The Plague Of The Web Community

The black plague was first introduced in the time of the Victorians, where a terrible virus infected many of the inhabitants of England. This is happening again, metaphorically speaking.

The plague is the annoying fans who flame the sufferers – the hard working webmasters. Every day in my inbox I find an uncalled for act of completely needless, unconstructive verbal abuse, sent merely to anger me. Admittedly it’s only about 1% of all sites visitors that do this, but that’s still a lot of people. What do you think was the main reason for all these sites closing down recently? It is the fans fault.

I’ll move back onto that a little later, but for now let me focus on explaining in more depth which people I am actually referring to when saying ‘The Fans’. It isn’t every single DBZ fan in the community, but rather the extreme opposite, it is a minority, and they know who they are. Don’t feel that it is necessarily you that I am speaking of when criticizing the ‘fans’, unless you have done something worthy of criticism.

Fans generally write in to webmasters in an effort to get their point across, which is all well and good until they give an immature opinion, such as pointless complaints or sarcastic, weak attempts at humor. It’s a shame that these people have no better things to do than write stupid messages to respected members of the DBZ web community in an effort to get a cheap laugh. Guess what guys? No one’s laughing!

I know for a fact that I’m not the only one who gets annoyed by this relentless plague of flamers, as it has been well documented that Mr E and Ex both get extremely pissed off at this, and rightly so too. These two individuals have quite possibly done more for DBZ on the Internet than any group of people put together, a feat worthy of mass respect. They have been labeled ‘Sell Outs’ though, just for revising their opinions on certain matters when FUNi does a good job on them. The fans that have sent them insulting messages because of this are quite simply, complete morons.

Many sites have shut down lately, with a handful more having been added since I wrote an editorial on it. I concluded my article by hoping that things would improve, how wrong I was. DBZ Uncensored and Hagemiai are the latest to have given up everything, partially due to lack of interest, lack of time, but majorly because of idiotic fans. Yes, that’s right, the fools that e-mail hate mail to the webmasters are a massive cause to the defecate of these majestic sites. The webmasters spend large quantities of their time working on their sites so that the fans can view it, only to be shown no respect, and zero tolerance when something goes wrong. No wonder Ex and Castor Troy get so angry when they are flamed, all it shows is arrogance on the fans behalf.

For those of you who still can’t comprehend what we have to put up with, here is a little e-mail I received a few days ago: “shouldnt the humor section have something funny in it?”. As you can see, the grammar is pathetic, and the person who wrote it has no respect for the hard work that I’ve done.

Another e-mail I got was referring to an update I made saying that there will be reruns at the end of the Cell saga, which was scheduled to finish in just a few days time. I meant that the Cell Games saga and Cell saga were separate, but this guy disagreed. “the cell saga aint over in england mate, what r u on, its only about half way through u fool!”. Once again, it has poor grammar. I think I’ve found a common mistake among these people…

The obnoxious, annoying criticizers seem to be illiterate, constantly making spelling and grammar mistakes. It makes sense – They give aimless flames to us, with pathetic spelling, which could easily be surpassed by a four year old. It backs up what I’ve been saying all through this editorial – They’re idiots!

DBZ fans on the Internet are known to be among the worst around, which is a shame as they demean everyone else’s reputation. Thankfully though, there are a wide variety of kind, gracious fans who send in compliments. As I said before, it’s only about 1% of people who send in hate mail, but that is still too much, and I get comparatively few flames!

As mentioned above, most fans (And I’m referring to everyone except the ‘plague’ this time) are actually quite helpful and kind in what they say. Here are a few quotes from e-mails that I’ve got with compliments: “Goooood site”, “…you guys rule”, and “I have never found a site more for the fans than DBZGT Legacy”. Things like that motivate me to carry on, and it’s the same with the other webmasters, I’m sure.

I’m not saying that us webmasters and site maintainers can’t take criticism, just that the only kind that is cool with me and everyone else is that of the constructive type, as it helps to point out mistakes made and ways of correcting them. Things like that need doing, but there is a huge difference between being constructive, and being an asshole. Basically when you get an e-mail pointing out a problem, with a solution to it not being provided, if the problem wasn’t pointed out politely, and/or if the problem was just an immature opinion, then it is probably a flame.

What can we do about this? I am going to set up a ‘Named and Shamed’ regime, where all webmasters give the name and e-mail address of the person who flamed them, and put it on a special page for it to be exposed to all, and maybe ‘accidentally’ used by others to return the favor to them. Maybe if the ‘fans’ get a taste of their own medicine, then they’ll realize how aggravating it can be to be on the receiving end.

If you are one of these ‘fans’, then stop flaming people, as you are hated even more than Page Pirates. Put your immature attitude behind you, and either quit bugging us or send in compliments or constructive criticism to us. It’s plain and simple, and will obviously make the DBZ web community a more enjoyable place.