Asandir's interviews with Newgrounds forum users
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[ Part 1 ] + [ Part 2 ]
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This week's interview features the user Idiot-Finder.
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When did you find Newgrounds and why did you join? Why did you choose the username BlackPaladin87 and why did you change it to Idiot-Finder?
"I first discovered the site in the fall of 2001. The reason I got there was because after 9/11, I started searching for anti-Osama flash contents for the same reason any Americans would have, being that he's a piece of shit terrorist (although the conspiracy nut sacks would love to have you think otherwise). I was going to join then but unfortunately, there were setbacks that prevented me from being able to do so, this includes similar passwords, screen name already being taken, and so on.
I eventually put it off for a while though I still came to the site frequently. Not to mention the problem with the internet access after my parents went to switch to AOL and we weren't able to log in for few months. It did came in during the time when AOL started to decline after its merger so that tells you something. AOL have gotten back now but back then, it was a disaster.
The main reason I wanted to sign in was because of the voting power. I honestly didn't think it would have that long to build up even ten times the amount as the tagline have promised. I mean the tagline about your voting power would be worth ten times if you register is what got me to do so in the first place. Then there's the fact that a notorious anti-American review troll "Xito" would go and do what he does best. You can say that he was my first enemy in NG so when I first came in, my user name was "xitosucks"...yeah, I know. (That's right people, I wasn't Idiot-Finder from the start. Reason why I used that name? I'll get to that later)
Back then, the rules were lax so you can get away with whatever you would post on the reviews, with that I would post reviews just to respond to someone else's reviews. Eventually, Xito would go into a decline and eventually disappear few years later, never to be heard from again. I then later changed my name to BlackPaladin87 because I was that big of a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh (I'm still am to an extent, just not as much as that time). I mean think about it, that card was a fusion between the African American Magician and the Buster Blader (the card whose effects enables it to take out a Caucasian dragon), what's better than that?
Eventually I changed to "Idiot-Finder" which actually came from the Yankees forum board where that time, the forum was horribly moderated, leading to onslaught of trolls. Hell, a Red Sox troll got away with posting how he wanted terrorists to crash planes into the Yankee Stadium!
This is one of the reasons why I sometimes want to track certain people down and slit each and every one of them in the throat. That forum was the closest thing you could get to an internet anarchy until a certain site (what must not be named!) came to town.
But then there's a user known as "Idiot-Finder" who appears and does what his screen name suggests he would do, he responds to trolls with "Found one!"
Sometimes it was "Whoa, here's a wild one." or "We have a winner!"
He eventually disappeared but it gave me an idea.
But as you know, "Found one!" would eventually become illegal in Newgrounds forum and you can guess why ;)
If anything, this current name I'm using is more or less an artifact name, NG Idiot-Finder was no longer the finder of idiots since 2009 where a last moment of glory came about when a Holocaust denier got banned and I PM the guy with "Found one!"
Remember the thread titled "Drunk with power?"
He thought I was the one who banned him!
The exploits would live on in the stories I wrote which are essentially crackfics and lately I started using my real name instead I mean, who the heck would call people by their screen name in real life? More importantly, how many people you know would even know what you do over the internet? There are exceptions when it comes to the story, only because I don't know other users' actual name but I'm not going to ask them. That's something what Google would do, as well as what they do in China."
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Do you think that you changed over the time you were here, as user, or also in real life?
"Kind of, but that has a bit more to do with real life than over the internet. However, at the same time, I also realize that when it comes to internet, it's the place where one can talk crap and gets away with it. Not to mention it's also the place where you can talk with strangers and be fine with it. The main change for me on NG was that I have start writing posts that are at least few sentences.
Thing is I could have done it on a given topic but more often than not, there's not much to discuss. Sometimes they're not worth discussing in the first place.
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Are there any other users that you like, and how do they affect you?
"Yes, one user I like is Coop as we're both fans of the same baseball team and have known each other (from the internet anyway) in the baseball thread on the "Club & Crew" section. I know there's not much to discuss right now but then again, it is the off season so there wasn't much in the first place aside from the fact that the Yankees screwed up on Cano which I still haven't gotten over and I'll leave it at that.
