotional detachment from chat isn't about how you perceive others, it's about how they perceive you. It's about you, once you've closed chat, more or less completely forgetting about anything that occured in it. Save for one or two people.

Oh, yeah..you can grow attached to people. But it's like when people get worked up at some random newbie, or worked up about something that doesn't honestly concern them.

This mental friends list, that people have. Whatever you want to call it. Friendship. Comradeship..buddydom..whatever. It's not designed around how well you know someone, or how well you think you know someone. It's based around a mixture of tolerance and admiration. You don't want to get to know them because you feel you already do, kinda thing. A good example would be Mike. No one knows anything about him, yet people like, trust, and admire him.

To put it frankly, No one cares whether or not you've had more pain and anguish in your life than someone else. No one gives a rat's ass. It's how they are to you right now that's important. Not the past, and not the future...and Jesus Fuck..I feel like I'm making a grandiose speech at the end of a teen RomCom movie.

Of course there's exceptions to the rules. There's people you care about, people you know. But for example, if I were to make an odd random comment, that somehow reflected on Mike's past, and he got upset about it, I'd be incredibly surprised. I'm being very vague as to the underlining point, here.

- Gremmi, Yahoo! Chat session. Early 2002.

Not that the point in question is particularly well hidden.

Methinks people take comments far too personally in here. Not only was the comment plainly about someone who isn't in here, but who also is utterly guilty of everything put forward, yet everyone leaps on the commenter like he was attacking their young.

- Gremmi, Yahoo! Chat Session.

An oft encountered issue within the society is the way everything is taken so (often too) personally by almost everyone. It's almost guaranteed than an idle comment will generate a response from someone who is a) completely uninvolved in the situation, and b) totally unfamiliar with it. This is the so-called "grandfather syndrome", as explained in this hypothetical snippet:

Chatter1: i don't like fish
Chatter2: my grandfather was a fisherman you bastard you take that back
Chatter1: oookay

Obviously, the situation is such that Chatter2 is simply aiming to provoke Chatter1 into an argument (one of only two acceptable forms of subject matter, more on this shortly) by taking an idle comment either too seriously or too personally. Factually, 98% of comments made in a chatroom (even those intended to be taken personally) are not actually personal comments, due simply to the anonymous nature of the internet. If you've never met someone, and know of someone only from what they or others have chosen to tell you over the impersonal medium of a chatroom, then you are not in a position to make any comment worthy of being taken personally. Exceptions to this exist, but only in cases of people who have taken the time to get to know each other, which is a rare task which is rarely fulfilled. Due to the sheer volume of information which is surpressed by communicating entirely by text, it could take a year of "chatting" to learn what could be learned from a person in five minutes of physical converse.

Those "acceptable subjects". There are two, and only two. No exceptions. The first is the one I mentioned above, argument. It's utterly acceptable to make an online presence based entirely on arguing with others. This either results in you being excessively liked, or excessively hated. There's rarely a grey area online.

The reason this is acceptable is because on the most basic level, everyone understands that there's no personal contact in a chatroom, so it's perfectly entertaining (a key word) to harass others, because a) it provides instant gratification, and b) you're more or less totally anonymous. This empowers you with the ability to insult and barrage anyone you choose without fear of reciprocation.

The other form of accepted conversation is the direct opposite. Anything which ultimately has no bearing on anything of any importance whatsoever, hence the prime example of chocolate milk. The colloquialism, "bunny" (or "chocolate milk bunny" in its elongated form) summarises any individual who never discusses anything of a higher calibre than "What should I do today? I could go out. Nah. I'll stay here. I'll get a drink! I'm back with chocolate milk! Ooo, I might watch TV. Nah, I'll stay here.", and so forth.

To wit:

- What annoys me isn't the people who converse, it isn't the tone or the tenure of it, it's the fact that without fail, it's the SAME FUCKING THING every single day.
- Yep. I think AnonChatter2's said that about 8 times, now. And every time, the exact same conversation happens.

AnonChatter2 mentioned something with regard to an illness she allegedly had. Every time, this sparked up a conversation about it which dragged on exaggeratedly for as long as a sympathetic ear (or eye) was present.

