Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/HowTo:Be a Troll

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edit HowTo:Be a Troll

JCM 00:41, March 22, 2011 (UTC)

Tick, tick, tick, boom. Jackofspades (talk) 19:49, March 22, 2011 (UTC)
Wait, what does that mean? — JCM 01:01, March 23, 2011 (UTC)
I'm doing this review and it should be done within 24 hours. I just get bored of always saying "got it" and had a song stuck in my head. Jackofspades (talk) 01:24, March 23, 2011 (UTC)
Humour: 4 soup /b/? I'm here to do a section-by-section humor review. But first, something completely different.

I'm going to review the humor in this article as I think that's it's pretty good as it is. However, I have a lot to say in the concept and formatting sections, so much of what I say in this review is to improve your humor overall and not necessarily in this article specifically. The main thing I would recommend is reading HTBFANJS and incorporating what you learn from that into your article.


You have only one joke per paragraph in this section. The first sets the tone that trolls think they are the best thing ever. This works well as a set up to the rest of the article. The second paragraph's only joke is the upside down exclamation point which is never used in the article, but is an ok stand alone joke as it is. I don't know if you think that swearing all the time is funny, because it's not, but it fits in with the character of your narrator so it can be kept. The last paragraph keeps with the "trolls think they're awesome" thing and ends with the joke that no one but everyone tells them what to do. This last joke goes on way too long and isn't referenced anywhere else in the article. If this whole "we're awesome, but can't stand up for ourselves" mentality was referenced later on in the article then this could be kept, but as it is it doesn't work and goes on way too long.


In the first paragraph your main joke seems to be having a completely wrong definition of "pwning." Your line about "pwning" someone by following them reluctantly is pretty good, but other than that there doesn't seem to be much humor here. Simply being wrong isn't very funny, especially with something that isn't very well known. In the second paragraph you just explain what pwning means. This section is spot on, however you've extended "pwning" to real world events. Pwning usually refers to something online or in a video game, it is only rarely used to describe someone who gets beat up, etc.


First off, no self-respecting troll would use 1337 speak anymore. That's been outdated since before uncyclopedia was up. The steps for how to speak 1337 are pretty good, but there aren't any other jokes in this section. A lot of this section is derived from the "everything we do is awesome" concept, which doesn't work that well after you've used it so much already. Insulting the reader isn't very funny either, but insulting others fits with the character. Just don't use "you" when writing an insult.


Once again insulting the reader...If you take that out this section is pretty good, but could do with more escalation. If everything trolls do is epic then list things that people wouldn't think of like flying a kite, flossing, training pokemon, feeding the cat. Everyone eats, sleeps, and jerks off, it's not surprising to hear that trolls do these things too. And just to clarify, insulting the reader isn't funny.

Justin Beiber

This section isn't exclusive to trolls, but it is a pretty good section to put in another quip about how trolls talk big but don't do anything about it (as in the intro.) As it is now you don't have a lot to go on here outside of insulting J.B. The last paragraph is pretty good as it mocks trolls themselves about actually knowing J.B. songs so that they can say how bad they are. However, to keep this section you need to work on the first paragraph and expand it to be more than just insulting a pop star.


It's spelled "lulz." Your first paragraph is informative, but there doesn't seem to be any humor other than making the z stand for Zuh and insulting the reader. The "zuh" thing isn't bad, but it isn't really all that funny. The second paragraph is much better. The "we can type while rolling on the floor" got a smile out of me so I'd definitely keep that line. You didn't include kik or ;p; in this section (each is one line off of lol on the keyboard) which may be sources of humor that you can use. This section is overall pretty good though.

OVER 9000

In this section you go back to insulting trolls which is much better than insulting the audience, although it should be done in a different way. Instead of it being a substitute for any number you could make it something that is said when a number is too high to count accurately (cuz trolls are inherently lazy.) Also, having trolls "required" to say it isn't as funny as having them do it out of reflex or habit. The section about retarded being disrespectful doesn't really fit in. If you want it to have more impact on the audience then it should be a more apologetic sounding tone. Something like "Oh no! I didn't mean to say that! I'm really, really, really sorry guys. It just slipped out." Even so, I wouldn't recommend keeping it.

Family Guy

While this section isn't bad it's making fun of Family Guy more than it is of trolls. Although you say that 99% of trolls' jokes come from Family Guy that's the only joke you make about trolls. The rest of the section is just Family Guy jokes which don't fit in this article. I'd recommend taking out this entire section unless you can somehow relate it back to trolls rather than just making fun of family guy. The sub-section you have doesn't really fit either as it's just a rant about peer pressure and how trolls are better than that. I don't really undestand what you're trying to do here as obviously trolls aren't above peer pressure. The sub-section should probably go as well.