He did ban me few times but to be fair, I had fights with some users and it leads to consequences. It also happens to be the reason why I haven't been involved in the Politics section. He's a fair mod who does what has to be done and few times we did PM each other during the ban to discuss what happened on sports.
Not to mention, back in the 51+ thread when I started writing an ongoing series about voting enhancement drugs, I featured him as a character and he did agree to participate for a while. The one scene Coop added, he had his character trying to buy an anime doujin that happens to be available. After series of misadventures, he eventually asked me to write him off because he have gotten tired of it so I agreed. I do have him making cameo appearances but good things has to come to an end.
It was sort of a buddy cop adventure that takes place in the Hong Kong arc where the event climaxed at the retelling of "Curry & Pepper" where I was the one who screws up while he's the sane one (with an occasional not above it all...)."
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Are there any users that you would consider enemies or that you just don't like?
"First it was Xito, popenfresh, sumgui, and Detesticus who has a tendency to have a certain political agenda that isn't quite popular with the majority of the users in NG. Then there was a anti-American flash maker currently known as James-Ball (though some of his flash have shown that he does have talents, but wasted it on low grade political-troll flashes).
Of the bunch, the one I couldn't stand the most was popenfresh, I mean you know leanlifter1 right? This guy was the prototype and perhaps much worse as well. The guy would not only post anti-American messages on the Politics section which was a cesspool at the time, he would also insults users he argues with and veer from the debate but mocking the person's personal interests.
Who the heck does that?
Later there was TheLastSpartan, ShaggyTheClown, Zen444, TehReTard, Worthless-Wisdom, and MadCow. To be honest with you, I actually appreciate the last two since they seem to take the time to go after me, even creating a topic on how much they hated me.
As for Zen and his pet retard, they're just assholes and were known in the forum as such so not much to be said although I sometimes suspected each of them of using their alt to post shit toward me, I mean the posts are similar.
ShaggyTheClown was basically what happens if TheKlown is a conspiracy wack job and he would sometimes use an alt to support his "argument". Why I think so? Look at the post by jackkniphe and the fact that they both have the tendency to attack the users who debate against them. There's also the fact that he would post links from biased sources and when asked to provide better sources to back up his point, he just copy and paste the same link several times over. Then there's the fact that he followed me to the "Regular Lounge Thread" to attack me (leanlifter1 went to do the same to orangebomb not long ago).
TheLastSpartan? As people have known about a stretchy sumo user who denies holocaust and post sources that aren't exactly reputable, this guy's on a whole new level. Basically, when a point is made toward him, he would move the goalpost and ignore whatever was presented to him. he would also post personal attacks on the people whom he "debates" against and it's the same old story until one day, his life would change.
The thing is that TheLastSpartan made a huge mistake, the worse possible one could make over the internet...he posted a picture of himself in his profile. I don't know the full story but from what I heard, someone post his picture on Encyclopedia Dramatica article of Newgrounds and someone from his school saw it. When his posts were read, basically something happened and his posts were wiped out along with his stats he spend years to build up to that point.
Kinda like what happened to RancidPsychoJosh (I was told he was permabanned as well, long story and it was years ago, he's also on my hate list but then again, who actually likes the guy?)
Now? There's leanlifter1, TheKlown, Mydarklord, and Wriggle.
However, anyone with a fraction of a brain would have know about these guys and why they're idiots. There is not much more to be said.
Same goes for VGmaster who whines whenever the U.S. sports team didn't win. I do understand his frustration, I mean I still haven't gotten over the epic failures of the U.S. hockey team at Sochi. But this guy whined about the Yankees not winning a game on 9/11 in 2009!
Seriously, WTF!
Then there's supergandhi64, the same reason for TheKlown among others.
