Comments on: Trainwrecks wrecked

Trainwrecks wrecked

humanfont — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:47:33 -0800

RIP Trainwrecks.net. A website devoted to making fun of bloggers and forum posters who reveal a little bit too much TMI went dark in January after sustained attack by another site called Heaven Nose. After it was gone many of its readers fled to new site called The Insult. The Insult went dark today in a similar fashion. Where does free speech end and cyber-bullying begin?

By: Lentrohamsanin

Lentrohamsanin — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:00:28 -0800

NO SHIT NOW THEY'LL TAKE DOWN MEFI DELETE DELETE DELETE.

By: GavinR

GavinR — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:05:04 -0800

Sorry, but if there weren't any assholes on the internet, what fun would it be?

By: atayah

atayah — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:06:28 -0800

I'm just pissed I didn't know about The Insult before it was taken down, too. I loved Trainwrecks, if only for all the nostalgia. And the wacky homeschoolers.

By: DU

DU — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:07:45 -0800

What free speech? It's hard to tell from (mostly) one side of the story, but it sounds like Trainwrecks was harassing people. Heaven Nose didn't like that, so they harassed Trainwrecks back. Trainwrecks couldn't take the heat, so they left the kitchen.

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:09:21 -0800

The end of the Internet, it has been reached.

By: agregoli

agregoli — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:22:21 -0800

Trainwrecks.net most certainly did not harass people. It posted links of sites that they found funny. There was then discussion of why these sites were funny. That's called opinion, in my book. People who can't handle other people having a negative opinion of them from information they themselves put out into the public sphere are really, REALLY immature.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:29:52 -0800

Heaven nose appears to have made less than 100 posts in its stupid little life. How could they get anyone shut down? More importantly, how could they muster the aggrandizement of ego that allowed them to do it?

By: nanojath

nanojath — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:39:40 -0800

Parhaps one day all the fuckers will wreck and devour each other.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:42:25 -0800

"The point of this blog was to take Trainwrecks down and the purpose of generating traffic to our site was to serve this cause.... We got rid of Trainwrecks just because we could." Hmmm...not sure they're up on the 'free speech' concept. It appears they shut the sites down - not simply used words. That is disturbing. I mean was it a DOS attack or something? (I'm not joe hacker). In addition to posting personal information. Way out of line if those things are indeed the case. Otherwise it'd be just a slap fight. Any other links or info on this? It's hard to discern the entire circumstances and therefore tough to formulate a solid opinion.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:43:17 -0800

bloggers get in pissing war ... flush at 11

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:44:19 -0800

Reported to blogspot, too.

By: msali

msali — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:56:21 -0800

I remember middle school as being populated by certain girls who would engage in this type of Machiavellian jousting, as evidenced by sites like Trainwrecks, Heaven Nose, etc. Most of them grew out of the desire to hurt and manipulate others for their own entertainment. Those who did not, grow up and start sites like these. I used to read Trainwrecks, occasionally they were funny, oftentimes just mean-spirited. Sorry I missed The Insult, though. Sounds like fun.

By: chrismear

chrismear — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:06:33 -0800

What the hell is going on here? I am not immersed deep enough in the internet rectum, so I need a succinct summary pls.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:21:33 -0800

No LJdrama drama?

By: zorro astor

zorro astor — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:28:03 -0800

That looked like a cool site. I wish I had known about sooner than this.

By: The Straightener

The Straightener — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:36:36 -0800

I am genuinely concerned that some of these so called cyber-bullies will never get to experience the deep level of personal satisfaction that comes from pinning the shoulders of a kid two grades below you to the asphalt of the school parking lot with your knees and beating him silly with his own hands.

By: concreteforest

concreteforest — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:39:41 -0800

I guess they haven't visited bash.org yet.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:42:06 -0800

How do people have time for this much drama (the calling people at work variety, I mean)?

