Randy McNob: Fear & Loathing on the Internet!

RANDY

McNOB

Fear & Loathing on the Internet!

Mike Knowles

Copyright 2011 by Mike Knowles

Smashwords Edition

Introduction

Welcome to WorldWideFreaks.Com!

Dedicated cyber surfers know that the Internet is just like that travelling circus in the 1932 film, The Freaks. The political incorrect poster from this MGM production proclaimed, Can a Full Grown Woman Truly Love a Midget! Yes, if she’s prepared to look down on him. The term freak may not be very popular amongst today’s over-sensitive politically correct brigade. But the reality is that if you have a computer and an Internet connection, the two-headed calf and the bearded woman are only a few clicks away!

Hence this book which relates my thrilling adventures tracking down a particular species of freak called the cyber troll. Just to make it official, (for me at least), I adopted the mantle of the Trollbuster General. My mission had historical precedence. Back in the 17th Century one Matthew Hopkins, a failed lawyer, called himself the Witchfinder General and set out to burn women at the stake. And he knew just who he was looking for. They were usually ugly and had a black cat, (a wart on the face was not obligatory. It merely provided extra proof that this was one of Satan’s handmaidens). Internet trolls were likewise easy to find. The hunting rifle was locked and loaded. Why? Because these were dangerous beasts and one had to be permanently on one’s guard. Take this veiled threat...

"At 10:50pm on April 1st, 2008,

Rubinstein said…

No sorry i worked for a branch of mi6, a covert branch who cleans up the mess others can not do, and i dont mean the shit house either, .You could call me the jackal but i dont get caught, i have c2 clearance, dhss sorry i have plenty money, i am not the best writer by far, thats why i am in the shadows."

How to Murder the English Language

Notice the poor spelling and grammar? Well, I’d better warn you now: it’s going to get even worse. If your typical troll’s grammar and spelling were ill they’d be in a hospice with only minutes to live. Take Rubinstein above. Fans of the suave and urbane James Bond may be wondering if the Secret Intelligence Service has lowered its standards. Is Rubenstein telling porkies? Or could he be some sort of super Ninja warrior and SIS decided that this more than made up for his illiteracy. He can do the killing and they’ll get Miss Moneypenny to write the reports. In the interests of accuracy I decided not to correct the abysmal spelling and grammar displayed by so many of these trolls. It wasn’t an easy decision. As a writer I have a great respect for the English language. So the urge to correct these linguistic abominations was great. But I resisted the temptation. It would have made the cyber trolls appear almost human. And grant many of them a level of education they didn’t deserve. As a result, I merely formatted the messages and kept them as they were. The drawback being that my MSWord spelling checker almost suffered a total breakdown.

Like a Greek Odyssey!

Unlike normal trolls who live under bridges waiting for goats, these trolls are the Internet version of the guests Jerry Springer has on his show. Let’s backtrack on that. I think even Springer might consider his show too highbrow for these dorks. Make no mistake about it. Some of these trolls are raving, foaming-at-the-mouth, megalomaniacs. Within these pages you’ll enter an obnoxious world that makes Batman’s Arkham Asylum look like a prestigious intellectual think tank. From a modest beginning my odyssey assumed epic proportions. Whilst some trolls were merely weird, others – like McNob and The Lonely Italian in a Hotel Room - were profoundly freakish. Not that it was all that difficult to track them down. Finding freaks on the Internet is about as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel with a Gatling gun.

Reality Check

At times a sceptical reader may wonder which parts of the book are true and which parts have been embellished. The truth is most of this stuff is so freakish that you just can’t embellish it.

All the trolls mentioned in the book were discovered on a popular pen pal site and most of them appeared on my blog, The Man Who Hunts Internet Trolls and Flamers. The blog no longer exists but I may resurrect it. Whilst it was up and running it collected quite a following. According to Stat-Counter, an application that kept tabs on the people who visited my blog, someone from the Manchester Evening News spent over 20 hours on it! As did someone from the Australian government in Canberra. Okay, I can understand why a newspaper might pay me a visit. But the Ozzy government? Were they concerned that these trolls might emigrate down under? Was the Prime Minister himself a troll? We can only speculate.

