I wrote this as an article on the Vanilla-BL forum as a rant against the rampant idiocy present there, but I think it's just as applicable in many a n00bish situation. I'm happy to say that for the most part, even the most newbish calculator user seems ten times more intelligent than the average vanilla Blockland user.

http://www.blockland.us/smf/index.php?topic=5887.0

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I must say that as a Blocklander of well nigh on a year now, and I'm extremely frustrated at the immaturity in this forum by a fair number of members, newbs, leaders, etc. My first experience was, as with most of you, using vanilla, and I loved it immediately. I did standard towers, platforms, stairs, all the newbie stuff. That got boring after a fairly short while; I was especially annoyed that I had no way of saving builds that took countless hours to make.

One day, I was browsing around vanilla servers and building with some of my 400 forum members that I got hooked on BL, and another user mentioned something called a "mod" that added a ton of cool features. The thing that sold me was the ability to create and load save files of bricks, a feature that I began to love the moment I downloaded the mod, TBM. It was merely coincidence that I happened to become a TBMer, not an RTBer or an AiO user, yet I found the TBM community quite inviting. Gone were the random users who would enter my server, talk with the mentality of a 2-year-old, user grammar and manners to match, and either build greatly inferior builds or gratuitously destroy my well-thought-out builds. Instead, I had many more bricks, a ton of colors for my bricks, saves, and my particular selling point vehicles.

However, I felt limited by the only two vehicles, the TBM-Cart and the TBM-Copter. "Gosh, how hard could it be to model my own vehcles?" I thought to myself. Little did I know... After several weeks of consultation and one-on-one IMing with Luquado, I managed to export and script my very first vehicle, what is now known as the TBM-Train. It was fairly sucky, unstable, and tended to crash a lot. Next I talked to Rob (no longer a TBM member), who gave me tips about preventing vehicle tipping and limiting crashing by adjusting certain physics engine parameters. I found these people a refreshing change from the few vanilla BLers I had talked to on this forum, who peppered every sentence with the cliched LOL ZOMG I R NOOB and showed off blocky, ugly builds. I improved my train, made a diesel from actual LEGO instructions, built a fleet of different flying vehicle types including the DeltaWing, SigmaFighter, and helped make the PsiFighter, then became an official member of the TBM staff. I followed that up by making progress on a long-term project, a damage[able/causing] tank for DTB, and working on a new, pwnier cart for TBM.

TBM 2.0 has been released, and after two hours of browsing, I have yet to find a single reference to that here. Why is that? It's clearly an excellent mod among the high quality that distinguishes all mods from vanilla (which is somewhat excused, considering the number of people who worked on vanilla vs. the number of people scripting and modelling for RTB or TBM), and it is as welcoming as possible. In all honesty, however, it welcomes only intelligent, constructive members of society, a criteria I find quite admirable. If I'm going to be creating huge virtual builds with other people, I'd prefer they have the creative and intellectual prowess to understand what someone else is making and make positive addition, or initiate exciting and unique builds. Each halfway decent user has his or her own contribution to make, but this can be quickly counteracted by frankly dumb users, who seem unable to form proper sentences or fully express an idea.

Why is this? Why, for crying out loud, does this forum and much of the Blockland community have such a low standard for contributions? Is the rest of the world really that stupid? By the way, if you find this arrogant, I'd like to point out the Wiktionary definition of arrogance:



But look at what Wikipedia has to say about pride:



I'd like to hope you see this post as fierté.

Kerm Martian
Webmaster of http://www.cemetech.net
1600 SAT-score earner
TBM Staff Member

I agree, there are a lot of people there who are not too great. One reason I don't post on Blockland forums, nor play much Blockland unless Cemetech is up or I am deperate

Exactly. I'm surprised to see that it's garnering a fairly positive reaction at BL.us:




I really should start a blog or something.

What in God's name is a "fierté"? Love the 1600-on-SAT bit of the sig.

Did you read the wikipedia quote above that?

Ah, I did, but not thoroughly enough. I like the pre-empting of arrogance attacks.

I figured it was possible I might get attacked as arrogant, since that's the usual characterization Badspot makes of MCP and the crew.

Sounds like a pretty crappy forum.

OMG, you haven't seen it? You would completely flip out.
http://www.blockland.us/smf

In that case, I think it would be better if I did not.

A personal favorite [http://www.blockland.us/smf/index.php?topic=2997.0]

I almost threw up after reading those.

ROFL, I could just imagine you browsing around with an account then...

Yeah? Try this one or for even more raging fun, this one.

Well, of course my topic was deleted, because the scope was far too intellectual...I mean controvertial for the site.

Hmmm....

That seems like a terrible forum. Why do you even bother posting there. Can't you just post soley in the TBM forum or do they not have one?

tbm has a forum. they are helpful too.

Because Kerm is obsessed with preaching his idealistic ideas and feelings upon everyone - especially to those who don't give a shit. "Rise and Fall of LOL" anyone?

I've resisted posting in this thread until now because I knew what I have to say won't be liked, but frankly Kerm, you were an ass in that post. The 1600-SAT score thing is just asinine. No one cares what you got on a test, and it had no relevance at all to boot. And I like how you post the definition of arrogant - as that is exactly what you were demonstrating with the SAT line and WEBMASTER lines at the end.

The message itself is relatively good, but it isn't needed, or, as you can see by its deletion, wanted. You basically flamed an entire forum community, and if someone did that here I'm failry certain that thread would have been locked ASAP. Stay in the TBM forums if you like TBM. Don't bother another forum that you don't like just to tell them how much you don't like them and how they are pathetic compared to your new best friends. Get a life.

Oh...the future of America

Personally, I think we should help this guy out: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2006/040406_b_depopulation.htm

Of course I am! And if you call me arrogant, you'd be slightly correct.

Actually, I was trying to demonstrate my credentials, but I guess it did come across that way.

That's precisely what I did, because my aim was not the actual users but the leader of the forum, Badspot. He's widely regarded as a complete dictator on the forum, and the only reason my thread was deleted (or so he said) was that it violated the "no TBM" rule on his board. WTF? The ostensible reason is because TBM makes a select few scripts closed-source to protect cool features from being copied by AiO and RTB, but other TBM members have said it's just because he feels threatened by TBM being superior to his own retail version of the product.

Psh, why would I want to do that? I'd rather indoctrinate n00bs in my spare time.