The Fake Yuzna (I’m Pretty Sure)

Posted on November 4, 2008
Filed Under internet idiots | 2 Comments

Would it be weirder if a famous horror movie producer/director — Brian Yuzna, a successful popularizer of H.P. Lovecraft in cinematic form — had stopped off in the Washington area and visited my site and crapped in the comments section over a disagreement with my opinion on zombies movies, even though it seems not at odds with the opinion he expressed in interviews himself? (That zombie films and horror in general just aren’t good media for exploring politics, that is, as Yuzna explains here…)

Or would it be weirder if it were someone else pretending to be this guy were playing passive-aggressive on my website, just to scold anyone with differing opinions about zombie movies? And that, on closer investigation, it turned out to be a politely banished commenter (who’d turned up under at least one pseudonym (see the latter part of this comment) since being told he wasn’t welcome anymore) to turn up impersonating said famous horror movie producer/director? Because, well, Silver Springs, Maryland isn’t so far from the place my old troll lives.

Oh, yes, I suspect I’ve got the drop on him, and it ain’t very pretty. Let this be a lesson, when you start wondering how people are doing while you’re logged onto Facebook: the guy who turned out to be a backstabber in middle school? He’s probably still uncool. Here’s what I’ve got…

This fake Brian Yuzna is posting from the IP 68.33.68.63, which is somewhere in Maryland… possible, as this gadget and a few others seems to think, in Silver Spring, probably near the corner of Caddington Avenue and Whittington Terrace… and a mere 27 kilometers from my troll’s town of residence. Which, you know, is a pretty big coincidence, especially given the email address used by the commenter — — and the fact that my onetime troll is a big fan of the film.

(See here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial&hs=W0B&q=Reanimator+site%3Amarkguppy.com%2F&btnG=Search)

This faux-Yuzna’s comment even fixated on some of the same people mentioned in that post.

Even some of the core vocabulary is the same as my troll’s, such as the insistent, and non-ironic, use of the word “auteur,” or his snide dismissal of my thesis as something a “bright undergrad” would demonstrate in a “term paper.” (Sure, pal. Do please show me where sociobiology and the study of literature have been combined. Maybe I missed that in grad school, or maybe some grand synthesis of knowledge has happened since I got to Korea. But nothing’s turning up on the databases I have access to…)

Of course, I could just be seeing patterns where there are none. Does anyone know where Brian Yuzna is living at the moment? I mean, if he’s living in or near Maryland? Wait, this website says he lives in Barcelona. And he surely doesn’t seem to be in the habit of posting nasty little comments on random websites, or so says Google.

And, really, it’s just a little too suspicious. I’m further betting that the IP-address-to-street-location gadget is actually not quite accurate (just as such gadgets all disclaim). Look across the parking lot. See that big building? I wonder whether that’s my troll’s workplace. I wonder if a slightly better check on the IP would reveal the name of the organization that pays for it? Not that I’d complain to his boss about his pissing on my website from a work computer, but… well… maybe I would. If it’ll make him stop posting here? I’ve emailed the ISP for that IP and asked them whether it’s a company using it, a company to which I could complain regarding an employee’s use of their company to post abuse on people’s websites. Because, man, how hard do I have to push to get a troll to go make a nuisance of himself somewhere else?

But I’d prefer he just sees this and stops posting here on his own… under any name. Come on, Mark Guppy, could you just quit it? Enough with the sockpuppets. Go away, and don’t come back. Then I wouldn’t have to ask your boss to tell you not to post little flaming bags of electronic turds on my website.

By the way, it’s pretty pathetic that you have to impersonate a famous horror movie producer to have the balls to disagree with me. Oh yeah, and the potshot about me being an “aspiring writer”? Uh, what is “There Will Be Wind,” pal?

(http://www.markguppy.com/search/label/There%20Will%20Be%20Wind)

Heh, whatever. Better to be an aspiring writer than being an aspiring troll.

Now, I could be wrong. But I doubt it. And after the sockpuppetry I’ve seen, it’ll take more than an indignant protestation to convince me.

Comments

2 Responses to “The Fake Yuzna (I’m Pretty Sure)”

  1. Mark on November 5th, 2008 1:43 am

    Not sure how often you check your e-mail – please check it.

  2. gordsellar on November 11th, 2008 11:55 am

    Mark, you’re assuming I haven’t killfilled you already. You know, killfile? When someone filters your mail direct to the trash? It’s a very useful technique to use with people like you. That is, Internet Trolls. Which is what you have, by your own admission, become. Because life is too short to deal with other people’s infantile responses to their own problems.

