"Though I am usually extremely busy with the outlook and planning of 200 + gaming sections, after preparing some modifications to my guestbook I noticed your grueling dispicible insults on your entry!"
-Paul Scamuffo
LUNATIC WEBMASTERS
During the golry days of my website, my favorite section was the "Awful Sega Websites" page because it did exactly what my website was originally created to do: Take the fight directly to the most deluded, psychotic and devoted Sega Fanboys. By mocking their terrible websites I was mocking their obsession itself, which was something they would not stand for.
It began after the release of the Dreamcast when I discovered the first of many "100% Dreamcast made" websites. Now, when I say "many" what I actually mean is that there were about four or five of these websites made in total. This was for two reasons. First, even though the Dreamcast had a limited web browser, there were no real tools built into the console to actually EDIT anything on the internet, much less create an entire website. As such, websites could only be created by Dreamcast users using free online services like the "Yahoo Geobuilder" or other similar services offered by free hosting sites (in my opinion, if they use an online tool available to everyone to create their websites then the Dreamcast itself deserves no credit but thats a debate for another day). The second reason there were so few of these sites is probably the same reason why we don't see "100% Xbox made" or "100% Playstation" made websites. People who buy console systems do so to play GAMES on them, not surf the internet. The only reason Sega fanboys were making these retarded websites was because they were trying to make some kind of ignorant statement about how "innovative" the Dreamcast was. That was the main reason I wanted to mock these horrible sites. But another obvious reason was that the sites themselves were terrible. Animated gifs, awful MIDI music and flashing backgrounds that gave people seziures were among just a few of the sins of these internet abominations.
But as I said, there were only a handful of these "Dreamcast made" websites and I quickly finished mocking them all. I loved the amount of entertaining content I had created by mocking these sites but once there were no more of them I had to move on to bigger targets. I began mocking other crappy Sega websites hosted on Geocities and other free hosts at first. But eventually I even began to go after rather large and well designed websites as well. Unlike Sega fanboys who mocked me I never did my work in secret. Whenever a website was chosen to become a victim of mine I ALWAYS informed the webmaster of the site in question. Usually via a message in their guest book if they had one, but even if they didn't have one I found a way to contact them if it was at all possible. As a result of this Sega Fanboys usually reacted to my attacks on their site fairly quickly. Reactions were mixed. A small number of former Sega fans had simply forgotten about their crappy old websites and saw the humor in my comments about their former obsession. But Anger and hate mail were far more common reactions among the nut jobs who still refused to see the failures and weaknesses of Sega.
But every so often I would come across a webmaster who was so enraged by my attack on their websites that their reaction was more outrageous (and thus more entertaining) then the website itself was. These people became... THE LUNATIC WEBMASTERS. They received their own section on my site and the ongoing sagas of their wacky antics became the most popular feature of my website by far. Often times even other gamers like myself would become involved in the harassment of these outstandingly foolish Sega Fanboys.
In the end, there were four of these over-the-top villians of the Sega community. Their stories are recorded below.
Lunatic Webmaster: Paul Scamuffo
A.K.A. "Paulos"
This image made by "King" Paulos. Take note: in the game "Rings of Power" the ability to "punch" someone is actually a SPELL you have to CAST.
Paul Scamuffo (known as "Paulos" on the internet) was the first and most insane of all the Lunatic webmasters, his website was known as "Game Amazon" but later renamed to "Game Legacies" after the amazon name was mocked by another one of the lunatic webmasters on this list. He was also the lunatic webmaster who got the most attention from other people besides myself. His website was featured as an "Awful Link of the Day" on Something Awful not just once but TWICE. Several times per year I would be contacted by someone who had run afoul of Paulos and had an entertaining story to tell about what an ass he eventually turned out to be. He even had run-ins with several of the other lunatic webmasters, all of whom ended up hating him just as much as everyone else (Sometimes the Lunatic Webmasters would try to join forces thinking that they could use the power of numbers to defeat me but these efforts were always brought down by their own arrogance and lack of social skills).
