Purely psychological and totally petty.
A forum I frequent used to be dominated by a regular who was normally reasonable and intelligent; however, sometimes he would become a frothing egomaniac and take a completely irrational, vehement dislike to certain people. Anyone who tried to stand in his way (i.e. defuse the situation) was guaranteed to receive threatening private messages and/or a request for their immediate banning. Naturally, this created quite a sour atmosphere.

As time went on, he got more and more power-crazy. One of the things he liked to do was obsessively search for his own name, and have the last word with anyone who had mentioned him in a less than complimentary fashion. Often, these threads would be days old and so no-one would see his sparkling wit, but the important thing was that he'd had the last word. At some point, I heard about his ego-searching and decided to throw a (rather small) spanner in the works.

If you used the search engine on this forum, it would look through the entire message for the text you were searching for - including all the special tags (bold, underline, image embed etc.) that aren't normally visible. One of these tags allows you to create a hyperlink; on b3ta, which uses standard HTML, you insert such a tag by including <a href="link to website goes here"> text goes here </a> in the message. Like this. Now when you click "post", the tags in your message are reduced to a standard format before what you typed in actually gets posted. However, the hyperlink tag is left unaltered, and it is entirely up to the poster to make sure their link points to a valid website. And if there is no text in between <a href="..."> and </a>, the link will be completely invisible. Like the one at the end of this sentence.

So by copy/pasting <a href="this user's name"></a> into every single post I made, I mananged to fill his ego-searches with completely irrelevant results. I've no idea how effective it was, but the thought of him sitting at his desk, searching for his own name, clicking through page after page after page of rubbish, slowly getting angrier and angrier generated enough amusement to keep on doing it till he left.

By the way, if you know of any online egomaniacs/self-proclaimed authority figures like this, please feel free to try this on them.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 19 Jun 2010, 12:27, 11 replies)

that
is brilliant :D
( arrangedletters, Sat 19 Jun 2010, 12:41, closed)

I love this.
It's subtle and surgically effective at the same time.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Sat 19 Jun 2010, 12:46, closed)

tl;dr

( broadsword now that's fresh, Sat 19 Jun 2010, 13:30, closed)

I find this oddly charming
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Sat 19 Jun 2010, 13:31, closed)

self-proclaimed authority figures?
I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Mr A.Badger "QOTW Cop" tells you your story is shit and you're passive aggressive idiot....
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Sat 19 Jun 2010, 13:35, closed)

Haha, someone's bitter!

( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 19 Jun 2010, 14:15, closed)

I must have been VERY sarcastic that day.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Sat 19 Jun 2010, 16:18, closed)

Bitter!?
I think it's funny that we've got a QOTW Cop. I don't think he's slapped the cuffs on me yet? Could be wrong.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Sat 19 Jun 2010, 16:54, closed)

Funny?
That boring little one-trick-pony has all the charm and hilarity factor of a genocide.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Sun 20 Jun 2010, 1:09, closed)

Funny, as in
It's funny to watch a twat behaving like a twat with absolutely no let up.

Is it performance art? Autism? Cuntery? Who knows, but I find his existence mildly amusing.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Sun 20 Jun 2010, 11:03, closed)

Linking to tubgirl
is just out of order, at least leave something good there for those who can find it
( Tedium Alduce me to interlow myself., Sat 19 Jun 2010, 14:07, closed)

At least it wasn't just me...
Who had to go check the link...

*click* for the OP
( snee held his breath since, Mon 21 Jun 2010, 16:45, closed)