    It’s perhaps worth a pause to reflect on that, Mark. You have become an Internet Troll: the most pathetic, least respectable, and almost (next to spammers) the most parasitic member of the Internet ecology. I don’t know what pleasure you get spreading your misery about the internet the way monkeys fling their own feces, but you are no longer welcome to do so here.

    You had the guts to mock and ridicule under a pseudonym, to “snipe” at me from the sidelines, for months on my website. You don’t get to email me and solicit “respect” and privacy now, and try to cut deals with me, wherein you stop trolling my website on condition that I remove this post.

    Which, go read your email again, is exactly what you did. No apology, just a half-assed admission of stupid behaviour and some excuse blaming me for it, followed by an unreasonable request that I change the content on my website because it showed you for what you are. A troll.

    So when you describe what’s happened, and is happening, what you need to recognize is that the “escalation” is not my doing. YOU have been escalating this situation from day one, and right now, I’m saying the same thing I said last time, after months of tolerating admittedly (by you) passive-aggressive comments and “sniping.” I’m saying STOP TROLLING HERE. Is the message through? Do you get it?

    Now, I may well remove this post at some point, of my own doing — to get rid of the rotten aftertaste you’ve created here — but I may instead leave it here as insurance. Because, you know, Mark, having your email and having this post and your response to it and all of that, I’m happy to just leave it all as it is. I don’t want to forward it to your boss, or direct to your wife’s attention this secret war that you seem to think you’ve been waging against me for the past year… which, if you step back and really look at it, suggests nothing so clearly as that you need to get some help. Yes, Mark, if what you say in your email is true, and you’ve been trolling my site for a year, getting pleasure from annoying and attacking because of a single post I made once that mentioned you, then you have serious problems. It’s maybe not your fault, we all struggle with demons, but I think some professional help might be in order. There’s no shame in getting some.

    By the way, actually saying you’re sorry? Or actually being sorry? Recognizing that you’d been in the wrong? That might have helped your case. I don’t feel too badly leaving this up when the one thing you should have done, after all this, you didn’t do. You didn’t apologize. Apologies mean something, Mark. Cook up all the justifications you like, when you act like a jerk, and you realize it, then apology is the natural thing. Not that I expect one. If you apologize now, it’s because it was demanded, and I have no use for formalities like that. All I see from your email is a lack of acknowledgement that you were in the wrong in what you did here. Fine.

    And meanwhile, I don’t see how this post that you mentioned could have conceivably set you off, or how this post “crossed the line.” Have you actually read the post from beginning to end? Have you read it since you took offense, and thought about it?

    I clearly stated, several times, that I wasn’t attacking you — after all, if I were, I would be attacking the majority of people in the world, since this diamond-ring meme is so immensely widespread. I mentioned you because your post got me thinking. I clearly noted that I have been affected by, and wrestled with, the effects of the same advertising that we both know created a link between diamond rings and marriage/engagement. I was talking about sociobiology and business, Mark, not about you. If you took offense, that’s because you were too lazy to reread it carefully, to see where I absolutely addressed you personally in saying this exactly, to think it over, and actually come out and say it. Your justification is so thin, here, and given the fact you didn’t bring it up at the time, I say it’s your own bloody fault you stewed so long.

    And as someone who read the original post has commented about this post, wrote:

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
    …
    Some people just don’t seem to make sense.

    So yeah, no, it’s not just in my head that I wasn’t being rude or insulting. If you can’t handle people talking about things, and making passing mention to you in the course of that, I think blogging is a place you don’t belong and never will understand. If you need to interpret people in the worst possible way, I suggest you stop visiting blogs.

    But who knows: people can change, if they try hard enough. Maybe you could actually learn to give people a little more faith, a little more benefit of the doubt.

    So here’s my response, in the open, in public:

    Just like you, I don’t want this to go any farther. Don’t comment here again, don’t post under a pseudonym here again, don’t visit my blog again, and don’t contact me in any other form again — by email, by phone, whatever — and I won’t I won’t contact anyone, forward your email or copies of your comments with IP data and the rest. I will not repost the full content of your email and comments here… but I will keep them on hand, Mark.

    Please… do us both a favor. There are so many positive things you could be doing with the few precious hours of life you have free, instead of trolling here.

    If you can’t think of anything better to do, fine… but troll somewhere else from now on, okay?

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