Then there was the delightful Ms Emotion. When I first came across her she was pretending to be a Belgian woman who drank like a fish. Hence her messages which often gave the impression that she was three sheets to the wind. I am, by nature, rather sarcastic so I couldn’t help having a pop at her. After trading insults for a while she revealed that she was really an American living in California. She also told me about the trolls on Interpals, namely one character I dubbed McNob. Realising she was also a troll I decided she’d be a good subject to study. It was the start of a torrid cyber affair in which we exchanged over a thousand e-mails that must, in total, have rivalled the word count of Tolstoy’s, War and Peace. Although I’m betting he didn’t have as much fun. Below is just one of those emails...

Subject: a quick by-pass but not the heart surgery kind

Date: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 23:43

From: Ms. Emotion <********@*******>

To:

Conversation: a quick by-pass but not the heart surgery kind

Dear sir Knowles,

Pardon the formal greeting, I just like the way sir and Knowles sound, try it, say it aloud, it sounds smooth. I'm on break in the museum just now, but i'll write you as soon as the hours of the moon show up. Thank you for the introduction, but you don't say much about yourself or your past, don't like writing long detailed letters with little tiny ass font size do you? No, really, I have to grab my binoculars to view your tiny words. I will share my introduction as well, later on.

How McNob , Knowles and Clarity met: a beginning.~

Hah! Yes, very sly that McNab.Oh it's definately him, how can one not notice that ever so popular TUFF. I know of 6 of his aliases, you certainly know as much as well, I have seen either your posts or your visits to them. I can't help but wonder if you and him are one in the same....I mean, you are a writer, writers shape shift, writers are fickle, writers look to conceive characters through actual human contact, well that mingled with imagination, and sometimes just imagination itself is at work....eitherway, what I just said sounded good. If you are him and he is you, good job. If it is not the case.... here, a tissue to wipe your tears as I hurt your feelings. Sorry. There there, there there, boo boos all better now.

I left him a message on FOxey007(which is now deleted) and sa_sexy,my strategy was charm, boldness, fierce and what nots, trying to get him to tic, but all he responded with was two simple words on my wall post. He's losing his touch lad, went down about 1000 notches over night. I'm thinking, the problem is this.....he has a inferiority complex fused with too much time in his hands. Now, his complex thrusts him towards the vulnerable people, the kind who will serve themselves in a plate for his enjoyment, he feeds off the negative responses he receives, to make himself feel, to take away the numb he has. An false illusion that sends a message to his mind that he's on top of things. Blah. As you can see, I too find him fascinating, however, initially my purpose(and to a certain degree still is my purpose) towards him was to , mmm, well it is for my psychology paper, a pal I know from the site knew about the topic of my paper and actually paved the way to none other than GOLDEN EYE 007, oh, ooopp I meant, FOXEY007, such a goop, he swears he's Sean Connery. The other side of my purpose now is simple, to entertain the wicked and confuse the elite. He once asked are you doing all of this to laugh at me, to make fun at me at my expence, how is that for hyprocacy. I mean, that's what he's doing to those fools coreesponding with him, I bet you no one either than you and I know of all this. He's taking them for a ride at their expence, so it's in my nature to return some of his own medicine, tis only fair. He's avoiding me because I challenge him, so I'm not feeding him no food.

So then, enough...but, anything with that goop is entertaining. I hope thi stime he pays his bill so as to keep his rent a family, give him some distraction.

Charity

Her flattery became an occupational hazard. My wife tends to be brutally honest and somewhat critical so I wasn’t used to to all these compliments. At first it was nice, but after a while I began to feel as though I was drowning in a barrel of honey. A few months ago I came across her profile on Facebook and I wondered how she was getting on. So I emailed her. Here’s part of her reply...