Although an article on trolls should have a section on anon it should be more about how trolls and anon aren't the same thing than just insulting anon. In reality the majority of trolls consider themselves to be part of anon, just with a more active role for "the greater good." If you want this section to stay it should be a description of anon, which describes them just like trolls with the end being something like "but not like trolls. I mean trolls do so much more like...well...uh..." You don't really have much humor in this section other than insulting anon.

The last two

At the end you drastically shift styles. Talking to the headers is a common practice that only rarely works. In this case, talking to the headers isn't advised as you don't really have much to say afterward and the entire first part is 1337 speak. Also, the thing about that's what she said jokes isn't very funny. I would recommend taking out both of these sections since they aren't funny and don't fit with the rest of the article.

Concept: 4 Your concept is undermined right now by the format of your article. HowTo articles should look drastically different than what you have right now, but more on that later. I like the concept of a HowTo article on how to be a troll, however right now you have an article on trolls, not an instruction article on how to become one. The concept of the article that you wrote seems to be that the narrator thinks that he's hot shit while not actually being all that great. However, you have just the first part of that concept in the rest of the article while not referencing the fact that, most likely, the narrator is sitting in his parents' basement. Just swearing all the time also isn't funny, we actually recently huffed 5 articles on VFD that were just swearing that was well formatted. However, keeping the swearing could be warranted if you want to keep the line about trolls swearing all the time. You also aren't clear throughout the article on whether trolls are being made fun of or not. Some sections make fun of trolls themselves while others just insult the topic of the section or the reader themselves. This really isn't a good tactic. Some articles rely on insulting the topic of the article, but they do it by treating the topic in a satirical way. This article doesn't have very much of that, most of it is just straight up insults. Try to get more satire in this article instead of insults and it will make it a lot better.

The actual jokes that you do have are pretty well executed which just makes me wonder why you feel the need to rely on insults in this article. Adding jokes like the ones you already have in this article would significantly improve it as even a bad joke is better than a straight up insult (especially if you're insulting the reader.) Also, a lot of the sections that you have in the article are severely out-dated. I already said that no one writes in 1337 speak anymore, but you also have tired memes such as Over 9000 and the canhascheezburger cat. Both of those things are ancient (for memes.) Happy cat was first posted in 2003 and the original over 9000 video was posted in 2006. I would recommend changing a lot of these to more recent memes such as trolling Mormon chat or yahoo answers. Outside of those things I really only have the format to talk about.

Prose and formatting: 5 The format that you've used for this article doesn't fit a HowTo very well. Specifically you just tell the reader about things that trolls do, you don't really tell anyone how to act like a troll or become a troll. To get a better idea of how to format your article I would recommend reading other HowTo articles specifically the featured ones (like HowTo:Nail a glass to a wall.) Usually there are steps given in each article that tell people what to do, in a humorous way, but you could also teach people a little something about trolls. You might also want to add something about how to troll a troll, there could be some humor there. A lot of what you have can be salvaged and turned into steps along the lines of "things that you should learn before trolling." Recommending sites to go to in order to practice trolling could be good as well (youtube is always rife with people begging to be trolled, or this one site called Uncyclopedia. (They think they're sooooooo funny.)) Alternatively you could just move this article to "Trolls (internet)" or something like that so you don't have to change the formatting all that much, but you'll still have to replace a great deal of the content.

The prose in this article is really good for what you're trying to do. The only thing I can say here is that you should avoid things like the peer pressure sub-section where you drastically change tone. The only way this is funny is if there is a status change involved where the narrator becomes apologetic to the reader instead of rough and abrasive. I would also recommend getting rid of all of the 1337 speak in this article as it doesn't fit. Other than that you've got great tone for this article.

Images: 5 The pictures that you used are pretty good, but the captions are just ok. All the pictures are relevant to the topic that you decided to write about, however if you want to keep the sections that these are about you could do a few improvements. The picture of the cheezburger cat is old as I said before and the caption isn't very clever so if you want a pic here I would recommend something more along the lines of [1] that picture so it's slightly less obvious of a choice. The next picture with the lemons also could do with an upgrade. Right now there are two lemons, really easy to count. If you had something that was obviously not a very large number of objects, but still fairly large it would be a little more funny, and the caption could be "What 9000?!" instead as you haven't referenced that part of the meme before. However, I wouldn't recommend keeping an image for that section as it doesn't really need one. The other pictures are alright but I would recommend going over to UN:PIC and requesting images for your article because you could use a few better ones.
Miscellaneous: 6 Overall "feel" of the article.
Final Score: 24 rules 1 and 2 respected. I would definitely work on the format first as it not being a HowTo is distracting to the rest of the article.
Reviewer: Jackofspades (talk)
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