Nerdy Who?

Someone pointed out a rant on some site I hadn't heard of before on IRC the other day. I valiantly fought an uphill battle against my eye lids, becoming heaver with each tortured word I read before I closed the site never to return again.

Then Drunk Report contacted me with an urgent letter asking me for a response. "Okay," I thought, "I'll give a half-assed response, as a half-assed one is all it will take." Here it is:

The author of this work, a white rastafarian complete with carefully manufactured dreadlocks (Jamaican Rasta to the core, except for skin color, accent, cultural frame of reference, ideology, and the fact that he lives in the suburbs of Ohio), basically has three arguments against me. Of course, being the Internet super hero that I am, I'm a natural target for angsty, marijuana-smoking teens majoring in park recreational services (or the like). Fight the power, Corey, smack the man down! Without further ado, the "arguments:"

1. The author claims that "100% of [my] fan loyalty hinges on the fact that [I] never break [my] word or change [my] mind about anything." Yeah, either that, or people actually like my writing. It takes a little more than "never breaking your word or changing your mind about anything" to create a fan base of 65 million readers. Of course, coming from a site ranked at around 182,000, I wouldn't expect you to know what makes a successful website. Alright, that was a cheap shot; it's not fair of me to say that you don't know what it takes to write a website that will be read and scrutinized by hundreds of thousands of people (daily). What, with such cutting-edge content as the results of online personality tests such as this one:

YOU ARE 58% ADDICTED TO THE INTERNET.

Thanks for the update Corey, we care.

But to be fair, that was from 2001, and everyone knows that an author's writing usually improves over time. So let's fast-forward to the exciting year of 2004 to find this ground-breaking laugh-a-minute material:

Wow, that's really clever Corey. I have to admit, that was kinda funny when I first saw it two years ago:

It never gets old:

Here's the formula for hilarity, according to Corey: take a tired joke that has been circulating around the Internet for years such as "here's a hot chick, see if you can focus on anything else," steal the concept and replace the hot chick with another tired pop-culture reference such as Mary Kate & Ashley. A half-hearted blurb of a post later, and you're on your way to COMEDY.

Then you criticize me for going on a TV show and reading one of my web pages nearly verbatim: "surely you can do something more impressive than read one of your webpages..." Guess what Corey? Believe it or not, guests don't call the shots on what material is used on a TV show. Since you won't be finding yourself making any guest appearances on any shows any time soon (although there may be someone somewhere who likes your cutting-edge social commentary about road signs), I'll clue you in: a producer calls the shots on a show's content. When I read my site on TechTV, it was at request of the segment producer. Until you get enough clout to call the shots, you do what the producers tell you. End of story.

That said, I agreed to do the interviews because it would spread the awesomeness of my sweet, sweet writing to a broader audience, you know, that thing you get once you start writing original content instead of lifting played out jokes from email forwards?

2. Next, you claim that I basically dodge the bullets, in favor of posting responses to emails I can defend myself against:

Everybody knows the easiest way to make fun of people online and get away with it is to choose people who a) don't read your website or b) can't respond even if they wanted to.

You go on to cite examples of people who don't read my website, such as "mouth-pieces for Fox News" because they're bound to contracts. Nice assertion dumbass, except for the fact that they regularly do respond to critics, and I have received several emails from FOX and FOX News; they not only know who I am, but many FNC employees have even read my website. Unless you seriously expect anyone to believe that news pundits have clauses in their contracts that explicitly prohibit them from responding to web satirists, the only real reason they don't respond is because they don't want to give me more publicity. Wow, if only I had galvanized this point so clearly in my O'Reilly article, you wouldn't have made this shallow assertion. Oh wait... I guess I did make this case, and you ignored it. My mistake.

Then you claim my criticism of programmers wasting their time on effects such as "rag doll technology" (a stupid, overused, industry buzz-word for describing basic Newtonian mechanics) is a "blind shot," and unfounded because their graphic engines may be used in "movie action scenes" (as opposed to those non-action scenes where the laws of physics don't apply), conveniently ignoring the fact that big studios such as ILM, Square-Enix, and Lucas Films already employ some of the most advanced graphics and physics engines in the world, rendering your argument void.

