Modsters Keep the Monsters Away

I was reading something the other day and it about scared my pants off. It had trolls and witches, and vampires and evil brainiacs. They were running around doing whatever pleased them. Without a care, they harassed the citizenry. Every move was calculated to suck the very life out of those nearest them. They put together ingenious devices to derail perfectly good trains, taking dozens of people down in a single attack.

It wasn’t a graphic novel, though. Or a Hollywood screenplay. It wasn’t even a half-decent chunk of fan fiction. It was a internet discussion forum (not this one of course).
It got me to thinking, as a modster, how would I want people to deal with these monsters? So that’s the topic of this Harvest…uh…Halloween(!) Modfia Blog. While I sit here and carve this pumpkin into the face of a biblical character, we’re going to go over the best ways to get rid of monsters.

Trolls, according to popular mythology were big, ugly, bridge-dwellers that, depending on the circumstances demanded a toll, asked you a riddle, or ate you alive. The best thing to do when facing an internet troll is to not feed them. Don’t give them something to respond to. Don’t argue with them. Don’t ask them out on a date.

Witches eat children. Especially ones with lots of information in their profile. If little Hansel092@yahotmailbot.com tells everyone where he goes to school, where he lives, and what time his parents get home, you can almost bet that he’s caught a baby-eating witch’s attention.

Vampires. Vampires like to bog down conversations, sucking the life out of them for their own amusement, by posting “Me too” and “:D” and nothing else. There’s really nothing to do but drive a stake through their heart. No really, there’s an app for that.

Evil geniuses sound cool, and maybe that’s the point. On the internet, they’re not so much interested in telling you their evil plan before feeding you to laser-toting sharks, as they want to tell you a bunch of useless information. If, for example, you’re discussing the merits of Twitter when someone pops up and says “Hey, did you know that Twitter operates on a queue server called Starling?” There’s a good chance that you’re speaking with an evil genius. Keep watching. In time, they’ll use their genius brain and endless supply of factoids to completely derail your train of thought. I know, cause I are one.

There’s one I didn’t mention before: zombies. Zombies? Well, zombies are just awesome. Every discussion board should have zombies. Nom nom.