SmartMuffin's Top Ten B8 Attention Whores

SmartMuffin produced this attention-whoring list in January of 2008.

Preface
As a long-time Internet forum poster (although not necessarily on this board), I have seen my share of attention whores. It is accomplished through various means, through trolling, through gimmicks, through identities, even through being nice. Sometimes it can be done with class in a positive way. Usually; however, it is done in an incredibly lame (HAY GUYZ LOOK OVER HERE PAY ATTENTION TO ME) where people take themselves, and e-popularity in general, entirely too seriously.

So, a lot of the people on this list are people who I'd also include on a hypothetical "worst user" list, because to me, attention whoring is one of the lamest things you can possibly do. Attention is to be earned through personality, typically one that reflects your real personality and isn't some sort of cyber put-on.

That being said, let the list begin!

Honorable Mentions
18. TurnTurnTurn

17. Zachnorn

16. SmartMuffin

15. Albion Hero

14. Heroic Palmer

13. Iamdead7

12. Tornadoman/fakertyu/sess

11. Ulti

Top 10 Attention Whores
10. Sir Chris (and by extension, anyone who participates in high profile account bets)

Let's get one thing perfectly clear, account bets serve NO purpose other than attention whoring. You're risking something that might mean something to you, but means absolutely nothing to the person who "wins" the account.

Especially when 95% of the time, they just come back with some dumbly named alt (what the **** is a Vyers?) Even "loser leaves the board" bets fail because the loser usually does not in fact leave the board. Account bet = "HEY EVERYONE COME LOOK AT HOW CONFIDENT I AM THAT MY FAVORITE CHARACTER IS MORE POPULAR ON THIS WEBSITE THAN YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTER IS, I'M WILLING TO RISK EVERYTHING, YET NOTHING AT THE SAME TIME"

Chris gets named specifically because he went through the trouble of having a high-profile account bet, losing it, then refusing to close it (resulting in a million topics about how he's a fat *****), then ultimately caving to peer pressure and closing it anyway. That was one of the greatest few days of attention whoring I've ever seen.

9. merSHINEsess

mSs nation comes to mind as the perfect example of "good" attention whoring. Yes, they (and their supporters which includes me) make a lot of pointless topics about them. But it's all in good fun. They posses a sort of "playful arrogance" that is entertaining without going overboard and taking e-pop too seriously.

And the best thing about merSHINEsess is that you have three distinct personalities who go about it in entirely different ways. SHINE relies on his crazy anime and nintendo games obsession, and a unique posting style in general. Sess gets himself banned every week and is ballin or trill or whatever. mer does... something, i'm not really sure... talks about reality shows with Palmer mostly, but is actively involved in most/all mSs topics.

mSs nation represent

8. The SEP

I don't know much about this guy. Apparently he's "sexy" or something. In any case, the entire board seems to be on his **** and for the life of me I can't really figure out why. As far as his sexiness, well, all the "females" of b8 seem to have bought into it.

He might not necessarily go trolling for e-pop as much as others on this list, but he receives it in such vast amounts that he earns a spot here. I don't see him post much, but whenever I do, it's pretty much always about himself. Oh, and then there's the whole "referring to yourself in the third person" thing. If you aren't The Rock, you probably shouldn't do it.

7. Luster Soldier

Having a unique gimmick and/or bizarre personality doesn't necessarily make you an attention whore. However, when you purposely exaggerate that side of yourself and start playing a character, then yeah, you've crossed the line into official whoredom, and I can think of no one who better exemplifies this than Luster.

I've said many times that I believe he's a "joke persona" and everyone always yells "BUT HE'S BEEN HERE FOR SO LONG AND DIDN'T YOU HEAR HIM ON KR" and other such things. But none of that really matters. Yeah, Luster is probably a real guy with a real "condition" of some sort and a real lack of understanding of basic human interaction. But he takes it too far. He exaggerates his "uniqueness" because he knows that it causes people to care about him more.

The fact that you people give him so much attention for it is mostly to blame. He shows up randomly and starts talking about himself because you guys have filled him with the idea that he's somehow this hilariously entertaining person who is crucial to the board. He's not a bad guy, and he's tolerable enough when he sticks to his board hunting and pointing out the obvious, but when he crosses into his whole "hey I'm Luster Soldier don't you know me I'm a famous board hunter and Icehawk exposed my plan to have mod babies with Pikaness and I was on KR it was pretty popular" thing, well, it just gets annoying.

Oh, and XD

6. MYC

This writeup won't be too long, because I really feel like no explanation is necessary. If you know who MYC is, you know why they are on this list. Aside from the whole "hey I'm a girl pay no attention to the penis behind the curtain" thing, MYC is the only user on the board who can not show up for a week, and people just start assuming that they committed suicide IRL.

Also various topics about how she harasses people on craigslist, dateline boards, etc. Also elitist musical tastes.

5. Pikaness

Now this might be kinda strange, so try and follow me here.

