The average intelligence (or lack thereof) of people on IRC
Cory C. Albrecht
God gave an earthworm? These people join a channel, do something they wouldn't
have done with just a minor bit of forethought, get kicked for it and then
flood-msg the chanop with seemingly every swear word at their disposal. I mean
they've already proven their lack of intelligence by getting kicked for
something obvious in the first place but how can they believe that "fuck you
asshole, unban me!" will make the chanop let them back in? Let me give you an
example.
On the Undernet channel #Canada we have a rule about only using French or
English in the channel and this rule is in the channel topic about 90% of the
time. You'd think that being in the channel topic would be a sufficient
warning for people - I don't know whether they are too dumb or too lazy to
read it, or whether they just don't care. So when they speak another language
in the channel I kick them and send them a messge explaining which rule they
broke. It's amazing how many people messge me back asking "Why did you kick
me?" in spite of what I sent to them. You'd think that perhaps the reason
people aren't obeying this channel rule, even though it's in plain sight, is
because they don't speak English or French adn thus can't understand the
channel topic but the fact that they've messaged me back (most in English,
very few in French) disproves that. Anyways, they say they'll never do it
again, they come back to the channel and guess what they do almost right away?
So I kick them again (strike #2) and once again they ask why. How hard can it
be for them to figure this out or do they have some genetic imprative to prove
out dumb they are? The really stupid ones who claimed they didn't know the
first time actually try to use that as an excuse the second time as well. Do
they think that I'm as dumb as they seem to be? I'm not sure whether to be
amazed or disgusted at the stupidity of people who, after getting kicked a
second time for breakign the same rule, return to the channel and break it a
third time almost right away. Strike #3, they're banned and they still keep
asking why. And yes, many are still trying to claim after this thrid time that
they were unaware of this rule. If they were they've got absolutely terrible
short-term memories! And these are just the people who don't start swearing
from the get go. Are they really that dumb to believe that "Fuck you asshole!
let me back in!" is going to convince me to remove a ban on them? And #Canada
isn't the only channel where rules mentioned in the channel topic get broken
immediately by a joiner - rules about colours, language to use, areas covered
in support channels, etc...
Also in #Canada we have a large problem with people who join the channel but
never say anything in it, only sending unsolicited private messages of "ASL?"
or "CTC?" to others in the channel. When they get kickbanned from the channel
for idling too long in the channel, they message a chanop and ask why they
were kicked. Upon being told they were idle for too long in the channel they
reply "But I was taking to people in private!" somehow not understanding the
"in the channel" part of "idle for too long in the channel". After making this
half-hearted attempt at complaining they immediately lay in wit their "ALS?"
or "CTC?" Oddly enough, 99.9% of these ASL/CTC-ers come from certain
well-defined geographical areas and these people extremely rarely ASL or CTC
people from those same areas or people with hostmasks indicating a Third World
country, targetting those they can tell are Canadians. The ASL is used to make
sure of who/what you are because if you oblige their rather inane attempt to
start a conversation and let it go on long enough the topic will eventually
come around to the subject of marriage visas. It can be quite amusing to
pretend you're the opposite sex to draw them in and then watch how quickly
they stop chatting with you when you reveal your true gender, even if they
haven't gotten to the marriage visa part yet.
Then there's the morons who don't seem to understand what it means when a
person's nickname end's with "_Away" and they get the same reply over and over
and over again to every message they send. Like this:
[01:49:36] <BATMEN> HI THERE
[01:49:36] <Fen_Away> Robot Message (Do not respond/Ne répondez pas): I am
away. I have been for 6hrs 38mins 24secs Reason: Gee, didn't you think
that my nick just might be a hint as to whether or not I am really at my
computer? Go look up "away" in a dictionary!
[01:52:27] <BATMEN> OK,BUT CAN YOU BE STILL MY FREND
[01:52:27] <Fen_Away> Robot Message (Do not respond/Ne répondez pas): I am
away. I have been for 6hrs 41mins 15secs Reason: Gee, didn't you think
that my nick just might be a hint as to whether or not I am really at my
computer? Go look up "away" in a dictionary!
[02:01:07] <BATMEN> OK,IM BELIEVING IN YOU
[02:01:07] <Fen_Away> Robot Message (Do not respond/Ne répondez pas): I am
away. I have been for 6hrs 49mins 55secs Reason: Gee, didn't you think
that my nick just might be a hint as to whether or not I am really at my
computer? Go look up "away" in a dictionary!
