591: Troll Slayer

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Troll Slayer

Title text: We have met the enemy and he is us.

Explanation

Stephenie Meyer is the author of the Twilight novels, a series of young adult vampire novels. The series was highly successful with a large base of (largely teenaged and young adult) fans, but also has a huge number of detractors.

4chan, is an imageboard with the feature to post anonymously. Due to its anonymity, the site has become notorious as a gathering point for trolls (as well as a number of other unsavory groups).

This strip depicts a fictional conflict between Meyer and a group of 4chan users. 4chan is used to coordinate an attack on a Twilight board, likely blanketing the forum with verbal attacks, offensive language, and other posts designed to offend and upset fans of the series. Stephenie Meyer intervenes, asking them to stop, but a representative 4chan user, accustomed to anonymous trolling having no consequences, laughs off her request. In response, Meyer writes 4chan into her next novel, presenting it as a haven for vampires. As she presumably intends, this draws huge numbers of Twilight fans into the forum, crowding out other users and likely rendering it unusable (or at least less usable) to its original user base.

The title text refers to Walt Kelly's famous saying. Kelly used it to refer to all of mankind, whereas here it refers to the users of 4chan, by bringing on the enemy of their forum themselves.

From xkcd: volume 0:

Some 4channers wrote in to complain I was violating rules 1 and 2. Some 4channers are a little slow on the uptake.

Transcript

[A list of post comments alongside pictures on a website. The first picture shows a page from a book/website with a small black picture with a white feature in the upper left corner and text to the right and below it. The second picture shows Cueball in front of three people, with a unclear drawing to the right (is it a canon?). The third picture shows a man with a black hat holding up a sword to the left and a trumpet to the right. The fourth and last picture is cut off in the middle at the bottom of the frame. The visible top part shows a drawing of a mans face from the nose/ears and up. The man has black hair and says LOL].

Text picture: Hey, let's troll the fuck out of the Twilight boards

Cueball picture: I'm in. Should be fun

Man with sword picture: Me too. Signing on now.

LOL face picture: Lol angsty teens.

[Stephenie Meyer is shown sitting facing right and chatting at her computer. She get's a reply from the screen. It looks like she actually speaks the lines of text to someone, but she only types it in via the keyboard. This becomes clear in the next panel where the pimpled boy she talks to obviously types his reply on the keyboard. Across the top border of the frame is a smaller frame with a caption:]

Hours Later:

Stephenie Meyer (typing): Hi, it's Stephenie Meyer. Fine, you don't like my books. But please leave us alone.

Pimpled boy (from computer): Show us your tits.

Stephenie Meyer (typing): I asked politely. Don't make me get tough.

[A boy with lots of pimples and black hair is sitting at his computer typing (facing the other way towards Stephenie in the previous panel). He writes his reply on the keyboard and receives a reply from Stephenie coming out of the computer.]

Pimpled boy (typing): And what, call the internet police? You don't get it, do you? We've been trolling for years. We're all anonymous. There's nothing you can do to hurt us. We're the net's hate machine.

Stephenie Meyer (from computer): Okay. Just remember, I gave you a chance. *Disconnected*.

[A page from a book is shown lying slanted across the panel. Some of the text is thus cut off at the edges of the frame. The first eight lines can be read clearly, even though the last letter in both the 2nd and sixth line is partly cut-off. Below that there are four incomplete lines, where only the visible part will be transcribed, but a good guess at the missing text is written in square brackets. Across the top border of the frame is a smaller frame with a caption:]

Six Months Later:

Vampires! Book VI

Edward ran a pale hand

through his perfect golden-

bronze hair, then signed

on to 4chan.org, the darkest

place on the internet, where

all his vampire compatriots

spent their time.

Suddenly, there was [a]

[sha]rp knock at the d[oor]

[?] swept in [?]

[?r?]ing [?]

[Another list of post comments alongside pictures on the same website as in the first panel. The first picture shows a man with black hair and a woman with long hair standing with their backs against each other (probably Edward and Bella from the books). The second picture is just a white frame with the text Dawnz. The third picture shows a person from the chest and up. The person has black hair and black clothes, with some kind of collar. The fourth and last picture shows two chess piece a large one in front of the other. The picture is shown completely but the text message seems to be more than two lines long, but only the top two lines are shown. Across the top border of the frame is a smaller frame with a caption:]

Shortly thereafter:

Two people picture: OMG I love this place it's so edgy being anonymous

Dawnz picture: Whos your favorite vampire

Collared person picture: Check out my pic Im so dark just like this site

Chess piece picture: Any Twilight fans in Dallas want to meet a lonely

[Back to the boy with lots of pimples now sitting resigned at his computer without typing.]

Hairy: Oh... Oh God.

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Discussion

The quote is "We have met the enemy and he is us." Us refers to the trollers. I think by meddling with the twilight forums, they brought on trolls to their own. I have changed the text to reflect the reference of the quote accordingly (currently it says they brought on the enemy themselves - focus is wrong). Adityarajbhatt (talk) 19:06, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

For some reasons, there are "twilight borards", not "forums". Apparently, /b/turds attacked people with decent aptness in "board culture". It would be even funnier if this comic implied the mouseover text is a quote from would-be book of Twilight series. 162.158.183.127 08:54, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think such a counter-attack would be effective. The /b/tards' standard defense mechanism would be to just flood the board with tubgirl and 50-Hilter-posts, and hammer that spike of Twilight fans right back down again. 169.233.101.195 01:43, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

True but in the comic it obviously worked on the poor pimple faced boy who is totally dejected in the last picture. Remember there are many more vampire fans than geeks on 4chan. ;-) Also this is the comics explanation and here in the comic it worked --Kynde (talk) 08:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

That defense mechanism works against a short termed spike, which is typically generated by other online media. However the mention in the printed book might push more towards a raise of the general level, instead of a single spike. --Lupo (talk) 09:04, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

The title of topic can be a reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. /b/tars tried to slay Twilight fans (all of them would rather be vampires than humans) and got a quick reversal. 108.162.231.201 07:45, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Is just me or are the boy's pimples shaped like the EURion constellation? 172.70.254.95 21:23, 11 October 2022 (UTC)