- I mean, I whine too. Don't get me wrong, and don't think I'll ever deny it, but Christ. I whine about something until I've exhausted it to my satisfaction, then I shut up. These people just re-whine as soon as they have a new audience for it.
- Yep. Mainly because they' have nothing to whine about, they're just attention starved.
- Exactly. Look! Someone else entered the room! No one loves meeeeeeeeeeeee!
- I very much doubt that a single person has problems like they keep making them out to be.
- I doubt any of them have the problems at all. It's the anonymity thing again. They'll never meet the people they're chatting to, so they amplify their "problems" as much as they feel like it to garner more and more sympathy and attention.

And on a slightly more controversial level..

- Not to sound sexist, but there's far too many women in chat. And a good 9/10ths of them constantly bitch about PMS.
- Indeed. Like it's a new thing, and no one understands it.
- No..it's that men are inferior, and are incapable of feeling pain the way women do, y'see.
- Ah, of course. We can't bear children or bleed on a monthly basis, so we have no appreciation for the finer points in life.
- I still vividly remember one argument about PMS ending with "You don't know what pain feels like unless you're a woman!" But anyway. I'm generalising again. That's the closure of any PMS argument. Men don't suffer it, so therefore they have absolutely no idea about anything.
- Yup.
- That's like saying I don't know what AIDS is like because I don't have it. Or something similar, at least.
- I don't know a thing about PMS/PMT. I admit this. BUT, I'm willing to wager that pre-menstrual tension is an exacerbating condition, not a given fact. It makes existing stress worse. Like in a married relationship. Any stress the woman has agaist her life or her partner or whatever is 'enhanced' by it. NONE OF THESE WOMEN HAVE ANYTHING IN THEIR LIVES TO CAUSE STRESS!!!!!!
- Then you get the patronising ones. The ones who are mid 30ish. The ones who are always right, and you cannot argue with because they're older so therefore they know more.
- Gah.
- At least there's hardly any angst ridden teens anymore.

The angst-ridden teens were fun. Y'see, angst-ridden teens have an excuse to be angsty. They have an excuse to constantly complain. We've all been there and done that. 14-16 year olds have every hormonal reason in existance to be volatile, and every hormonal reason in existance to be sexually charged and frustrated. It's perfectly acceptable for these people to act the way they do. However, when angst-ridden teens fail to grow out of said angst and become angst-ridden 20-somethings, it bears into frustration rather than tolerance, and spawns much of the above horsetwaddle. For some reason, in the latter months of 2001, the usual host of angst-ridden teens somehow disappeared. Continued procreation of the species notwithstanding, no angst-ridden teens appeared to replace them. Unfortunately, a horde of angst-ridden bunnies did arrive, but the less said about those the better, methinks.

I've opted not to edit the names from the following excerpt, because I know their egos can stand it:

- At least the angst ridden teens had vaguely good poetry. Well.. Not really good poetry. Deej always decided to type out the lyrics to whatever song he was listening to. It was fun.
- Yeah.
- Even the Force from a few years ago was more fun than the current one.
- Force. Master of all knowledge on sex.
- He's what...16?
- Yeah. And he reckons he knows everything because he's had a blowjob.

More common sense, disguised as cutting remarks. From the same conversation as above, if I recall correctly.

- I think Yahoo Chat is the evilest creation ever made. It's 90% full of complete morons and people who you'd passively ignore if you saw them in real life.
- Literally .I feel kind of bad about it, like I should be more tolerant or something, but fuck it. I'm starting to feel like it's time I grew out of a lot of this shit.
- Tolerance is overrated. We need a good war. Against France, or somewhere out in Europe. That'll soon clear things up again.
- Tolerance is just what it says it is. It's something that's designed to run out. You can't be tolerant of something that irritates you for an unlimited amount of time.

Clans. Clans are something probably best discussed under the heading of "Roleplay", but for the sake of ease, I shall introduce the concept here instead.

A clan is a group of people who choose to be similar, usually limited to changing their screen-names to feature the same surname, or something. The most famous example of this is the roleplay "family", the McClouds. Lead by Force, mentioned briefly above.