...Indeed this entity named dwells in Australia for the past, say, 3 years. On and off the first year and a half. It takes a traveling soul to do this for it can at times ache the heart just alittle. Do I enjoy it here? Yes. It's no different to back home, there are good days and bad days, the location does not change the way life moves its waves. Do I miss my old life? yes. Do I like my new life? yes. Do I want my old one back? yes! So you see, it tears one apart. I miss my family too. Simple things as well like my car and my room with all my strange and wonderful books.

The only problem was her email header said it was sent from California. I hate to call a female a liar so there was only one possible explanation: for some reason I find difficult to fathom, she prefers sending emails from America. And she hops on a plane back home whenever she has to write one. Perhaps the Australians lack that kind of technology. Anyway, the saga of Charity and I deserve a book of their own. In this one I’ll concentrate on the other trolls I ran into. With special emphasis on McNob. And, for those of you with strong stomachs, the gruesome Tenebre Doom Occulta. A man who makes the Maquis de Sade, Adolf Hitler and the Spanish Inquisition look like beacons of liberalism.

Part 1

McNob: The Sorry Tale of a Modern Day Baron Munchhausen

It was Ms Emotion, AKA Charity, who introduced me to this chameleon like character. With more aliases than the Scarlett Pimpernel, McNob has appeared in many, exotic, manifestations. The semi-literate contract killer Rubenstein was just one of them. Indeed, McNob qualifies as a circus freak because he’s also appeared as a female. This makes him a hermaphrodite. If he were starring in that film The Freaks he’d be in a circus tent with a big sign reading: COME & SEE THE MAN WITH A COCK & A CUNT! ADULTS ONLY! On the other hand, he may even be a female! But, just to avoid even more confusion – these trolls create more than enough already – we’ll say he’s a man. In this case, we’re using the term loosely. But there’s a caveat. Although I can make fun of McNob, I must also remember to pay him homage. Why? Because he’s made a valuable contribution to our knowledge about Internet Trolls. Of course, McNob didn’t set out to improve mankind’s knowledge. His motives weren’t altruistic. They were egotistical. He wanted people to admire him. And I do admire him. I admire him for his chutzpah and the fact that I find him incredibly amusing. In fact, I found most cyber trolls amusing. So let’s take a close look at our subject. Let’s, in the words used by pathologists, open up this fucker and see what’s inside...

The Pathology of a Cyber Troll

Below is the first of his many profiles I came across on the pen pal site. In it McNob is portrayed as a battle-hardened vet from the first Gulf War. A crude portrayal but that’s to be expected. We are, after all, dealing with the licentious soldiery. The men who frightened Lord Wellington. Although he’s too modest to say, the impression McNob gives is that he was a former member of the elite Special Forces. In other profiles he was more specific and pinned it down to the SAS.

His initial reticence could have been because he was testing the water. He may have thought there’d be genuine members of the Special Forces on this pen pal site. In which case they’d soon unmask him. It may not have occurred to McNob that – with their need to remain in the shadows – a pen pal sit is the last place you’d find someone from the Special Forces. Had McNob read any of the books written by his hero, Andy McNab, he’d have known that. Perhaps he has read the books but the penny failed to drop. Did McNob think they might be on the pen pal site hoping to make friends with terrorists? I can just picture the scene at Hereford...

CO: We’ve had intelligence that Al Queda and the Taliban are using a pen pal site called *****pals. So we’re getting a covert team together to befriend them. If we can groom these buggers we can get some useful information out of them.

McNAB: Good idea, Boss. We may even catch some sad individuals pretending to be SAS men.

The temptation to pick this congenital liar apart line by line proved too great. It’s cruel, I know. It’s tantamount to kicking a cripple. Or poking a blind man in the eye. But we live in a cruel world. And this is nothing compared to what a genuine member of the Special Forces would do to him. So you could argue he’s getting off extremely lightly. In this case his ego is merely being bruised. But, if the SAS had anything to do with it, there wouldn’t be an unbroken bone in his body and both testicles would have been squashed flat. And that would just be for starters. Then there’s an added bonus for any students of psychology. If you could mine a multiple