By: grapefruitmoon

grapefruitmoon — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:44:27 -0800

The article on cyber-bullying talks about those kids these days bullying other people that they actually KNOW, just doing it online as opposed to writing "Whore" on their lockers. So, what does that have to do with Trainwrecks and Heavens Nose or whatevs? Are these guys all in the same junior high and they're going to start posting about how the other site looks fat in their gym shorts?

By: juliplease

juliplease — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:46:53 -0800

Thanks for posting this, humanfont. I have been so curious about how and why this happened, for the same reasons Smedleyman states.

By: dead_

dead_ — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:47:08 -0800

Man the Internet is a lame place. I can't believe all this drama. Just like ThePinkSuperhero said, it's almost unbelievable that someone would have time for this.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:48:11 -0800

It appears they shut the sites down - not simply used words. That is disturbing. I mean was it a DOS attack or something? (I'm not joe hacker). In addition to posting personal information. Way out of line if those things are indeed the case. Otherwise it'd be just a slap fight. They apparently tried to divine the authors of the site, and then started calling them at home, at work, harassing them, etc. The trainwreaks people claimed that the harassment targets were not them, but pulled the site anyway. The whole thing is extremely childish. These blogs are in the 400k rank on alexa, very low traffic levels.

By: YoBananaBoy

YoBananaBoy — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:49:15 -0800

The end of the Internet, it has been reached. No, this is the beginning again. We doubled back when we reached the end in 1993.

By: davejay

davejay — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:02:02 -0800

Man ~~the Internet~~our society is a lame place Fixed that for ya.

By: bruce

bruce — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:08:41 -0800

the "sustained attack" link failed to elucidate the nature of the attack, whether it was an organized denial of service or merely a steady stream of taunts and ridicule. i had never heard of "trainwreck" or "the insult" before five minutes ago, and i do not mourn their passing. the interwebs is full of loonies, many of whom are hissing and spitting at other loonies at any given time, and if one or two hundred vanish at once, don't worry amigos, they will very soon be replaced.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:12:12 -0800

"It appears they shut the sites down - not simply used words." They made Trainwreck keep hitting themselves.

By: humanfont

humanfont — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:14:17 -0800

The owners of Trainwrecks and The Insult acutally went beyond taking their sites down. They put up "noarchive" robots.txt entries to get the sites out of Google and archive.org. I don't know if this was done for because of concern for future legal exposure, or just as a condition to stop the counter-harassment. Given the fact that a specific technical remedy was put in place, I assume there was some kind of legal action taken beyond what has been publically disclosed.

By: humanfont

humanfont — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:20:49 -0800

The sustained attack appears to have consisted of following every trainwreck link, and posting the personal information (including some employeer info) of the Trainwrecks sites' alledged owners. This allowed trainwrecked individuals and their fans to take their own action. Though I can't say for certain since the HN site is mostly full of crazy talk.

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:23:40 -0800

too much TMI I think you meant "too much TMI information", right?

By: joelf

joelf — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:27:28 -0800

FUCK YOU GUYS! YOU ARE ALL GOING TO HELL!

By: oaf

oaf — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:41:24 -0800

Given the fact that a specific technical remedy was put in place, I assume there was some kind of legal action taken beyond what has been publically disclosed. There's no reason to conclude that. Unless they were saying something untrue and damaging, there's not really much that anyone could have done to Trainwrecks or The Insult. Frankly, if these sites are encouraging people to make harassing phone calls, they can and should be litigated out of existence.

By: oaf

oaf — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:06:52 -0800

(And as crappy a website as I'm sure Trainwrecks and The Insult were, it's clear that Heaven Nose is in the wrong, and clearly the people behind those sites weren't in it for the long haul, because they could easily have chosen not to stop until the harassing parties were behind bars, paying them damages, or both.)

By: HighTechUnderpants

HighTechUnderpants — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:11:29 -0800

I'm with Smedleyman. Can we get a little more background? Timeline maybe?

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:17:39 -0800

Well done, old chaps. Good show. But if you even think of laying a finger on MeFi and related spinoff sites, or bash.org, you'll have an entire world of delicious hurt all of your own. And I'll be standing there making sure you eat every last molecule of it.

