Stephenie Meyer vs. 4chan -- XKCD

On today's XKCD, Stephenie "teen superstar author" Meyer takes on 4chan, home of Anoymous and the Internet's most prolific trolls. And wins.

Troll Slayer

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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dculberson

Elguapostrikes, I think you’re giving octopussoup too much credit.. have you looked at his/her other posts? heh.
bshock

I saw XKCD this morning and was quite disappointed. It seemed as though the author had never actually visited 4chan.

You can’t ruin something that’s been pre-ruined, folks. There’s no such thing as a pristine troll environment.

Oh well, everybody has a bad day, I guess. Better luck next time, XKCD.
Anonymous

Ok twilight wasn’t that bad, i have read worse…

btw, LOL at that comic
Anonymous

Nailed it. There’s nothing 4chan hates more than new users. Except furries, $cientology, people with morals, each other, and people who mess with cats.
Antinous / Moderator

This inspires me to try out some new moderatorial techniques. Note: you have to actually click the link to see the whole thing.
axl456

i saw it on my feeds and ROFL!!!
Anonymous

about 3 seconds after xkcd posted that, a thread on /b/ echoed verbatim. it was meta-tastic and full of fail.

-boinganon
cstatman

can’t breathe

laughing

too

hard….
mdh

plague of locusts, indeed.
Anonymous

6 months to write a twilight book? xkcd really are giving her credit for quality control
Nawel

I didn’t totally get the joke (I’m not very familiar with the 4chan forums), but randomly searching I found this and I laughed:

http://xkcd.com/239/
Anonymous

Less than a week later, the internet went down after what experts call the Cullen worm. It was a simple botnet zombie plague, spread by a pop-up that simply stated the following:

YOU HAVE 1
PRIVATE MESSAGE
FROM
ECULLEN1901
CLICK TO ACCEPT

In the chaos, the only people able to receive e-mail were fully paid up members of the Church of Scientology, and all that was in their inboxes was pictures of bears and naked children.
failix

The comic is funny, even funnier is how many people didn’t get it! ^^
Anonymous

/B/ actually changed it’s name.
I don’t know if it’s still up, but it was funny as all-get-out.
I lol’d hysterically at this one.
Anonymous

4chan and twilight: no matter who wins, everyone loses.
darkknightjared

I don’t think Meyer quite has the awesome to pull something like that off, but I’d love to see it happen. :D
nosehat

YES, this is definitely the way to do it. What a wonderfully sinister twist on “If you can’t beat them, join them” ;)
Anonymous

lol at cognitive dissonance. Ruined the Bram Stoker archetype? are you serious? It’s all made up, therefore it can be remade up anyway the author wants. It’s like Asimov getting mad when other sci-fi writers wrote books about robots that didn’t follow his 3 rules: completely asinine. I’m currently writing a book about rainbow eating unicorns that befriend the wolfman.
Anonymous

I’m sure the /b/tards will enjoy the fresh meat.
Girlâ„¢

@darkknightjared: I totally agree, it would be awesome times one thousand if she pulled it off.
Anonymous

#36 charjan muh Layzor!!!
Hawley

that comic was amusing. but if you seriously think it would affect 4chan in any way, then you simply do not understand it.

“if you can’t beat’em, join’em” works both ways on 4chan
Beanolini

I suspect that Ms Meyer has as low (or lower) an opinion of her fans as 4chan does.
error404

this is wild.

First you have a post about Tim Powers, my favourite author, then you have one of Stephenie Meyers the author I loathe the most.

You could make a Twilight book by randomly writing the word vampire onto the shooting script for a Clearasil advert.
NicoNicoNico

As of right now, it is still the Twighlight Appreciation Station. Someone needs to track this.
NicoNicoNico

That’s Twilight, not however I spelled it. Sorry.
Avram / Moderator

Cognitive Dissonance @39, are you aware that the Stoker-Polidori-Byron innovation of the noble vampire was itself a departure from the monstrous vampires of earlier myth?