[02:02:37] <BATMEN> WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THIS
[02:02:37] <Fen_Away> Robot Message (Do not respond/Ne répondez pas): I am
away. I have been for 6hrs 51mins 25secs Reason: Gee, didn't you think
that my nick just might be a hint as to whether or not I am really at my
computer? Go look up "away" in a dictionary!
[02:04:15] <BATMEN> I DONT UNDERSTAND YOU
[02:04:15] <Fen_Away> Robot Message (Do not respond/Ne répondez pas): I am
away. I have been for 6hrs 53mins 3secs Reason: Gee, didn't you think that
my nick just might be a hint as to whether or not I am really at my
computer? Go look up "away" in a dictionary!
[02:05:31] <BATMEN> CLD YOU PLSE RESPONCEIN A CLEAR MESSAGE
[02:05:31] <Fen_Away> Robot Message (Do not respond/Ne répondez pas): I am
away. I have been for 6hrs 54mins 19secs Reason: Gee, didn't you think
that my nick just might be a hint as to whether or not I am really at my
computer? Go look up "away" in a dictionary!
[02:07:07] <BATMEN> OK BYE-BYE
[02:07:07] <Fen_Away> Robot Message (Do not respond/Ne répondez pas): I am
away. I have been for 6hrs 55mins 55secs Reason: Gee, didn't you think
that my nick just might be a hint as to whether or not I am really at my
computer? Go look up "away" in a dictionary!
How unclear can "I am away" be? Or "Robot Message"? I leave my IRC client
connected 24/7 because it runs some scripts which take care of the channel and
when I come back after being away overnight (generally for about 12 hours) I
have 2 or 3 dozen message windows. Most are from ASL/CTC-ers, 1 or 2 are from
people who didn't like getting kicked by my swear kicker or other scripts, and
about 6 are like BATMEN up there - unable to grasp the fact that they are
carrying on a conversation with an answering machine. Those numbers more than
quadruple over the weekend while I am away for 2 days straight.
And am I the only person to think that if you're looking to talk to a Mexican
person you go to #mexico, for a Greek you go to #greece, for a Pinoy you go to
#pinoy and so on? Or if you want help with your Sega Dreamcast you go to
#dreamcast not #canada, or that if you want MP3 files you go to one of the
multitudinous #mp3... channels? Do these people go to the dairy section of
their local grocery store when they are looking laundry detergent or to a
butcher when they want bread? It's not like it's difficult to get a list of
all the channels on an IRC network and to search through or filter it for what
you want. And those people who ask "What time is it in Canada?" - are they
incapable of looking at an atlas and guesstimating? Heck, most atlases even
have a map of all the timezones on the planet with their offset from GMT
marked. Not to mention realizing from the size of Canada on a map that it has
more than one timezone so the question is meaningless, anyways.
During the past few years the average person on IRC seems to have lost IQ
points. Nine years ago when I started IRCing on the Undernet there were no
ASL/CTC-ers looking for marriage visas harrassing others in the channel with
unsolicited private messages. People paid attention to the kick messages when
they were booted from a channel. People read the channel topic and didn't get
kicked in the first place for rules that were mentioned there. People
understood what suffixes like "Away", "Gone" or "AFK" on a nickname meant and
didn't send private messages to people like that unless it was something
really important for when the person returned and they certainly didn't try to
have a conversation with a scripted answering machine. And when you were
looking for something specific on IRC you went to a relevant channel instead
of just joining a random one where people probably don't know the answer to
the question. And none of this idiocy can be explained by the "newbie factor"
of the Internet's amazing growth in the last few years. Failing to look at the
channel topic - which is one of the first lines printed out after a person has
joined the channel - and to see what information it has is not a newbie error.
At best it's laziness but it seems more like sheer stupidity to me. And even a
newbie can tell from a repeating response when there is not body on the other
end.
Surely these people can't be a dumb as they seem to be. Or am I giving them
too much credit?
