This is your average forum-goer.

Most importantly in addition to choosing their own user name, they also pick and choose their own internet e-penis - even females. Believe it or not, in the online world everyone has an e-penis, including females. There is not one person who will say and do the same things in real life as they do in an online setting. Most of the time, people's e-penises (or should it be e-peni?) are a lot larger online than they are in real life. This has caused the growth of many different types of internet personalities ranging from The Judge to The Woman, all of which have their ups and downs.

The New Guy
Everyone goes through this stage when establishing their e-penis. The New Guy is almost exactly like an infant. They don't know how to act since they have never been exposed to such surroundings before. Some New Guys take it better than others. Some will lurk around before making posts in order to test the waters before jumping in. New Guys that follow this course of action usually have the best chance of making it past the abortion period (Which is the time before a New Guy is banned). Other New Guys on the other hand will not take the time to test the waters and instead make a fool out of themselves by posting and asking a question that was already discussed and answered two days ago. These types of New Guys don't make it past the abortion period unless they own up to their mistakes and agree to think before hitting the submit button. The New Guy has an average e-penis size of 4.5 inches given some are more conservative than others.

Trolls typically can be found hiding in your lawn, as well as within forums around the internet.

The Forum Troll
A forum would not be a forum without The Forum Troll. The Forum Troll can be compared to an outgoing teen-aged Goth who has radical views on abortion and every other item up for debate under the sun. The Forum Troll feels compelled to share his or her views with everyone else, even if what they are posting about isn't discussed within the topic in which they are posting. You can easily spot a troll by their activity in threads that discuss religion. If they are quick to say that religion is a scam and followers don't have a brain, they are probably The Forum troll, and probably replied while living in their parents' basement.

The Woman
The Woman (singular) refers to a member who is able to mentally archive and recall any and all posts made by you, as well as the 1,459 other members on the forum - All without the need to use the board's search function. The Woman will use these archived posts against you and others in the event that an argument should break out between you and the woman and they've run out of responses to throw back at you. He or she will open their reply with something like, "Back on March 17, 1998 at 11:45:49PM EST you replied on this same topic and said..." The women will also feel the need to make irate and insane topics / replies for several days in a row for almost no apparent reason and then seemingly return to normal as if nothing had happened.

The Emo Emu
If you're a member of a forum, then you have to know this one: The Emo Emu. The Evil Emu insists that they have the worst life style on the planet. If you post about a bad day, their day was twice as bad. If you post about a problem you're having at work, they post a reply saying that they have that same problem, as well as 5 others to deal with all at the same time. The Emo Emu is also sensitive to issues regarding their boyfriend / girlfriend who just broke up with them. Their hearts have been broken, and no one else knows what it's like since they lost their other half of two weeks.

Keep an eye out for The Emo Emu as they can quickly derail a thread about hot dogs and turn it into a thread about hamburgers, which are complete opposites!

Stephen Hawking Wanna-Be
Each and every day I think to myself how amazing the internet is, and how lucky we are to have such a tool at our finger tips. The internet allows anyone access to a massive amount of data, which means even the dumbest user can appear to be one of the smartest users with enough effort and determination (Assuming they are smart enough to put forward such effort). The Stephen Hawking Wanna-Be will search for any and all data pertaining to a topic in order to claim that they are an expert on the topic being discussed, when in reality they know nothing about it. You can sometimes catch a Stephen Hawking Wanna-Be in the act by simply taking the first several words of their reply and search for them on Google. Sometimes you may get lucky and find the same information somewhere else online verbatim in which case you should take a screen shot of the evidence and post it for all to see and reply with "We've got a live one".

When caught in the act, Stephen Hawking Wanna-Bes quickly scatter since they know they have been caught red-handed. They simply move on to the next community until someone there figures out they don't really know what they claim to know.

The Judge
The Judge - not to be confused with The Geek Forum's member named TheJudge - is quick to judge new members (as well as existing members), hence the name. The Judge has very strict criteria for those who he can consider worthy enough to be his e-friends. If you don't meet his criteria, then you're not good enough for him and you've managed to make his shit list until you can prove his assumption incorrect - which sometimes may never happen. The Judge is also like The Woman in the sense that he has the ability to remember posts that were made several years ago as a means of retort in an argument as well as justification as to why they hate you.

They might also hate you since they are stuck living in their parents' basement.

Grandpa Willard
Grandpa Willard can commonly be found on tech forums asking for help since they can't open the .scr file attached to an email they got from Britney Spears. Someone who fits into this category doesn't have to be old enough to be a grandfather; (Though they are getting younger and younger) they just have to lack technical skills like an old grandfather in his 80s would. Grandpa Willards all seem to lack technical skills, literacy skills, and patience once everyone starts telling him the answer to his problem can be found on either Google.com or Zombo.com.

Grandpa Willard tends to only stick around for a few days after they realize that no one is going to help with his problem since he's The New Guy. Grandpa Willard will stick around to yell a few obscenities at some of the members and then storm out of the room like a little child would do who didn't get their way.

There he is, ready to take over your thread the first chance he gets.