Maybe a century from now, someone will be getting flamed for writing a story in which vampires don’t sparkle in sunlight. “How can you ignore this classic element of the vampire archetype, going back all the way to Meyer’s work at the dawn of the 21st century?!”
Anonymous

Checkmate, /b/!
Moriarty

My knowledge of these books comes entirely from the commercials for the movie, an article about trends in teenage sexual abstinence, and the South Park episode about vampire kids. I like it that way. If 4chan trolls and infatuated tweens want to inflitrate each other’s worlds and increase the entropy of the internet, more power to them, I guess. I’ll watch from a safe distance.
octopussoup

Is this supposed to be funny?

It’s just Panel 1:Let’s go to twilight board and make fun of them.

Panel 2: Stop or Ill get tough.

Where is it funny? Is it the trollers going on those boards? That’s not new. Is it that author thinking she can get tough. That’s just lame.
CVR

octopussoup,

did you click the link to see the full comic? I’ll admit I didn’t at first, and was scratching my head over the two panels that were shown on BB.

I still don’t know enough about Meyer or 4Chan to be really tickled by this, but the joke isn’t that hard to get if you read the whole thing.
Anonymous

@19
i see wat u did thar
elguapostrikes

@CVR

lol trolled
Pasketti

The title for /b/ was changed to “Twilight Appreciation Station”.

I think it’s hilarious.
Anonymous

They’d be banned, as mods have no restrictions.
Lobster

#9, I don’t know, I don’t mind two communities I care nothing about attack each other.

I don’t know if I’d call this “winning,” really, but if that is how it went down I do have to give her props for using her head and keeping her cool.

As for her books, they’re “pornography” for tween girls. They appeal to their target audience. They might seem terrible to us, but that’s because they weren’t made for us. It may be trite, you may argue that it’s anti-feminist at best and soul crushing at worst, but we need to remember that books are just another form of media.

Sometimes you get Citizen Kane. Sometimes you get Twilight: The Movie.
Talia

I honestly thought the books were fairly engaging, if periodically annoying. *shrug* Havent seen the movie, get a feeling I shouldn’t.
mdh

4chan and twilight: no matter who wins, everyone loses.

UNTRUE! We got them all in one place, now if we can just kill them all the lord will come back.
arkizzle

It really is High-larious how /b/ has been renamed in response..

Anonymous 06/01/09(Mon)10:09:58 No.139063346 [Reply]
Can all you “B” people please go away? This is a Twilight forum and
the things that you guys are posting are highly offensive and off-topic.
Also, could the moderator for this forum do something about the porn
ads? They really aren’t appropriate.
Thanks.

>> Anonymous 06/01/09(Mon)10:12:29 No.139063698
TITS OR GTFO

tee hee hee!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Nobody will get this but….ZOMG, it’s the sparklolcalypse!
zuzu

UNTRUE! We got them all in one place, now if we can just kill them all the lord will come back.

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Toast

XKCD : 4Chan :: Bruno : Eminem
Battlehobo4000

Cute thought, but ultimately just that. The first image of gore+sex would drive off the tame sissy-vamp fans.
amused

Too funny!

The /b/ forum is renamed Twilight Appreciation Station…Something wicked this way comes, these two are working together. Now if they could only get a real vampire…
Luke1972

From the top of /b/ today:

Twilight Appreciation Station
The darkest place on the internetâ€”for vampire compatriots.
cognitive dissonance

at the very least, 4chan vomits something funny every so often; twilight eats the brain of teenage girls.

i’m not one for censorship, and advocate anything that gets kids to read, but if i had kids, i’d rather have them reading the turner diaries, than twilight. it practically promotes domestic violence, and dismisses core elements of bram stoker’s century old vampire archetype for a much more convenient one that requires no thought to fit into story structure (ohh, i can walk in the daylight, duhhh, and i have no urge to eat you because i eat animal blood, and i can fly for no apparent reason.) At least the Blade series was slightly self deprecating, which made it’s interpretation more palatable. i never understood literary fads, or the harry potter fuss, but meyer makes rowling look like faulkner.

just thinking about the money that skank is making off an abortion of a love story is making me nauseous.
nnguyen

Curses my work’s content filter! I sooo wanna go there and see the hilarity going down.
bklynchris

Man, that was funny. Per the movie, it is pure girl crack. I told some girls waiting in line to see the sequel, “well, I guess that is what true love is, girls waiting for some guy to come along, fall hopelessly in love with them and suck the ever livin’ life out of them”.

I know that’s what 20 years with my spouse feels like.