The reason Paulos made so many enemies wasn't just that his website was awful (which it was, covered from top to bottom in thousands of animated gifs and dedicated to remembering some of the most easily forgetable Sega games in history) but also was because Paulos himself had probably the most abrasive personality of any human being on the face of the earth. He was completely convinced that his website was the greatest invention in the history of mankind and would become outraged the moment anyone suggested otherwise. He also had a tendancy to say the most bizzare shit, as though he were attempting to talk like the queen of england after doing several hits of acid. "You keep the shut up woesome lout" and "More arrogance and slime you moppy scumball" are just a few examples of the type of comment Paulos might say after hearing someone insult his website, not to mention the quote from him I posted at the top of this page which came from his first email to me after I declared him an awful website. As a result of this behavior our buddy Paul was already under attack from every possible angle even before I discovered him.
The first note worthy incident was when Paulos confronted the webmaster of a website called "Mega 64" which features some teenagers making videos of themselves dressed up as characters from video games and acting retarded in public. Several of the users of this site were in an AIM chat room one night (this was in the days before 100% of the population of AIM chat rooms were bots spamming links to porn websites) when Paulos barged in and began spamming links to his website. At the time Paulos' site was little more than a shrine to the Golden Axe series of Sega games which Mega64 described as "still no more than some elves trying to escape from the Al Borland twins on their pink bird-lizards." The users of the chat asked Paulos to stop spamming but he just responded by shouting profanity at them and inisiting that his website was better than anything else on the internet. They mocked Paulos' website by pointing out that he had animated gifs which captured frame by frame screens of wizards being eaten by worms. He replied by telling them that the frames on their site looked like shit. They reponded by pointing out that their site didn't have any frames. Finally they dealt the killing blow when they told Paulos "If one of the characters from I Am Sam fell asleep on their keyboard, it would probably lead to the development of a better site than yours. But since that hasn't happened yet, I guess your site's really the only one in town, sure." After that they kicked Paulos while he was down by signing his guest book 400 times. Paulos vowed revenge but his revenge never came.
When I finally met Paulos myself one of my favored ways of harassing him was to assume his identity and then terrorize other Sega fans using the same methods that Paulos himself often used. I would contact people and tell them I was Paul Scamuffo and that I DEMANDED they link to my website which was obviously so much better then theirs. When they would refuse or insult me I would begin screaming the same sorts of bizzare things Paulos was known to say in these sorts of situations. Other people who saw the results of this form of trolling began to copy me and ran around the internet talking about how busy they were planning 200+ gaming sections and refusing to take any crap from moppy scum balls. At one point the fake AIM account I was using for these hijinks was contacted by some guy who wanted me to invest in a hotel in africa and asked if I was interested in phone sex. It was an obvious scam of some kind so I gave him Paulos' home address and phone number which I had obtained by doing a WHOIS look up on his domain name. Paulos was quite dismayed to learn his personal information was available to anyone on the internet who wanted it.
But despite years of the most obnoxious harassment the internet could muster Paulos never did back down and his awful website is still online to this very day. This earns him the dubious honor of being the only Lunatic webmaster to still have his awful website fully online.
Lunatic Webmaster: Tyler Waldman
A.K.A. "Smart"
A terrible webcomic made by Smart's demented side kick, SAM.
"Smart" and his website, Sega Universe, was one of the most bizzare and confusing cases I ever encountered.
At the time I encountered Sega Universe, I was searching for new additions to my Awful Sites section in BULK. That is to say, on any given day I might visit 100+ Sega related websites and would choose the most awful ones I could find to become new additions to my site. I wouldn't generally have time to write up a full rant on every site the same day I found them, so often I would just bookmark their site for later. But what I would usually do right away was leave a note in their guest book to let them know they were going to be listed as an Awful Website on my site. In addition to being ignorant, arrogant and obnoxious, Sega fans were also LAZY. So it would take them anywhere from a few days to a few weeks all the way up to a few YEARS before they would check their guest book and see my note. This gave me plenty of time to revisit their site later, write up my rant on it and have it all posted to my site before they ever saw my note in their guest book. However, in the case of Sega Universe things progressed a little differently...
Apparently I had marked Sega Universe and for whatever reason I never got around to actually ranting about them on my Awful Sites page. But "Smart" contacted me after seeing my post in his guest book and reminded me to add him. He actually ASKED me to tell him what I thought was wrong with his site. Well... I told him. And then he did what Sega fanboys usually do: scream profanity laced insults at me. Up to that point "Smart" seemed to be a pretty typical Sega Fanboy. But it was what he did next that earned him a place on my list of Lunatic Webmasters: He declared he was going to "fix" his awful website and then went about the process of attempting to do that in what I can only describe as the most retarded way I have ever observed anyone attempt to do anything.