First of all, I am fully convinced that "Pikaness" is a fake identity, brilliantly constructed by someone who fully understands just how the Internet works. The ultimate irony is that for a long time, Pikaness was considered believable as a girl simply due to the fact that she never really called attention to it. Which is the brilliance of it. Whoever is behind this fully realized that if you show up as "sexygirl6" and immediately make topics like "hey im looking for a boyfriend also im sad because my breasts are too big" then you won't last five seconds.

So Pikaness did the opposite. She avoided all the "girl cliches," she avoided drama (for as long as she could), and in general, just acted like "one of the guys" except claimed to be a girl, although never claimed it so loudly that anyone had any reason to doubt the legitimacy. In other words, she did everything right to be the anti-fake girl. Which is exactly why anyone with any amount of common sense and/or internet experience knew she was a fraud.

Which brings us to the attention whore part of the equation. Pikaness was an attention whore by virtue of intentionally not attention whoring, which in actuality gave her far more attention than she could have got with a week or so of "hey resident evil scares me and i want to have sex with my dog" topics. She was easily the most fadded/attned user on the board, and had an entire entourage of poor misguided teenagers all trying to outdo each other to win her fake love.

As far as Internet Persona Masterminds go, the person behind Pikaness is truly one of the greatest. I salute you, Mr. Pretends To Be A Girl On The Internet Guy

* cue "Real Men of Genius" song*

4. Kuge

Kuge takes the relativley innocent concept of having a gimmick, and beats it with a shovel until it's dead, then digs it up out of its grave (with the same shovel) and continues beating on it. This guy is like Smurf on speed, in that he seemingly tries to "re-invent" himself every few days or so.

And the worst part is that none of the gimmicks have even been that good. Online poker? Trying to be a stand up comedian? A bunch of obviously fake girl/sex stories? A bunch of ridiculous "hey do you think this hat looks good on me" topics? I mean seriously, enough is enough. Pick something, preferably something not all that lame, and just stick with it man, please?

3. Vlado

Now I know what you're probably thinking. Vlado doesn't post all that often anymore, and when he does it's usually in his own topics. Very SDR like. But in some cases, it's more about quality than quantity. Vlado has become famous (infamous?) enough around here that he no longer has to worry about name recognition. We know who he is, and even if he posted with an alt, we'd still be able to tell it was him.

Of all the people on this list though, Vlado posesses in the greatest amount the most defining attribute of an attention whore, the ability and desire to make all issues about him. What Vlado does these days is simply wait around for something significant to happen in Board 8, and then turn it around so it's all about him. Lately he's been doing this under the guise of being a "journalist". Yeah, he's a regular Walter Kronkite. And best of all, he usually has the nerve to act as if his thoughts are critical, and that we all sit around waiting for his brilliant analysis of L-Block's victory (a true triumph for the prolteriat against the elite upper class of Link supporters), his reaction to the pikaness drama, or his top users, or whatever else.

And to his credit, it usually works. We know that it's bait, but we all bite anyway, and I'm as guilty as anyone. This means he obviously knows what he's doing. But he misses the very top of the list due to the fact that he IS able to stay away from the board MOST of the time, and therefore isn't nearly as "relentless" as the two people above him. Vlado is a very good attention whore, but what can I say... on my list, I demand excellence.

2. andymancan

This is another case where no explanation is necessary. Andy (and a few people sympathetic to his cause) has never quite understood why certain people hate him so much. After all, he doesn't troll or attempt to anger most people intentionally, the problem is that he's just... well... ugh, I can't even explain it.

He's the classic teenage boy who wants so badly to be recognized. Like a puppy who keeps jumping up on you, and even when you kick him really hard in the face, he just KEEPS jumping up on you because he values the attention so damn much. He doesn't care how he has to get it, or whether it's positive or negative, he'll just keep doing whatever it takes to get you to notice him.

1. Smurf

This isn't even about the various top 10 lists that all have the same eight "girls" on them. It's not so much about the month or so where he spent five times more effort denying being a furry than anyone ever spent accusing him of being a furry. It's not as much about his various joke alts that he always makes sure to eventually take credit for, or about his overnight conversion from vlado-esque nintendo-hating troll to friendly popular user who rags on other people for being "too negative"

All of those things would be enough to earn Smurf the #1 spot, but they pale in comparison to the ultimate in attention whoreery, the "I'm leaving the board" topic. The "announce that you're leaving" scheme is the single biggest attention grab one can possibly do on an Internet message board, and Smurf has had several (as if in an attempt to prove my point, he actually started a new one during the course of my posting this list). And how do you make the single most attention-whoring scheme even MORE of a desperate grab? By failing to actually, you know, leave the board. Which Smurf never has, and never will.

I guess he really is a popular user now. I guess most of you fall for his crap and think he's something other than a complete work on all of us whose only purpose is the glorofication of his own online alter-ego. And really, that's what puts Smurf above all the others, the fact that his attention whoring is actually successful.