Theory

[icycalm]

http://www.smf4free.com/forums/afterpar ... tml#msg617

Nobody's going to join anymore.

lol. Three new users signed up within the last couple of hours.

If new readers see his forum now and see that they can't access it without paying icycalm €10, they are simply not going to sign up, intelligent or not, especially since they can no longer see what's going on there at all now.

They can still read the articles, dumbass. You have the psychological acumen of a frog. So keep your stupid speculations as to the effect of my actions to yourself, and enjoy running the "Insomnia rejects" website.

[icycalm]

The most hilarious thing about this whole business, by the way, is that the first person to send me money was female. And just a few days ago I was wondering whether I have any female readers at all.

[icycalm]

lol. Three new users signed up within the last couple of hours.

Tell me which ones end up paying you €10.

All of them.

Someone could read all the articles, the posting guidelines, etc., and still not be able to tell what goes on in your forum. And very few people would even want to make any posts either, considering that they would very soon see how easy it is to be banned there. You are essentially charging €10 for the privilege to lurk the forums.

And there will be hundreds — and in the long run thousands — of people willing to pay for this privilege. Not everyone is a miser like you. Moreover, not everyone is as stupid as you to fail to realize what they'd be missing in order to save a couple of fucking euros.

[icycalm]

Another one for the Subhuman dictionary, by the way: the verb "to lurk".

What does it mean to lurk? "I lurk the Insomnia forum" merely means "I read the Insomnia forum without posting in it" — in the same manner one would say "I lurk The Economist", or "I lurk Le Monde", etc. etc. — which not only now have forums/comments threads in which you can post, but they've always also had the "Letters to the editor" snail-mail route — which the majority of the users never bothered to take, and with good reason.

In short "to lurk" basically means "to read". And this appears to have negative connotations in the subhuman world. The act of reading has acquired negative connotations among them...