"Smart" returned to his website and posted a new announcement indicating he was looking for help updating his website from another Sega Fan who would be his co-webmaster. "Smart" promptly choose the very next person to sign his guest book to be that new co-webmaster. The next person who signed the guest book claimed his name was SAM and that he was 13 years old (and the way he claimed this made it sort of creepy too as people don't generally mention their age in their introduction unless they are lying about it, like maybe SAM was actually a 40 year old pedophile). SAM promptly reviewed several games that were not developed by Sega, not published by Sega and were not available on any Sega console. Then SAM followed that up by putting a monkey on the enter page. When I say he put a monkey on the enter page I don't mean just a picture of a monkey, it was an actual animated monkey that would dance around the screen and make monkey sounds as long as anyone was viewing the website. What the hell ANY of these updates had to do with Sega is a mystery that still haunts me to this very day.
When SAM's ramapge finally finished I was contacted by "Smart" once again, who insisted that I remove his site from my list because it wasn't awful anymore... YEAH, RIGHT! I told "smart" not only was I not going to take him off the list but that if his buddy SAM kept adding stuff to his website that wasn't about Sega he was going to have to change the name of the site from "Sega Universe" to just plain old UNIVERSE. "Smart" attempted to reply to that by sending me a bunch of links to games that weren't developed by Sega, published by Sega or available on any Sega console. I responded by sending him links to some other games that also shared those same traits. What the hell the point of that conversation was is a mystery that still haunts me to this very day.
Over the course of the next few YEARS very little else happened to the Sega Universe website. SAM briefly returned at one point to post the awful webcomic you see at the top of this rant. SAM then vanished again along with said webcomic after I mocked the hell out of it. "Smart" briefly attempted to exchange links with Paulos but that didn't last very long before they turned on each other.
But in the end, Smart finally earned his nickname (which is why I no longer use it in quotation marks) by being the first Lunatic Webmaster to take his website offline. He admitted that the site was not that good, offered no useful information that wasn't available elsewhere on the net and that he could find better ways to use his time than updating an awful website. Last time I checked in on my old buddy Smart he was still alive and no more interested in Sega than the average person. That earns him the dubious honor of being the only Lunatic Webmaster to give up his evil ways.
Lunatic Webmaster: Brad Mikeska
A.K.A. "Mike Ska"
Mike's Golden Rule:
"If anyone makes fun of your site TAKE IT DOWN!"
I first encountered "Mike Ska" by discovering a very old version of his website that must have been created some time during the cold war and had not been updated since. Despite the age of this website, it was still mostly online but with a link to a newer version of Mike's site. That site was also old, outdated, mostly online but with a link to a newer version. And that version? You guessed it, same deal all over again. Mike must have had atleast five or six versions of his website online, all of which were still online for some reason and all of which contained a link to a newer version of the site. When I finally found the "current" version of his site, it was actually the least complete of all the different versions! Mike's website was called "The Page of Stuff" as if you would expect to find a lot of content on it but it hadn't been updated in over a year and it looked like all his non-sonic related content had dissapeared over time. Links to Decent, Quake and other pages had been struck out with lines and the only remaining pages were about Sonic or about Mike himself. He had a horrible "FAQ" page and an even more horrible "About Me" page. Both of these pages seemed to exist for the exculsive purpose of giving him oppertunites to brag about what a "great" HTML programmer he was and some video game he apparently never made.
I complained about these aspects of his web design skills, among other things, on my awful sites page and dropped a note into his guest book to let him know. Now here is the great irony of Mike and the reason why he became a Lunatic Webmaster. Even though he claimed he was "too busy" to update his website more than once a year, he apparently had PLENTY of free time on his hands to monitor his guest book 24/7 and instantly react to any new posts. Within 2 hours of my site about his site going online, he deleted his entire website and left behind a nasty note saying it wasn't right for "some people" to insult other people's work, along with a few other choice words. Upon seeing this I updated my page to mock him for being too lazy to update but apparently having plenty of motivation to delete his entire site the same day someone makes fun of it. As soon as I uploaded those comments to my site he swooped in and removed his note to me that he had left behind. After that all that reamined was a blank page. I assumed I would never hear from Mike again.