--
Cory C. Albrecht
Carl Stefan Grøtter
news:V4QB7.339558$j65.89...@news4.rdc1.on.home.com:
> Why is it that so many people on IRC don't seem to have the common
> sense that God gave an earthworm? These people join a channel, do
> something they wouldn't have done with just a minor bit of forethought,
> get kicked for it and then flood-msg the chanop with seemingly every
> swear word at their disposal. I mean they've already proven their lack
> of intelligence by getting kicked for something obvious in the first
> place but how can they believe that "fuck you asshole, unban me!" will
> make the chanop let them back in? Let me give you an example.
>
<cut out some long, nice examples>
I am no shrink, and therefor I cannot explain why people are this stupid. I
can only conclude that it is not a problem that is specific to canadians, as
we have the same problems on #oslo, #sol.* etc..
A friend of mine has a great page with lots of logs from stupid people on
irc. Unfortunately it's in Norwegian, so most of you won't understand it.
Nevertheless you'll find it at <url:http://www.tjessem.net/irc/>.
I just thought I'd add to your examples. Some people even try this: "Unban
me or I'll DDOS your bot" ... Our bot is W, the service bot... others, after
getting my autoreply for asl, telling them that asl is stupid, and I won't
reply, rephrases it to "age, sex, location?" thinking that this is better...
Sometimes I kick someone for using caps lock. The kick mesage clairly say
"caps lock is equal to shouting, and is considered to be rude". Then their
friend on the channel say "WHY DID YOU KICK MY FRIEND?"... Guess what
happens. :)
> Surely these people can't be a dumb as they seem to be. Or am I giving
> them too much credit?
I guess the anononymity of being behind a nick makes them forget that people
will think their stupid if they do stupid things. This, of course, is
considered stupid by others :)
--
Carl Stefan Grøtter
www.kverulant.net || ne...@kverulant.net
Å lage artige signaturer er ikke lett :)
MJ Ray
that God gave an earthworm? These people crosspost drivel to irrelevant
groups, badly MIME-encoded and fair to set follow-ups correctly.
They don't seem to be much better on IRC, as they seem not to know what
/away is, or what undernet's channel services are for.
Follow-ups set. Original author goes *plonk*!
Igor2
On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Cory C. Albrecht wrote:
> Why is it that so many people on IRC don't seem to have the common sense that
> God gave an earthworm? These people join a channel, do something they wouldn't
> have done with just a minor bit of forethought, get kicked for it and then
> flood-msg the chanop with seemingly every swear word at their disposal. I mean
> they've already proven their lack of intelligence by getting kicked for
> something obvious in the first place but how can they believe that "fuck you
> asshole, unban me!" will make the chanop let them back in? Let me give you an
> example.
They think it's fun. They are having fun first by imagining that irc makes
them anonym, and using this "anonymity" in the bad way, i.e. saying
"f_ckyou" to anyone on a channel, or flooding is fun for them. When they
get banned, they think the right way to force an oper to unban them is to
flood him. You can't fix it, they are stupid, simply ban+ignore them ;)
> On the Undernet channel #Canada we have a rule about only using French or
> English in the channel and this rule is in the channel topic about 90% of the
> time. You'd think that being in the channel topic would be a sufficient
> warning for people - I don't know whether they are too dumb or too lazy to
> read it, or whether they just don't care. So when they speak another language
Both. Some are just joins because they have an idea about the channel's
purposal, so they act like that without checking the real purposal. The
others think that the channel is for them, so anyone there must learn
their languages. And finally there are a very few who really never thought
that anyone on the world speaks any other language than his own one (in
this case i usually reply them in hungarian, so most of them realizes why
english is the offical language on my chan).
> in the channel I kick them and send them a messge explaining which rule they
> broke. It's amazing how many people messge me back asking "Why did you kick
> me?" in spite of what I sent to them. You'd think that perhaps the reason
> people aren't obeying this channel rule, even though it's in plain sight, is
> because they don't speak English or French adn thus can't understand the
> channel topic but the fact that they've messaged me back (most in English,
> very few in French) disproves that. Anyways, they say they'll never do it
Yes, the kind of the "the channel was made for me" will ask back, because
he thinks that you have kicked him only for fun.
> again, they come back to the channel and guess what they do almost right away?
