By 2006, Languatron was gone.
He had completely disappeared.
Every board had banned him. Every respectable person on the Internet despised him. And, according to Lang, every other person on the Internet was actually an employee of Universal Studios, and they were all out to get him. So he retreated into his Fun Fortress, which could only be viewed by registered users, and – surprise! – he was the only registered user. Unregistered users could see the total number of posts, but not the posts themselves. We all noted the fact that the post count continued to rise, which meant Lang was writing his paranoid fantasies for an audience of one.
In my real life, I was getting more and more involved in web design and video production, and I was learning how to use Flash to make simple animations. As a sort of training project, I decided to create an homage to the absent Languatron, whose departure from the scene had left a hole in the hearts of those he hated – an online Stockholm Syndrome, if you will.
The video below was the result.
But before you watch it, a few words of explanation. Having reviewed the movie for the first time in years, I had hoped that all of the posts I had made would give you enough context to understand all the references. I was surprised at how much I’d left out. So here’s an additional primer so you can chortle along with the rest of the Moist Boys.
The video begins with three phrases Lang used in his posts: “Implied Innuendo,” “Pedestrian Lethargy,” and “Discriminatory Ambivalence.” There’s no major significance to any of these phrases, other than the fact that they’re all kind of stupid. The video then shows a picture of “unsold DVD shelves,” which Languatron insisted would hold the DVD copies of the GINO miniseries. RGrant was quick to point out that 1) All DVDs on shelves in stores are unsold, and 2) Lang was referring to the shelves, not the DVDs. We all imagined what an unsold DVD shelf would look like, and in the video, you get your answer.
There’s a brief screen shot of one of Lang’s posts from Cylon.org, which features his signature listing several of his enemies supposedly saying “Help me, I can’t fight Langy alone.” For some reason, I’m not a part of that signature in that screen capture, and there are only four names listed – Rgrant, Neuromanzr, Hubcap Dave, and dvo47p. Usually, Stallion_Cornell – always with the underscore – was listed, too. We came to be known as the “Flatulent Five” who couldn’t fight Langy alone. Everyone else on Cylon.org was jealous that they weren’t included in the list.
The movie shows a picture of a bespectacled Lang, which was discovered by Moist Board agent codenamed Crappy Pants. It was a guesstimate as to what Lang would look like, but when a real picture of the guy surfaced, it proved to be surprisingly accurate. The picture of the guy with his head up his butt was RGrant’s guesstimate as to what Lang looked like. While not physically accurate, it serves as a strong metaphor for Lang’s spiritual condition.
The scene from the original Battlestar Galactica featuring an actual languatron comes next, and the subtitles reimagine the scene as if the languatron were to translate using the personality of the living Languatron. It includes another silly phrase – “Core Splinter Group” – that Lang was fond of using. It’s also quite rude and accuses the Ovions of being Universal Studios spies.
We then come to the word “Rampa,” a word Lang used as a substitute for “rampage.” Originally, it was very likely a typographical error, but when the error was brought to his attention, Lang refused to acknowledge it and continued to use “rampa” as part of his vocabulary in subsequent posts. Then events are set in motion, as explained yesterday.
There’s then a smattering of Lang diatribes from over the years followed by some nice Langy hula, then a brief appearance by a Simpsonized Lang and the aforementioned Flatulent Five. We go from there to Bob Is Shoe, and then The Bet. That’s followed by “A Strange Quietude,” another of Lang’s strange aphorisms, and then a list of things that are BANNABLE OFFENSES.
I really wish I had explained this earlier.
See, on all the boards Lang visited, he tried to play the victim when the admins of the boards started to come down on him. To prove that it was we Moist Boys, and not Lang, who were the nuisance, Lang would accuse us of “BANNABLE OFFENSES.” In his mind, just about everything was a bannable offense. Whenever we would respond to something, he claimed we were “crashing” his threads, and crashing threads was a BANNABLE OFFENSE. If we disagreed with him, that, too, was a BANNABLE OFFENSE. The film provides a list of several such offenses, using dramatic license to extrapolate just what is bannable and what is not.
The rest is self-explanatory, and I’ve probably told you too much already.
So, without further ado, I give you…
MISSING LANGY…
Tomorrow: The Return
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