Not an April Fools Joke

[james_davis_nicoll]

How smart is the average self-published spammer?

Terry Austin to Veritas: Your books don't sell much because you're an illiterate retard spammer.

[snip]

Veritas: I'll have you know my parents were married for twelve years before I
was born.

Comments

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

Managing to out-dumb Austin is quite a feat.

[iamza.livejournal.com]

Heh. Retort in haste, repent at leisure...

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Now, if he'd just stolen my comment, "Please don't tell my parents. They don't know.", then that would have been slightly funny. This, though, is just sad.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I can't deny a certain morbid curiosity to know who this "Veritas" is -- either he came by r.a.sf.w after I left, or I've forgotten him -- and what his book is, but I'm reluctant to open the floodgates of Google to find out. Is someone willing to do my homework and provide a one-sentence summary?

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

He's a self-published "author" and spammer who sincerely thought that rasf.w would be happy to hear about his book. Or in other words, he's a born Terry Austin toy.

[t-guy.livejournal.com]

A few more details, should Ross (or anyone else)be interested: the 'novel' is called _Rarity from The Hollow: A Lacy Dawn Adventure_... hang on, that's that other divot, isn't it? Veritarse is Ken Hogan or the like, who watches share prices while typing up his messages on Google groups (= v. declasse) and has provided Terry Austin and myself with several minutes of harmless fun (when Terry is on I switch to spectator sport mode; I learn from the master but do not presume to supplant him).

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

He also came to rasfc to promote the book and hung around just long enough to realize people were ignoring him. In essence, he has written a semi-SF that promotes his ideas that humans are aliens and of how the world will end. Poorly.

Ah, that wacky Terry.

[glorin.livejournal.com]

Years and Years ago when I used to hang out on rec.games.frp.misc Terry was a frequent participant. Some things fell into place for my perception of him when he admitted baiting people, fanning flames, and generally being a troll was a game</>I to him, somewhat akin to an RPG. That his behavior was thoughtful and intentional made him an even bigger jerk, in my opinion.

Re: Ah, that wacky Terry.

[glorin.livejournal.com]

Ahrrg, mistyped a tag there. Sorry.

Re: Ah, that wacky Terry.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

As I recall, Terry was usually pretty up-front about that. I actually found the honesty kind of refreshing.

That didn't stop me from killfiling threads that were starting the Terry-spiral, though.

Re: Ah, that wacky Terry.

[glorin.livejournal.com]

In theory, I don't disagree with you. But I would feel bad if I was ruining other people's fun by breaking the playground.

Re: Ah, that wacky Terry.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Terry managed to stick below my threshold of `specific persona', staying in `generally familiar name' until around December, I think it was, when he went full-bore ``die spammer die'' on a person who happened to post in one of those spammer-created threads that had transmogrified into a relatively interesting one. At that point several people tried to clue him in that he was attacking a perfectly harmless person who'd posted something on-topic on that thread, and on-topic regularly for years in dozens in newsgroups.

Of course the clue didn't take, and I haven't seen the innocent guy post since that little fight. It might just be coincidence, like deciding not to renew his account at the end of the calendar year or something like that, but the event's got Terry promoted to where I consciously skip subthreads with heavy Terry content, rather than trusting my subconscious to remember which parts not to read.