Top 5 Trolls

TheOriginalCinephile’s Top Five Trolls.

5) Landover Baptist Church – http://www.landoverbaptist.org

What began as a satirical website by Chris Harper slowly became one of the gems of the internet. A complete satire of fundamentalist Christiany, posting insane articles such as “TAMPONS: Satan’s Little Cotton Fingers!”, you’d be surprised people even fall for the trolling. The real fun, however, is the forums. Dedicated trolls live and breathe the church and everything it preaches when it comes to responding on threads. Fortunately, plenty of people have flocked to these forums to ask questions about Christianity, only to be greeted by claims that they’re godless. Reading through some of the trolled threads (or even some of the others they write in for fun, such as “God Hates SWEDEN”) is always amusing. The sad part of it all, however, is knowing in the back of your mind that Fred Phelps and the other Westboro Baptist members would find even the Landover preachings too tame.

 

If only the victims did a little research into the church’s town of ‘Freehold, Iowa’, they’d discover the town doesn’t even exist. Maybe then they might not have fallen prey to such simple trolls.

4) Erica Feldman

I imagine writer Li Mei Rong wasn’t taught in school that Wikipedia isn’t legitimate reference material, but she’d likely be well in the know now. In 2006, Erica Feldman and a classmate decided to place Erica’s name over Madam C. J.Walker’s as the inventor of the hair straightener. Originating on Wikipedia, it soon spread all over the internet, and into Li Mei Rong’s book, that Erica Feldman was in fact the inventor of the straightening iron. The hoax still lives on today, even after Wikipedia finally fixed it two and a half years later. Just Google Erica Feldman, or “Who invented the Hair Straightener?” and you’ll surely see the reach of this.

3) Mark Zuckerberg

It’s rather sad, the extent people will go to for “likes” on Facebook, but when you want to find the quick way to do it you could always visit the LikeStore. Rotem Guez is an entrepreneur who cashed in on this idea, selling ‘likes’ on youtube and facebook to anybody with the money to do it. Hey, any way to get rich is a good way, and he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids. See, believe it or not, Facebook has terms and conditions which justify (in short) only they may sell likes.

Facebook, being a business, didn’t like Guez. He was sent a Cease and Desist order, refusal to shut down business would result in being sued. Well, it turns out Rotem Guez was dropped on his head as a baby wanted to have some fun, so he retailiated in a very proper fashion. He legally changed his name to “Mark Zuckerberg”.

“If [Mark Zuckerberg] wants to sue me, [he’ll] have to sue Mark Zuckerberg”, Guez reportedly said as he backhanded Facebook. He’s been banned from accessing Facebook permanently. I’ll place bets that he gets sued anyway, but this is yet to fully unfold, so keep your eyes on this one. Let’s just hope he can throw in a few more acts of trolling before they sue him for all his money and internet access.

2) Peter Jackson and Costa Botes

Firstly, I urge you to watch “Forgotten Silver” before reading this any further. It’s only 53 minutes long and it’s almost as amazing as I am.

At first I was going to mention Tommy Wiseau (because as of now, he seems to be trolling everyone, there’s no way he can be that deluded), or Joel Schumacher for the atrocity of Batman and Robin which he advertised as the next ‘big thing’, possibly Adam Sandler for harassing audiences by releasing Jack and Jill!  I even took a few hours considering The Beatles for fooling the world into thinking Paul McCartney was still alive. Finally, though, I decided, out of all of the entertainment industry, the best act of trolling was Forgotten Silver.

I first saw Forgotten Silver last year during a class (taught by Gfunk), and, I can safely say, it blew everybodies minds. Originally aired in New Zealand, 1995, where this short documentary was widely across New Zealand (or as widely as you get in New Zealand), and it revealed, among other things, the legacy of Colin McKenzie as a film maker. Far more importantly though, was evidence of Richard Pearse having the first powered flight, not the Wright Brothers. The evidence is something many Pearse believers had been waiting for!

It’s a shame none of them checked the credits (and who’s to blame them, neither did I) of this well crafted mockumentary. Well crafted enough, in fact, that when it was revealed to be a hoax, Peter jackson and Costa Botes both recieved mail which varied from death threats to laughter and appreciation of the prank. Both Jackson and Botes put in enough detail and effort into both the writing and creating the fake archive footage that no matter how unlikely it became, audiences believed the film from beginning to end.

1) David Thorne – http://www.27bslash6.com

Kate’s Birthday Party was due to be a big event in 2010, a facebook event which had accidentally been left open gathered over 80,000 people attending (probably because she advertised free booze) up until the event was taken down by Facebook. It’s highly likely that if you use facebook, you know about Kate’s Birthday Party. Turns out, Kate is actually a 37 year old male named David Thorne, and Kate’s party was his hoax.

I don’t think anybody has mastered the art of trolling greater than Mr. Thorne, an Australian who makes a living off of posting articles about his troll attempts against everyone around him. Articles such as “Overdue Account” have gone viral and been re-posted and forwarded in emails thousands of times. The most convincing (perhaps because they always forget something) of all Thorne’s Trolls, however, would be a fake memo he sent out for McDonalds, from a Managing Director which stated “If the girls leave one item out of every second or third order, this adds up to several thousand dollars per week revenue”, which found itself duplicated into enough emails that McDonald’s had to push an official response onto their websites. Congratulations, Mr. Thorne.