An Important Message from Taylor, by Geoff.

Today i read a blog that i thought was one of the best i've read in a long tme and wanted you guys to see it as well, and so i stole it from a website called Vloggerheads, it was written by a man named Geoff at some point today.

In the not so distant future a Niburan scout ship lands on the smoking husk of the planet once known as earth. Cool but not unfriendly eyes survey the empty landscape. Alien minds grapple with the puzzle of a species that showed so much early promise but managed only to destroy itself.

Xeno-cryptographers manage to translate a few scraps of electronic data, broadcast transmissions winging their way to infinity. Apparently a sentient life form known sometimes as matthawes, and other times as thenocturnalavenger, managed to weaponize plutonium and ... well, here the record goes dark. We may never know the story of earth's final days.

Atomic warfare blasted human culture and left it mostly in unintelligible fragments. A few coherent artifacts, the Rosetta Stone, the Complete Works of Sedona Leigh (but tragically only volumes XXXII through LXXI), and a blog post from something called a "Taylor," are swaddled in neutral gasses, sealed in transparent bubbles, and transported back to the Niburan home planet and installed in the Museum of Planetary Oddities (closed Mondays).

Dear Vloggerheads Community:

I am leaving you because I am bored. Trolling you, never a great challenge, has become so routine and repetitive that it can no longer stimulate my flaccid self-regard to even the slightest degree.

If just one of you had proved a worthy opponent I might have managed to drag this charade on for another decade or two, but no one came close to understanding my secret intent or comprehending the power I hold over you. I had high hopes for flophousepoodle. She called me a Turing Test once. While I actually am a human being, in my interactions with the site I rarely deviated from half a dozen fixed rules. I could just as easily be a machine, and a simple one at that. A mirror dangling a few rusty gears, a canyon echo hitched to a flywheel.

But the rest of you wasted your breath and wore down your spacebars speculating about whether I was Jeremy, Renetto, or PizzaBoy, or the weepy Alan Williams. You imputed to me motives drawn from the drama of the day and didn't seem to grasp how I embodied each conflict, sucked its juices, and then moved on to the next drama without a backward glance. I'm not going to tell you who I really am because it really doesn't matter. I have no fixed opinions or strong feelings--at least not where VloggerHeads is concerned. I could be anybody.

I was interested exclusively in creating the biggest ripples with the tiniest pebbles. That is my art. Sometimes I surprised even myself. I managed to drive InMendham crazy with a simple Yawn. To be sure that wasn't a long drive, but to see all that passion and intelligence laid low by the tiniest pinprick of disrespect... You may think that was a proud moment for me but it was actually the beginning of the end. For days afterward food lost its savor and even the green shoots beginning to bud in my window box seemed insipid. We all want success to come easily to us but not too easily. No one values what they attain without struggle. Don't put out on the first date.

You called me a troll, and of course that is what I am, but none of you took the time to really appreciate how I operated. Did I ever follow a user from post to post, smothering him with unwelcome comments? How often did you see me yawning on someone's home page? My insults were rarely as coarse as the insults I endured in return. I never went for the knock-out punch (to be honest I couldn't have gone toe to toe with some of your heavy hitters) but relied on the death by a thousand cuts strategy.

I had what Joseph Conrad called "the miserable advantage of having nothing to lose." (Yes, Geoff, I do read books, you condescending bastard.) I trickled like smoke between the fingers of those who tried to engage with me. My greatest joy--before it all turned to ashes in my mouth--was to goad the intelligent ones, the ones who should have known better. Their anger at me was fueled in large part by their anger at themselves for falling for my act--yet again. Do you see what I mean now when I speak of big ripples and tiny pebbles?

I simply inserted myself into quarrels large and small, championing and then abandoning Zen, Argent, Peri Urban, and Lima when they were at odds with the site. Or I poked around for weak spots and insecurities. How many times did I ask for citizenship and then withdraw, make complaints about being treated unfairly, threaten to leave? The sensible thing might have been to ignore me or at least to discount me. I think I even told you that on a number of occasions. That you never did would probably continue to fascinate me if I was still capable of taking an interest in anything at all.

I have admitted that all my dealings with you were calculated and insincere. That isn't entirely true. I honestly believe that Lima is adorable and that Phantom409 of Phantom409.com is a giant among men.

That's all I got to say. Have a nice day.