Lastly, bigbadron, people may whine about Poozy as I mentioned before but this guy is truly what happens if you gave the modship to a troll.
bigbadron has a tendency to ban anyone he thinks violates the rule, even if it's what one can describe as a "small scrape". Not only that, he would even go after people that made posts he just didn't like and rather than just delete them, he'd hand out bans like he's giving out candies. I don't know what the hell was his problem but I was happy when he finally got demodded, seriously, he's a horrible mod and probably the most abusive on NG to date.
This is what happens when you hand a modship to a troll. No really, I wouldn't be surprised if some of his bans are made to troll users.
Lastly, Dream-of-Duke.
To sum it up, just read his posts in the baseball thread at "C & C" section and you'll understand. However, he did gain a reputation at the "EGB" when he created an alt to pretend that he has a girlfriend. Needless to say, he was found out and the results are hilarious.
So yeah, he's generally hated by many."
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What is your opinion about the forums? Is there one forum that you prefer? And is there another forum user that you want to see getting interviewed by me?
"My opinion on the forums tends to vary.
Thing is that it really depends on certain time as the General section can be filled with stupid things but to be fair, there are good number of times I indulged in the stupidity as well. For example, around 2005 I got into the photoshop thread craze as one would create a thread titled, "Photoshop Insert Subject Here!"
I don't know if I set the record for most photoshop threads created but over half of them annoyed the hell out of just about everyone.
Honestly, how many people would want to photoshop a base picture of someone's head? You don't get anything out of it!
Not to mention some of the people are obscure and I only did it because they're douchebags reported on the news. Also some of the topics are random items.
They were TheKlown level posts.
The forum I liked the most is "Where is/How to" as it keeps tracks of stats that are generally meaningless if you maxed out the voting power and the level rank but still, you can't help but follow them!
Also the medal thread...I need more medals!
With that said, have orangebomb, Coop, and Ryanson been interviewed? Would love to see them."
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I guess that you have an opinion about the moderators of Newgrounds. Do you think that they do a great job or not?
"I do think the current team of mods are doing a good job, just hope they can avoid the trap that Canas have fallen into...twice. Funny thing is that I didn't hate Canas, in fact his situation was pretty funny. I mean, how many people are dumb enough to get phished twice? Did the Aflac Division offered him free candy or something? Come on!
With that said, I liked the current team, just wish that Poozy comes back though, his sports threads are fun. If he had created the Olympic thread, it would have been a huge hit."
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Would you like to become a moderator on Newgrounds? If so, what kind of moderator?
"To tell you the truth, years ago, yes.
But now, I'm not exactly sure. Keep in mind, being a mod does takes a measure of responsibility, how much is the question since I have no clue in that regard.
Sometimes you have some uptight pricks running the show while you have some that are too lenient that it can turn the entire board into the Yankees forum from early to mid-2000s (I had to do that).
If I want to become a mod, I would go with the forum since I tend to hang around in that place a lot for the past several years. If it does happen, don't get your hopes up, I have no intention to use "Found one!" as a ban message and besides, it's an easy way to get demodded so it's better off saved for really bad trolls."
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You were a member before the redesign 2007. Tell me how you experienced Newgrounds back then and what changes you liked about the redesign. Also talk about the 2012 redesign.
"Boy, do I have a story to tell!
Back then, the site was pretty slow due to tons of pop up ads. It doesn't help that my family were using dial up that time so it made it a tad bit worse (In the style of Bob Uecker when Vaughn made that wild pitch in "Major League"). After my failed attempts to register into the site, I gave up.
I still visit the site for the flash games until the switch from MSN to Aol and you know what happened, the web became nonfunctional.
It would be like that for weeks until we figured out the problem (technical support wasn't much of a help back then so it took a while, also I didn't really want to try).
Skip several months later after an oversea vacation from Taiwan, Hong Kong (my favorite part), and China (my first experience with squat toilet...), I eventually did registered into NG with my aforementioned user name, "xitosucks". If I see someone with a screen name like that now, I'd laugh.
Then after some changes you know what happens.