Clans and families are all well and good for Roleplay. They serve their purpose by creating groups of allied and conflicting characters which can be pitted against each other in text-based arguments. Fair enough, say I. However, the process gets completely cocked up once "clans" mutate into "families". The primary problem here is an exacerbated example of the Halo syndrome. In short, thus:

Tom actually hit the nail right on the head with his exampling of the Halo syndrome. "Jimmy is like me, and likes the same things as me. So Jimmy is a good guy." Then if someone, even Jimmy, makes a claim to Jimmy's idiocy, they must be wrong." It's defending X simply because he's X. Not because he's right or wrong.

Extending this further, we get groups of people irrationally defending their "kin" against "attacks" (i.e. disagreements, idle comments, "personal attacks", see above) simply because they choose to associate with them. In a simple debate between two people (note the use of the word "debate" vice "argument"; a debate is simply people with differing opinions discussing the options, an argument is a passionate debate of a personal nature, at least for the purposes of this document), instead of having a seemingly orderly discussion between the individuals involved, one can wind up with the entire room's population (chosen to be "aligned" with two seperate "clans" of which the debators are "allied") pitted against each other. This of course leads to more "personal comments" being hurled, and the entire thing snowballing into an angst-laden ball of idiocy. Which invariably leads to suicide attempts and threats of "I'm leaving and I'm never coming back", but we'll get to those later.

Another example of stupidity:

All the new regs were talking about a "clan war" against the X-Files chatroom a while ago. I believe it was when Chatter10 was going on and on and on and on about one single person being mean to her. And her solution was to create one single emote that wouldn't affect him at all.

An emote is a snippet of text, usually in the form of a third-person "action" narrative (i.e. username *does this*). These things are probably the most irritating force available to a chatroom user, as they're a) completely useless, really, and b) damned annoying. My argument is this: What more can a pre-conceived line of text which is invariably irrelevant to the current situation do than a line of text you've actually typed yourself, possibly even being pertinent and interesting (although I'd be cautious using either of those words with regard to this population).

Further exploration of the Halo syndrome, and arguments online:

- "Jimmy is like me, and likes the same things as me. So Jimmy is a good guy." Then if someone, even Jimmy, makes a claim to Jimmy's idiocy, they must be wrong." It's defending X simply because he's X. Not because he's right or wrong.
- Indeed.
- Like Chatter11 last night. Laying into Tom for attempting to sound clever. Even though that's how Tom talks naturally.
- Or, in the specific of this room, elitism kicks in. The mass defend the individual, regardless of said individual's involvement/guilt/right of action.
- There isn't one community here..that's the problem. There's about 3 different communities which overlap. Then there's people who refuse to be placed into a single one, like me. That's where the friction comes from. Alliance.
- Quite right.
- Fear my neutralness. Well..I'm not neutral. I'm intensively aggressive if challenged.
- I'm at the point now that you were about eight months ago. I'm at the point where I've started to openly display my indifference to various aspects of chat. Up til now, I've grit teeth and tolerated it. Now I just don't give a fuck, and can't be bothered to pretend I do. Which is exceedingly hypocritical for the person who's hand is on the button of what I hope I'm not egotistically titling the "semi-unofficial" forum for this room. And, before anyone goes shoving words in my mouth, I don't mean that I don't care about everyone by what I just said. I mean I don't care about crap, which, unfortunately is a good 95% of what goes on in here.
- (It's called the shift from wanting to "conform" to the realization that you are your own person.)
- I found it amusing last night, when SS started shouting "YOU'RE MAKING ME CRY IRL, AND YOU DON'T CARE, DO YOU?!". And we replied blankly "No. We don't.". There was a point where I did care, but with X, it's a problem. As long as everyone adheres to him as some sort of God, and never rises above anything more than "Willing Slave", it's happy. There's not a real person in there. Not anymore. The person who was X doesn't really exist anymore. It's too ingrained into its psyche to come out with friendly advice. Severe therapy is the only thing that could even slightly help.
- Basically, I do care, but I can't be bothered to. Not online. It's a waste of time and effort, when all I want to do is either pass some time, or have some fun.