I mean, why waste your time on making the game fun, you know, the whole reason we play games in the first place, when you can spend that time much better creating realistic physics that cause enemies to flop down stairs like dolls. Hey, the game might suck but at least the enemies flop around like realistic dolls! It never gets old!

Finally, you claim that I don't have a forum because I'm afraid of people who might have intelligent criticism. Yeah, either that, or I don't have the time, money, or interest in hosting a forum. If I added a forum to my site, my traffic would nearly double from morons like you checking back to see if anyone posted a reply to your oh-so-witty Internet banter. Nobody cares. Not that people don't already talk shit about me on forums. Hell, go read the forums on my fan sites, they always talk shit about me and get this: I link to them.

As for not posting intelligent, well-written hate mail, I explained this in the FAQ: I don't post most of the hate mail I get for a number of reasons, all of which you gloss over without addressing:

1. People like you email me and assume that a lack of response means I can't respond because I've been PWN3D. Nice conclusion, if you ignore the fact that I get thousands of emails per week, and have over 76,000+ unread in archive, thus making it impossible for me to read every piece of mail I get, or even the majority of it, dumbass.

2. I don't post intelligent, well-written hate mail for two reasons: A) I don't get many and B) it's BORING. If you want to read a carefully thought-out, objective debate, go someplace else. Someone once asked me to post the 100 most recent emails in my inbox, so I posted them here completely unedited (minus the "From" line): http://maddox.xmission.com/last100.html

Where's all the intelligent debate? Besides the fact that most of the hate mail I get is fake (people try way too hard: "FAGGOT NERD STUPID FUCK"), well-written emails are not only boring, but they're not funny either. Trust me, I've seen it all. Being that I'm sure you think the little rant you posted on a site that nobody reads is what you'd consider "intelligent," and/or "well-written" (at the expense of cheapening the phrase by using it in connection with your writing), you don't have any excuse for some of the verbal diarrhea you churned out on the mediocre, add-riddled massacre you call a website.

3. Finally, you claim that I "hide behind an alias for protection." Oh really? Is that why you used my first name in your opening paragraph? Yeah, I hide behind an alias, except for the fact that my full name has been published in "The Boston Globe," TechTV, and dozens of magazines, newspapers, radio shows, and even on my fan forums. Ooops! Looks like you just choked down a shit-load of dumbass.

Then you claim that my site is a generic Google "look-a-like." Good point, if you neglect to mention that my site was created several years before Google's inception.

Last of all, you heroically point out that I accept donations for my site, as if it's in some grave contradiction to my creed. Even though I don't have a link to PayPal on my site, I guess this equates to begging for donations, as opposed to simply answering a frequently asked question, right dumbass?

Of course, it's not nearly as noble as cluttering up your site with shitty banners for websites that help lonely men jack off to pictures of feet. That is, when you're not pushing links to affiliats and cam portals to insecure cam whores with spotty complexion and saggy tits. But we all know that bandwidth isn't free, and that a site ranked as low as yours eats up some killer bandwidth, so the $20 you pay per month in hosting fees warrants all the porn banners. It's okay, we don't mind. Keep up the great work "Corey, defender of integrity." I look forward to your next exciting installment of "hey guys, look what I found on the web!"

Who needs original content when you can create another status-quo E/N site that nobody reads? Please accept my condolences for shattering the high you got from taking a pot shot at big bad Maddox. Fight the power! Damn the man!

Note: this will never be posted on my main page, because the real reason the rant was written about me was in hopes of a link on my site so his boring site could get more traffic. A cheap ploy for hits indeed. Nice try, chump.

112,583 people didn't see this ass-stomping rebuttal coming.

maddox@xmission.com

Back to how much I rule...

© 2004 by Maddox