The Web Preserve Thy Verve

Unas parodias internetizadas de poesía inglesa—seleccionadas de un duelo poético entre Abi Sutherland y Chris Clarke visto en Making Light— "The soft and unmistakable sound of a gauntlet landing on the dusty ground". Newbies, abstain.



Abi Sutherland:    

“You are old, Mr Clarke,” the woman said, stunned,
“And your music has gone out of style;
Yet your circles are full and your comments +1’d
Have you been on the net a long while?”

“In my youth,” Mr. Clarke replied to the lass,
“Our flamewars used genuine fires.
I still carve my zeroes; my ones are hand-cast.
They barely fit through the wires.”

“You are old,” said the girl, “you once used AOL
As shorthand to mean ‘you are clueless’.
I’ve no doubt at all you were once on the WELL —
Are you awestruck by all the newness?”

“In my youth,” said the blogger, pausing his post,
“Discussions on Usenet were clever.
And here we are still, and I don’t mean to boast,
But I’m just as witty as ever.”

“You are old, said the girl again, “antedating
Both Napster and Wikipedia.
Are you really a part of the world we’re creating
With sharing and social media?”

“In my youth” said the writer, “we shared without fail:
The carbon would blacken our cc’s.
We guessed from their style which posters were male,
But often we doubted their species.”

“You are old,” said the girl, “I can scarcely believe
The time you have been wasting in chatter.
What famines and poverties did you relieve
What injustices did you shatter?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
Said Chris; “Tell me how if you’re friendless
You expect you can change all of that crucial stuff?
The potential of wank is just endless.”



Chris Clarke:   

 I

Among twenty spammy newsgroups,
The only moving thing
Was the yap of the newbie.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
That was linked on Metafilter.

III
The noob mailed everyone he knew.
Text was a small part of the GIFs in MIME.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man is a woman, and a newbie
+1s.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of clueless yammering
Or the beauty of WTF,
The newbie tweeting
Or just after.

VI

Giffy files filled my long window
With iterative trash.
The shadow of the LOLcat
Crossed it, to and fro.
The newbie
Posted in shadow
An indecipherable meme.

VII
O bloggers of Godwin,
Why do you bother with golden words?
Do you not see how the point
Flies over the heads
Of the newbies about you?

VIII
I know mobile access
In lurid, inescapable schisms;
But I know, too,
That the newbie is involved
In [FOO]FAIL 2012.

IX
When the newbie ran out of words,
It made for glee
In one or many circles.

X
At the sight of newbies
Flying in a green light,
Even the pages of Geocities
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He blogged about Lieberman
In a glass house.
Once, a fear pierced him,
That some had mistook
The outlines of his quippage
For a newbie’s.

XII
The cursor is moving.
The newbie must be lying.

XIII
It was September all year.
They were posting
And they were going to post.
The newbie sat
In the Cheeto-crumbs.
 



 
Abi Sutherland:    

Raging and raging in the lengthening thread
The mood will not heed the moderator;
Rules sprout loopholes; the FAQ cannot answer;
Mere trollery is loosed upon the site,
The lambent prose is loosed, and everywhere
The assumption of good faith is crumbled;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some resolution is at hand;
Surely Going Viral is at hand.
Going Viral! Hardly are those words onscreen
When a vast image out of Fandom Wank
Troubles my stream: somewhere in the wilds of the net
A community with zeitgeist and common purpose,
A cause right and pitiless as the sun,
Is searching for a forum, while all their LJs
Trail threads of the approving, supportive THIS’s.
The tweets move on again; but now I know
That 287 TLDs of peaceful sites
Were vexed to nightmare by a raging thread
And what rough horde, its cause come round at last
Slouches toward my website to be borne?
 
Chris Clarke:    

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Eve?
Thou art more trollish and intemperate:
Rough words don’t slake your need to vent your peeve,
And someone here is past their sell-by date:
Sometime too hot the heads of heaven, mind,
And finer posts than yours rejected, Jim;
And every rant from narcissists declined,
Or from their needless words their vowels betrimm’d:
But the endless Septembering you’ve brayed
Has lost possession of what slack I owest;
Nor would Death long bear the crap you’ve laid,
When in these endless threads manure you throwest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
Go back under your bridge, and eat my shorts.
 

 
Abi Sutherland:    

This ae site, this ae site,
So long as screen-light glowes,
Joke and jest and fire-fight,
The web preserve thy prose.

When thou from hence art AFK
To Ever September make thy way

If ever thou gavest a newbie grace
Here in comfort take thy place

If taunting newbies was thy thing
Lang may thou with griefing sting

From Ever September click away
To Blogosphere make thou thy way

If ever a stranger thou savéd from flame
Here will others for thou do the same.

If only thy friends were safe with thee
4chan is thy destiny.

From Blogosphere then click away
To Social Media make thy way.

If ever with links thou gavest credit
Thy posts and name be top on Reddit.

If links and credit thou oft left aside
Thy authorship be alway denied.

This ae site, this ae site,
So long as screen-light glowes,
Joke and jest and fire-fight,
The web preserve thy prose.



—This, ladies and gentlemen, is what the internet is for.

______


También me gustan las contribuciones de algunos comentarios, por ejemplo esta de Relic sobre los nombres de los trolls:

The Naming of Trolls is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your Fluorosphere games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a troll must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's a name for defining a meddler,
Such as Sockpuppet, Cannibal, Feeder of Flames,
Such as Drive-By or Threadjacker, Hlep or Slug Peddler--
All of them trollishly suitable names.
There are subtler terms if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the bridge-dwellers, some for their games:
Such as Churlish, Crook-Pated, Pearl Clutching, Chest-Beater--
But all of them trollishly suitable names.
But I tell you, a troll needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more specified,
Else how can he maintain his rant perpendicular,
Or spread his fresh compost, or keep his posts snide?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as N00B8R, Haxxor, or URn@shl,
Such as 2SMUG_180, or else WTForum-
Names that never belong to more than one troll.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no Google research can discover--
But THE TROLL HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a troll in profound frothination,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His spleen is inflamed by complete liberation
From the truth, from the truth, from the truth of his name:
His indubitable dubious
Indubiouslydubitable
Real, indisputable, culpable Name.


—o este de Bruce Cohen sobre una flame war:

The sockpuppet and the 4chan troll
met to play mortal whack-a-mole.
'Twas late at night and (as you'd expect)
neither had for the other a bit of respect.
The posters and lurkers logged in yet
perceived that flame would fill the net.
There was going to be a horrible war.
(I wasn't there, I was later told
what happened just as it did unfold).

The sockpuppet started with "I'm in your base!"
And the 4-chan troll replied "In your face!"
The site was littered, an hour or so,
With scorn and snark and to-and-fro,
While the commenters feared for peaceful status
and hoped for even a brief hiatus,
dreading the spread of the heightening flame.
(Now mind: I'm only telling you
What those who were watching swear is true!)

A lurker was startled enough to post,
that revolted as she was she was quite engrossed,
But the sockpuppet and the 4chan troll
argued and fought without self-control
Employing every meme and trope
so the comment server could barely cope.
And, oh! how the outrage and insolence flew!
(Don't fancy I would tell you wrong -
I heard it from one who was there all along!)

Next morning, as far as any could scroll,
They found no trace of sock or troll;
And some folks think unto this day
That Cthulhu stole their words away!
But the truth about the troll and sock
Is this: erased by perfect mock!
Now what do you really think of that!
(The lurkers in email told me so,
And that is how I came to know.)

La letra pequeña