But I assumed wrong. Within two weeks Mike put a new version of his site back online. This time he called it "Version MAUL" even though it looked almost exactly like his old website just with a lot less content and a slightly altered color scheme. The only content which was new was that he had purchased a PAID Live Journal account to use to post updates about the site and had posted a poem on the enter page which sounded very, VERY GAY to me. I updated my entry about his website and mocked the fact that he PAID for a Live Journal just to use it to post updates about his site that he barely ever updated and also to complain about how GAY that poem was. Can you guess what happened a few hours later? He didn't delete everything this time, but that poem and that Live Journal dissapeared very quickly. I was starting to sense a pattern here.
For the next several years this process went on: Mike would make some very stupid design decision about his website, I would mock it and he would delete it. Mike would never directly speak with me. My posts in his guest book would get deleted right away, he would block or ignore me if I tried to contact him via any instant message service and my emails to him received no replies. Despite this fact he continued to react to every update posted to my site. I mock something, he deletes it. This went on for YEARS.
This extreme reaction to critisim made him a popular target for harassment by fans of my site as well. Other people would contact him to ask if his name was Mike and if he liked Ska music. "Mike" was not actually named Mike. His real name was Brad Mikeska and for whatever retarded reason he called himself "CMikeska" on the internet. People would see his internet name and assume his name was Mike and that he liked Ska music. He HATED this. So obviously people made a point of doing it to him ALL the time. He would do to them the same thing he did to me: Cuss at them then refuse to ever talk to them again. As far as I'm aware however I'm still the only person he would delete his website for though.
As for where Mike is these days, his crappy website is still online... sorta. All of his "stuff" is gone. The site contains nothing but a link to his myspace page, probably because that was the only thing I never got around to mocking. Upon reading his myspace I discovered a twist I never expected. HES GAY! I guess that explains the gay poem he tried to post all those years ago that I made him take down so perhaps I should have seen this coming. Mike has earned the Dubious Honor of being the only Lunatic Webmaster who I accused of being gay (although I didn't know I was doing it at the time) and actually turned out to be gay. However, since Paulos added his awful website to both a gay webring and a lesbian webring I suspect Mike may soon have to share this honor.
Lunatic Webmaster: James Michael Corbett
A.K.A. "HMD"
James was the webmaster of an awful site called "Cross Dresser" (Or was it Cross Changer? I'm not sure there is a difference) which was probably the most bizzare, confusing and incomprehensible Sega related website on the internet. James' site was self described as having "all the personality and charm of a Dragon Ball Z shrine" and that isn't far from the truth, although if given the choice I would much rather spend my time with the Dragon Ball Z shrine.
James was also the only Lunatic Webmaster who found ME rather than the other way around. While I was making fun of Paulos' awful site I tried finding some reviews of some of the games he featured on his website. One such game was called "Exile" and I mocked Paulos' obsession with this game by linking to a review of the game which described it as: "For an unclear reason you stumble around a disjointed world on a series of muddled quests resulting in a confusing ending." Paulos never made any attempt to reply to my suggestion that the games he discussed on his site were as awful as the site itself was but for some reason James was highly offened by this and decided to send what he called a "Big Ol' Fuck You" to me. This attitude is not unusual for Sega fans. Many react with anger or even rage on an outrageous and unreasonable level after reading my website. But James did neither of these things. His "Big Ol' Fuck You" to me was to post a positive review of Exile (a game he obviously never played) onto his site. This rather bizzare reaction is what placed him above the level of the average Sega fanboy and earned him a place as a Lunatic Webmaster.
Of course, like ALL Sega Fanboys, James did his work in secret. He put his website mocking me online quietly and without informing anyone. I've already told you that I don't operate that way. So when I discovered James' site about me some time later I not only added his terrible joke of a website to my awful sites page but I also let him know right away that I had done it. He had no guest book and did not provide any obvious means of contacting him, so I posted a message in his forum. James and the ONE other person who was registered for this forum (I'm assuming it was a personal friend of his) used their admin powers to mess with my forum account and then proceeded to rant about how they had "won" because they used "spite" aginst me. I chalked up their behavior to them simply being too immature and childish to have a real debate, something James himself had admitted to in one of his own zany rants. Then I moved on with my life.
But James would not move on. He could not move on. Being ignored was simply not an option for his fragile ego. He was determined to carry on with what he called the "bloody Cross Changer vs Sega Sucks War" forever. He continued to add more pages about me and even invented fake converstions with me just to have something to say on these pages. At one point he even went into the BLOG of a friend of his and posted a big rant about me, then tried to blame it on me by claiming I "spammed" his blog. Was James really so deluded as to beleive I was somehow responsible for things HE was doing to piss of his own friends?