By: maryh

maryh — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:34:46 -0800

I wouldn't worry, loquacious. As far as I can gather from reading the HN site (and it was a thoroughly baffling read, btw) these guys are only interested in poking around other people's online catfights. I think even the most glorious MetaTalk flame-out would be a tad too heady for them. (But please, feel free to attack my site! The only readers I get are survivalist types googling for squirrel skinning tips. God, I'm lonely.)

By: Biblio

Biblio — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:43:38 -0800

I loved trainwrecks, despite belonging to the demographic most often bashed there. The mods did not tolerate commentors posting the contact information of the trainwrecked targets or going to those sites to harrass the victim in their own comments. One of the things Heaven Nose would do was post offensive comments on Trainwrecks, using the names of well-known commentors. (one of the many drawbacks of Haloscan is that you can use someone else's id quite easily.) After Trainwrecks disappeared, a bunch of fans gathered at The Zero Boss to discuss what happened. That's probably a good place to get some backstory.

By: Coventry

Coventry — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:44:18 -0800

Man, Encyclopedia Dramatica is down, too! Coincidence? I think not!

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:47:25 -0800

Hey, you get reporters too! To judge by the comment on this hilarious post, anyway.

By: YoBananaBoy

YoBananaBoy — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:47:26 -0800

maryh: Only five posts since April 2005 on your site. So its got that going for it. But really, I think everyone prefers you here, anyways.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:48:04 -0800

That was a response to maryh. Damn, you guys are talkative.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:56:16 -0800

Was the Church of Scientology involved?

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:58:18 -0800

So this site was sort of like the various messageboard threads that take the piss out of John Byrne, but about other people too?

By: BrotherCaine

BrotherCaine — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:05:12 -0800

Metafilter: immersed deep enough in the Internet rectum.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:16:52 -0800

I wouldn't worry, loquacious. I'm not particularly worried. Except, maybe, about squirrel-skinning... survivalists? WTF?

By: juliplease

juliplease — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:19:57 -0800

gulp... a trainwrecks link was the second time I visited this site. They were making fun of a MetaTalk thread wherein a member had used AskMe to find out what was wrong with his e-mail, specifically regarding an away message or auto-response or something. The overwhelming majority of people were saying it was user-error. The asker got REALLY mad and took it to Meta and then got even angrier. Or something. I can't find the link but damnit, it was funny.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:23:34 -0800

Metafilter is immersed too deep in the in the internet rectum. We're already swimming in stomach acid.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:29:21 -0800

juliplease, hotmail is in ur email, changing ur settings. Words to live by.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:31:06 -0800

Y'know what's really pathetic? I doubt Trainwrecks or Insult ever actually even bothered to harass me, and I mighta actually appreciated the attention. I been journalling (I predate blogging) since 1997 dangit. No one's bothered to bully me since the 20th century. I'm just such a small fish in such a big pool, it'd be like pushing over a zombie. I'm a fossil that nobody ever bothered to dig up. *sniff*

By: maryh

maryh — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:32:06 -0800

(loquacious- yes, well. I suppose naming a blog "How To Skin A Squirrel" was bound to attract, then disappoint, people interested in skinning squirrels. Obviously I am not really 'getting' the blog thing. & thx languagehat!)

By: juliplease

juliplease — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:39:21 -0800

That's the one, maxwelton. That's the one. /derail

By: itchylick

itchylick — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:58:21 -0800

The end of the Internet, it has been reached. Can we retire this one and all its variants?

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:25:22 -0800

I read a bit of Heaven Nose. That is some insane shit. Thank you Jesus for the Internet, because without it the authors of Heaven Nose would be coming home from their shifts at Arby's to torture dogs or kill hookers or something. Just to show how powerful they are.

By: ODiV

ODiV — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:33:24 -0800

Hey ZachsMind, you suck!

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:37:54 -0800

*tear* Thank you ODiV!