However, the biggest change I experienced was the website itself in late 2002. You know about the blam and save system, but that time, there's only blams and users can only get it through direct blam. Basically, if you're lucky enough to land a finishing 0-1 vote, you get all the credit while the people who helped made it possible for you to get the point walks away with as much meaningful trophies as Alfred Hitchcock (Honorary Award don't count).
As a result, users would simply refrain from voting in hopes of strengthening it with tons of experience points until they felt it's strong enough to land the final blow to a crappy flash. With an added bonus, if you manages to blam it, you get directed to a flash video where a flash work gets shot down by a laser blast, destroying someone else's "hard work". Come to think of it, if you vote, you would be treated to a Pico animation where he throws either a heart or a bomb at the flash, increasing or decreasing the score depending on how you vote.
Back to the topic, because of the fact that users would try to get the blam, there would be countless of flash still linger in the portal and nobody would care. Wade would then change the system where users would be credited for a blam point and protection point (aka saves) the same way we do now. After the new system was implemented, everyone went on a blam hunt and I actually took the time to use search and it was a gold mine!
That time, there was no "Under Judgement" so you can still see the score, reviews, and the number of votes before it even passed the threshold. You can easily vote without watching it and this would pose a problem for Wade because he was afraid that people have gotten blam hungry. I myself lost count on how many direct blam flashes I have seen that day but I do remember a record was set on the portal and will never be surpassed, the most flashes blammed in one day. I forgot exactly how many but it's hard to believe now if you think about it.
Another thing is that the threshold for the flash to pass was the score of 1.5 and above and 100 votes. But then, Wade started to become worried because he felt that some of the quality flashes were likely dragged down with the crappy ones so he went to change the system once again. He began by forcing the users to wait until the flash loads before they can vote but some of us were able to exploit the flaw by clicking on the link to open the flash and close it whiel the voting panel activates. Later, the score, reviews, and the number of votes were blocked and that's when the birth of "Under Judgement" takes its course.
Later, the number of votes required to pass have been risen to 200 whiel the threshold score was brought up to 2. The reason was that people started to become save happy and that's when things started to go downhill...
Truth is, good number of crap in the portal wouldn't have made it past judgement had they been submitted back then. In the end, the judgement have deteriorated to the point that the only day where the crappy flash are allowed to pass (Clock Day) became uneventful (2007 was the best for me). It was fun...but at the same time, maybe the current system was for the best since there are some good flash that got dragged down to hell because we based the quality of the flash form the author's poor commentary and experience.
As for the reviews, with anarchy going around, the current review system would be installed. The problem was that users can get penalized for the past reviews that were written years ago, I still have few of these reviews from 2002 that responds to Xito's idiocy, good thing there's a statue of limitation made for that later on.
There's also the popularity thing in the profile based on the number of hits received each week. It was done away with because users would try to abuse it by clicking on their own profile even though it wouldn't work. With that said, my peak was #87, the only time I made top 100 before it was abolished.
There was a Steven Seagal flash that happens to be popular for some reason but I never got around to check it out. After it disappeared, there are some obsessive fans taking shots toward Atom Films when someone mentioned that the author sold the rights to it. Not sure what really happened but yeah.
Needless to say, I liked the 2007 redesign.
The reason is that I felt the new design was a refreshing change of pace compared to a more darker and plainer look. Not to mention it is one of the few times the redesign made the site navigation no different after few days of getting used to. I do missed the blam flash, save flash that came a bit later, and having someone blowing my whistle. The site actually retained the whistle system for a while until few years ago...
There's also a gem that represents the amount of views the flash gets, that's gone too sadly.
As for the 2012 redesign, I have a heavy dislike for it. While it's not as bad as what Google have done to YouTube over dozens of times each year, it still made the site tougher to navigate and it takes even longer to get used to compared to the 2007 edition. You can say that I was deeply disappointed and the worst part is that the literature portal is still in a developmental hell!"
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Now the first part of the interview with Idiot-Finder is over. Part 2 can be found here.
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Whirlguy
Interesting! I loved reading about those portal developments. I had no idea it was that anarchic.
Asandir
Neither did I. It's like a whole different Newgrounds culture ^^