Eventually I picked up the pattern in James' behavior. He lied. Everything he said, everything he did and everything he posted on his website was a lie. He never once told the truth about anything. He apparently wasn't even capable of it. If you have read this far into my website you have obviously already seen that I have no problem with insulting people. I enjoy it quite a lot actually. But when I insult someone I do it based on something that is true. I see a fat guy I call him fat. Ugly woman, call her ugly. Someone who likes Sega is obviously an oblivious idiot who willingly allows himself to be financially violated by a faceless company which doesn't give a shit about him. I have no problem with insulting people but if I'm going to insult someone I have to know who I am dealing with so everyone will know I'm not just making up bull shit, I'm laying down the real truth here. James apparently didn't feel the same way and was fine with his website being nothing but obvious bull shit. So I had to repond the only way I knew how: With the Truth.
And so I told the truth. The whole truth. Who James really was. His full name, his home address, his phone number, the names of his realtives, EVERYTHING. Then I said to James: "I know who you are. You have NO idea who I am. You know nothing about me and you clearly didn't do more than glance at my website. From now on when I insult you everyone will know my insults about you have weight behind them because I tell the truth and know all I need to know about you. But when you insult me everyone will know its bull shit because you are totally clueless and will never have any idea who I am."
After that, James began to back down, obviously losing his own silly war. At first he tried to fight back by coming up with more lies about me, such as his theory that I was actually a guy named Terence Klugman. I easily proved this wrong by pointing out that Terence Klugman was dead and that anyone with two brain cells to rub togeather could have found an obituary online to prove this. After this James began moving his website around multiple times and each time the site would relocate it would have fewer and fewer sections about me as James was apparently too lazy to retype up all his lies which had already been disproven. Finally James moved to his own domain name and it appeared that perhaps he was going to get serious about doing something with his website, but not long after that he allowed the domain to expire. James and his habitual liar of a website finally vanished off of the internet forever.
When I announced that I was planning to retire as the Sega Slayer and would no longer be updating my website, James made one final attempt to determine my identity before the oppertunity was lost forever. He posted the "results" of his investigation on an anime forum he and his childish friends like to visit. Nearly every "fact" James found about me was totally wrong. For example he tried to claim he knew my age, but upon looking at the age he was claiming belonged to me it was obvious to me right away that he had simply located the FAKE birth date I use on the internet, just to confuse idiots like James. For all of his foolish behavior James has earned the Dubious Honor of being the only Lunatic Webmaster who should NEVER EVER apply for a job as a private investigator.
Special Bonus Webmaster: Some Wapanese Douchebag
A.K.A. "Wapanese Douchebag"
Paulos was not the only one of my victims to be targeted by Something Awful. The 10k Coma (or was it Commotion?) was one of the sites on my Awful Sega Websites page which was also targeted by Something Awful as one of their awful links of the day. Its a shitty web comic about some homosexual children who play that Dance Dance Fever game made by Sega or whatever the fuck that shit was called. Here was what Something Awful had to say about this terrible web comic:
Everybody out there in Internet-land knows how much I love webcomics. In case you don't know how much I love webcomics, let me explain how much I love webcomics: I fucking hate them. That should clear things up for everybody who were either previously confused or retarded or both. It is my opinion that anybody can create a shitty webcomic, and anybody does, which is why we've got so many stupid websites devoted to the wacky antics of two MS Paint computer-lovin' teenage guys who play Counter-Strike and make acerbic comments about the Xbox before joining their furry friends on a spaceship which is piloted by a unicorn who can transform into a dragon or tank. "The 10K Commotion" combines shitty webcomics with the ever-so-popular "I want to draw anime but my advanced case of Down Syndrome prevents me from doing so" art style that permeates every goddamn nook and cranny of all original online art. Now combine that with a cast of boring, bland, one-dimensional kids who play "Dance Dance Revolution" and you've got something which should be illegal in all 50 states and that one island that I think the US owns but refuses to acknowledge it because the inhabitants are always shooting and stabbing each other all the time.
After Something Awful made this site an awful link of the day the owners had to shut it down for awhile because they couldn't afford the bandwidth that was being used by all the people coming to their website to send them hate mail. Sadly, the website eventually came back online. I never heard any reply from the web masters of this site as a result of my making them an awful website on my page, so they were never promoted to the status of a Lunatic webmaster even though their site was probably one of the worst Sega sites out there.