> So I kick them again (strike #2) and once again they ask why. How hard can it
> be for them to figure this out or do they have some genetic imprative to prove
> out dumb they are? The really stupid ones who claimed they didn't know the
> first time actually try to use that as an excuse the second time as well. Do
I think the best method is to kick without warning for some base things,
like the language that is also mentioned in the topic. The ones who ever
tries to understand what is irc and how does a group work on the internet,
will than speak to you telling that he/she was missunderstood. The rest
wouldn't change their ideas about the rules even if you warn them 50
times, than kick and than ban them ;)
> they think that I'm as dumb as they seem to be? I'm not sure whether to be
> amazed or disgusted at the stupidity of people who, after getting kicked a
> second time for breakign the same rule, return to the channel and break it a
> third time almost right away. Strike #3, they're banned and they still keep
This why my 2nd move is ban :)
...
> Also in #Canada we have a large problem with people who join the channel but
> never say anything in it, only sending unsolicited private messages of "ASL?"
There is a group that uses irc mostly to pick up a new girl- or boyfriend.
They won't ever use a channel, only private. However, just because
idleing, as long as not 24h/day, i think usually they don't deserve a kick
or ban :)
...
> Then there's the morons who don't seem to understand what it means when a
> person's nickname end's with "_Away" and they get the same reply over and over
> and over again to every message they send. Like this:
Yes, i know them too, simply ignore them :)
...
> During the past few years the average person on IRC seems to have lost IQ
> points. Nine years ago when I started IRCing on the Undernet there were no
Thats right, as computers, internet and other releated things are more and
more opened to the people, the average IQ is decreasing, it's not
suprising i think. However, this all is not only about IQ, but about
mentality: if you join a new thing in your life, anytime, anywhere,
anything, you usually first try to ask somone or read after what you will
have to do and what you will get. Same about irc, and all the progblems
you listed above is because they hadn't spend the time on reading about
what is irc exactly and how to use it.
...
> Surely these people can't be a dumb as they seem to be. Or am I giving them
> too much credit?
We have a channel, pretty big one in it's chategory on ircnet. We have a
good mood, and here, as on other channels too, channel is almost equal to
the regular ones. If someone crosses the rules, we kick or ban him, if he
is whining, we ignore him. It may seem rude. However, on the first week
when i met this channel, i was kicked about 15 times... Simply, valulbe
members of the group will be the ones who tries to behave and become the
part of the group, and the rest shuld only stay there as guests. If one
doesn't even show the will to try to accept the group, we simply don't
need him in the group.
Conclusion: usually warn, but than kick and ban. After the first lines of
msg after a ban, you can decide if the banned one could understand what is
irc, channels and others or you should simply ignore him ;)
> --
> Cory C. Albrecht
>
bye
Igor2
Martin Edwards
>So I kick them again (strike #2) and once again they ask why. How hard can =
>it=20
>be for them to figure this out or do they have some genetic imprative to pr=
>ove=20
>out dumb they are? The really stupid ones who claimed they didn't know the=
>=20
>first time actually try to use that as an excuse the second time as well.
There are some very immature people out there who get off on the
anonymity. Also some people are just determined to do as they like.
Here in England some people smoke on buses. Moi j' m' en fiche. Je
ne vais pas m' inquieter.
******Martin Edwards.******
Come on! Nobody's gonna drive that lousy freeway
when you can take the Red Car for a nickel.
-Eddy Valiant
^Tickler^
"Cory C. Albrecht" <coryal...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:V4QB7.339558$j65.89...@news4.rdc1.on.home.com...
> Why is it that so many people on IRC don't seem to have the common sense
that
> God gave an earthworm?
It's IRC/NetChat, It does that, i've been on it for over a year and it's
rotted my brain :o)
> And am I the only person to think that if you're looking to talk to a
Mexican
> person you go to #mexico, for a Greek you go to #greece, for a Pinoy you
go to
> #pinoy and so on? Or if you want help with your Sega Dreamcast you go to
> #dreamcast not #canada, or that if you want MP3 files you go to one of the
> multitudinous #mp3... channels?
What about the people (that do actually speak) that want to talk to anyone
and everyone from around the globe about absolutely anything?
Also, some of the ASL'ers don't know how to start a conversation thus doing
it like this and turn out to be quite nice people. They could be shy, ASL
brings out the people that maybe of the same age group or live in
interesting places, of course this doesn't include the nonces that you talk
about but ASL'ers shouldn't all be thought of as the same.
apus
the ignorance spread amongst irc is no difference from anywhere else, get
used to it
"Cory C. Albrecht" <coryal...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:V4QB7.339558$j65.89...@news4.rdc1.on.home.com...