By: geoff.

geoff. — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:48:57 -0800

I knew someone who had a lady friend that was a complete drama queen. She'd post all the little details of her life (and by extension love life) to the "notes" section of Facebook. This, of course, showed up on all our front pages, due to how the Facebook privacy settings default. Each of her notes ended with excruciating drama about trivial things ("I just couldn't handle my car no starting, nothing ever works for me! I cried for an hour!"). No one could tell if that was really her or if she was just an attention whore. I decided enough was enough ("I don't think anyone likes me! :'( I have no friends" only to receive 25 replies from gay friends telling her she's amazing), and Isent her a nicely worded e-mail explaining that perhaps she did not realize that we would all see her notes on our front pages even if we weren't "tagged" and mentioned how I did not know if she knew about these new privacy settings (at the time Facebook would not let you filter out seeing notes on the front page, so the onus was really on her). The point being the fallout reminded me of Hiroshima. And I learned who in my extended network of people were friends I would ever like to hang out with. So in a roundabout way the Internet solved very quickly what usually takes several months to figure out, if you are like me and give people the benefit of the doubt they are not crazy. On a separate note: I remember googling a girl that was interested in me only to discover her myspace page had literally hundreds of entries on every single of her ex boyfriends and guys she hooked up with. So thank you Heaven Nose, give these people a false sense of security and let them continue posting.

By: Flunkie

Flunkie — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:17:07 -0800

Where does free speech end and cyber-bullying begin?

I don't know, but I do know this: Not at the same point.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:48:49 -0800

Er, this is a really o-l-d spat, isn't it?

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:52:09 -0800

lost for all time...

By: zek

zek — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:52:38 -0800

I want the five minutes back that I spent reading this FPP. Not even any useful links? This is a non-event as far I'm concerned, except for that core of people involved in the whole thing.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:26:26 -0800

I'm not sure why folks are so confused by this post. This bit from the 3rd link seems pretty clear: We were never contacted by google or an attorney for we have violated no laws. The ip addresses that were published in the comment section of our blog were not put there by us. However, the information is definitely correct. FYI: We never contacted these women or their employers at home or at work. We never crossed the line into their "real lives" in any way but apparently, some of you did. As far as what exactly went on between Heaven Nose and Trainwrecks: none of you know jack shit and none of you ever will. Except for that last sentence, but still.

By: KevinSkomsvold

KevinSkomsvold — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:48:30 -0800

And in case you missed the news flash: neither do we give a syphillis whore's cunt about popularity. Oh the ironing.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:01:16 -0800

She'd post all the little details of her life (and by extension love life) to the "notes" section of Facebook. I HATE this. HATE HATE HATE. Especially when girls would post about the new douche they're dating, and be all coy, oh, I don't really want to talk about it, blah blah blah. THEN WHY DID YOU MAKE A POST, BIYATCH. I ended up removing almost half of my "friends" on Facebook because I couldn't stand seeing their pathetic lives on my feed.

By: duality

duality — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:44:50 -0800

so this is what happens when someone uses the internet for something other than porn?

By: Sparx

Sparx — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:17:37 -0800

She'd post all the little details of her life (and by extension love life) to the "notes" section of Facebook. I HATE this. HATE HATE HATE. Oh - the irony.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:39:09 -0800

Never read or heard of Heaven Nose, but I'd occassionally check Trainwrecks when there was a particularly juicy argument on MetaTalk to see if they'd noticed it; generally, they had.

By: LeeJay

LeeJay — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:16:14 -0800

Why am I just finding out about Trainwrecks now? Oh well, I guess it's back to Fandom Wank to get my daily dose of crazies.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:16:41 -0800

I followed Trainwrecks briefly after it was linked in a thread here. I wish I could say a small part of my heart had been torn out when it was shut down, but not really.

By: Ynoxas

Ynoxas — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:51:25 -0800

Are there really more than 5 people on the whole series of intartubes who gives a rat's ass about this? The "I'll call your boss in real life" stuff seems so 1997.