The Forum Clown
Just like how every class has a clown, every forum has a clown.

Just like The Troll, The Forum Clown is there to de-rail your thread about how much you rule at Guitar Hero. Have a topic about how sad you are after your mother's death? The Forum Clown will be there to throw in an untimely joke about how she probably deserved it anyway. The Forum Clown doesn't start very many new topics on their own since they have nothing of value to give back to the community.

If The Forum Clown decides to create a new thread asking for advice from the rest of the members, feel free to either ignore the topic all together, or post equally useless replies in his thread as he did to you.

Moderators
Moderators are just below Administrators, and tend to have less control over the forum. A moderator's job is to do just that - moderate things. When a discussion gets too heated and two members start to argue over the internet like two retarded kids over an empty pack of gum, the moderators are usually there to put an end to things - after everyone has had their fair share of laughs, of course.

In some cases when a moderator is first brought on board, they may feel the need to test out all of their new powers that have been granted to them. Other forum regulars refer to this as a "power trip" since there is no need to ban every new member who signs up, and every other member who doesn't agree with them.

Administrators
Administrators are operators of the forum, and are usually the people that pay the bills to keep the place running. They generally have direct access to the forum's database and subsequent files. Administrators are usually fair in the way they manage their boards, but sometimes a forum might have a rogue Neo-Nazi who only accepts registrations from white males who are over six feet tall with blonde hair and blue eyes. Most require a photograph of the new member with the current day's newspaper before registration is accepted.

This is your space. The future of computing is here!

Before the advent of My Space and Face Book, the practice of social networking was rather cumbersome, as there was no fancy GUI (Which means "Graphical User Interface" for those of you ultra-hip non-geeks reading this) to make things quicker, thus vast social networks were not created up until My Space and Face Book came around in mid 2003. Before this time, social networks consisted of only a few people that stuck together and didn't change their user names each time they logged in unlike today's social networks which consist of hundreds and sometimes even thousands of individuals who have never even met one another that insist on changing their My Space URL every time that they login because they are in a different mood than they were before.

Social networking is great because it allows people to stay in touch with each other no matter where they may have moved to - even jail. However, today's modern social networking websites do come with a lot of side effects, some of which may be unwanted:

Accessibility and reliability:
First up is the issue pertaining to accessibility and reliability. My Space is probably the worst with this since My Space gives its users the ability to customize their pages by allowing users to input their own HTML, CSS, and Java Script into their pages. For those of us geeks, we know this is an issue since the majority of the users on My Space can't turn on their computer, let alone insert a link or an image into a web page with basic HTML coding.

Some users get a little carried away with their pictures and wind up embedding nearly 25 megabytes worth of images directly on their My Space homepage since they didn't bother resizing their images. Others, however, don't get carried away with pictures, but instead get carried away by embedding a never-ending techno song into their page since it reminds them of the time that they were in a coma after jumping out their second floor window while having a bad acid trip. Needless to say, these profiles are your web browser's worst nightmare, and should be avoided at all costs. (Don't go on My Space at all to avoid them)

Party Gate Crashers:
Before there were social networking sites it was almost impossible to organize a spur-of-the-moment party when you found out your parents were leaving town for the day. Now since everyone is connected by social networking sites, the task of telling everyone about your party is a lot easier. Before you know it everyone in your senior class will be at your house while your parents are away. And so will every other high school senior that's within an hour's driving time from you.

Though it may seem like a good idea to simply post up the details of your party on your My Space profile, some users don't realize that unwanted guests maybe able to view the invitation and invite themselves, along with all their friends. Look on the bright side; you might become an internet legend overnight like the Numa Numa guy Gary Brolsma or Corey Delaney, the official 16-year-old party liaison of Australia.

This is what your typical pedophile / predator looks like.

Pedophiles and other things that go bump in the night (Literally):
Perhaps one of the biggest fears that parents have nowadays is the fear of their child being stolen by someone they met on My Space and then later sold on eBay or Craigslist to someone in a third world country looking to find a young child who can work 18 hours a day for just one dollar.

Back in the days of newsgroups this was not a worry because pedophiles did not exist then. They were simply known as horny middle-aged men looking for a nice young girl or boy to "hang out" with. Digital cameras were also not embedded in every object in those days either. In today's society it's very easy for you're 12-year-old to post pictures of themselves doing obscene things on the internet for deviants to drool over without your knowledge since you most likely let your 12-year-old stay up till 12am on school nights so as long as they are able to wake up and get ready on time the next morning.

If you're worried that your child may fall victim to The Predator, I recommend that you take a sharp knife and immediately cut the cable going from your modem to your computer. This will stop pedophiles in their tracks as they cannot talk to your child anywhere else but online and in public places where children usually hang out.

If you do take a knife to the cable linking your modem to your computer, make sure to cut away from yourself and from others. This may seem like common knowledge, but not everyone knows these things.

Censorship, China, and Soviet Russia:
In Soviet Russia, the internet censors you!

[ The rest of this section was deleted as per request of the Chinese and Russian Governments to avoid the risk of World War III breaking out]

Comments?