Fighteer

Fighteer (aka John M. Aldrich) is a senior moderator of TV Tropes. He's also autistic, whiny, a veritable fountain of butthurt.txt, and a ranting bully that is part of the reason TV Tropes' moderation are considered to be massive assholes.

A loving father and his adopted Guatemalan son.

To quote Something Awful's fourth TV Tropes mock thread on the man:

	“	Fighteer: Fast Eddie’s war dog......Fighteer sees every user as a potential enemy. Is convinced the widespread criticism of their site is a single, unified conspiracy and will accuse all users who raise issues with the site’s management of being goons.	„

The part in bold is important, and we'll get to that later on in this article. Anyway, even if weren't also unbelievably paranoid, he'd still be an asshole who often violates the very rules he shits on other people for violating, and this article should let you know more about why this guy is a walking font of drama.

The origins of his moderation career

He was made a moderator of the wiki August 2010, and ever since then is pretty much the face of the moderation, especially, since Fast Eddie gets so incredibly butthurt over criticism that he usually lets Fighteer do most of the spitting and snarling at heathens against Der Fuhrer. He can typically be found wherever there is a dispute, where he usually acts like an internet tough guy and reminds the peons he would never let his 7 year old son get away with being as immature as them.

Fighteer: Fast Eddie's sockpuppet?

Many people on the tubes who have had to deal with this asshole have wondered if Fighteer is merely a sockpuppet for Fast Eddie, which, at first glance, is understandable, since both are prone to ignoring the "be nice' rules of their own site because they can and Fighteer often gives out policy announcements as if he is Fast Eddie.

The truth, however, is more mundane. Fighteer is basically a rabid dog Eddie sics on uppity tropers to keep them in line, especially because Eddie himself hates negativity (by other people), and is too much of a weeping vagina to deal with conflict most of the time, so he relies on his most reliable sycophant (since all mods are reliant on Eddie's good graces to keep their positions) to deal with the upstarts and deliver policy notices that would get Eddie more backlash than he is comfortable with (read:none)

Also, as detailed on Fast Eddie's own page, he's a geriatric neckbeard that lives in a trailer park in Wisconsin, and Fighteer is married (Eddie is single) and has an adopted son. Fighteer also lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Fast Eddie is known to work for a game company (most likely Rage software) as a Team AI lead. Fighteer works for the scientific division of Olympus America Inc., a position whose duties he is rather vague on and is more likely him trying to make a low rent pencil pushing IT job sound unbelivably important, though he claims to be a computer programmer and a sales analyst (another position whose duties he is vague on).

Some self troping

Autism.jpg

Like most tropers, his troper page has some self aggrandizing bullshit on it that is particularly lulzy: (original in bold, comments in italics)

I am 37, male, a computer programmer, a sci-fi/fantasy geek, and live in Pennsylvania, USA. There's not much else to say, unless you care about my guild's World of Warcraft exploits. Or my 7-year old son. (He's very cute.)

Incidentally, my online handle, "Fighteer", comes from a character I created in elementary school when I was entranced by Voltron. It's a giant yellow robot that later became a Transforming Mecha when Transformers came out and tended to act as a God-Mode Sue.

So he sperged over a shitty cartoon as a kid and named himself after his childhood wank fantasy. Big fucking surprise.

I hang out the most on the forums, so please take it there if you want to chat, or send me a PM.

As of August, 2010, I am a wiki moderator.

Tropes that describe me:

• Badass Bookworm: I studied Tae Kwon Do for many years in order to be this. Now that I've got a kid, I've let it slide.

Internet Tough Guy.txt

• Big Ol' Unibrow: I shave it frequently but it keeps growing back.

• Character Alignment: Lawful Good.

You're not supposed to use alignment terms to describe characters, and even though there is no rule against it on troper pages, it's rather ironic that this man was the guy who established Character Alignment to describe people was a bad idea does it to himself. Also, if he wanted to be honest, his alignment would be Lawful Asshole

• Geek: Promoted from Nerd, which is what I was in school.

Not much of an improvement

• The Glasses Gotta Go: Said by my then-girlfriend, now wife. I used to be Blind Without 'Em until I got LASIK.

• Good with Numbers

• Happily Married

• I Know Karate: Second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

More Internet Tough Guy.txt

• Nerd Glasses: Used to have 'em before getting laser eye surgery.

• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: I was nicknamed Mr. Spock as a kid for my habit of being pedantically precise in my speaking habits.

At least he admits his autism

• The Smart Guy

In Troper speak, this is very much an Informed Ability

• Took a Level in Badass: I studied Tae Kwon Do to compensate for getting bullied in school. Ironically, since I started training, I've never gotten in a fight.

Even More Internet Tough Guy.txt

Fighteer Crying Like a Bitch Part 1

In this blog post, Fighteer gives us some insight to his USI

Choice sections will be quoted below:

	“	I am a moderator on TV Tropes, meaning it is my “job” (I don’t get paid for this) to help keep things orderly on the wiki and forums. Although I have no administrative control, I do get to witness a lot of what goes on under the hood of a site of this size and complexity, and one of those dubious privileges is dealing with the kinds of folks who don’t play nicely with rules.	„
	—Translation:I spend most of the time I claim to have a job snarling and spitting at upstart editors on a wiki

	“	TV Tropes has been subject to numerous forms of malicious activity, including simple vandalism like defacing articles and placing insulting comments in discussion pages or forum threads, attempts to recreate articles that were deleted or to delete existing valid articles, attempts to exploit security flaws, and even denial of service attacks, over the site’s administrative and content policies.	„
	—The denial of service attack referred to is when two tropers were banned in June 2012 for backing up material TV Tropes was censoring, and even though no loss of service was detected or reported at the time in question, Fighteer called it a denial of service attack anyway to make it sound like banning two people for doing something that is in no way illegal was something impressive. The guy who uploaded a torrent of the data copied even admitted in the torrent readme what he did, pointed out he'd pay for damages (that never happened) if need be, and called Fighteer out on his horseshit

	“	Much of the recent furor apparently stems from disagreements over a decision made last year to delete most references to pornographic media and tropes specifically derived from pornographic media, in an effort to keep the site “family friendly“. What this means is, essentially, that the staff don’t want TV Tropes to be thought of as the kind of place where people go to gush over porn. As the site is specifically about fandom (although its opposite is acknowledged, that doesn’t mean it is encouraged), it’s inevitable that talking about porn will get it talked about, and not in a favorable way. It can even get the site in trouble with its advertisers. TV Tropes doesn’t attract nearly enough donations to function ad-free, it doesn’t enjoy the support of a large foundation or sponsors with deep pockets, and Google threatened to pull or actually pulled its ads on at least two occasions over content complaints (despite the suspicion that they may have been malicious). But more than anything, the staff just don’t want it.	„
	—Amusingly enough, Fighteer is partially correct here in that TV Tropes had a lot of gross shit on it, but the decision to cut porn related content was to keep the site from going under and because Fast Eddie finally realized the monster he created by not caring until it threatened his Jewgle Ads, so when Fighteer says the staff doesn't want it, that means Fast Eddie started banning it and the other moderators have to tout the party line or lose their mod status

	“	What’s worse is that it discredits the very notion of internet vigilantism as a force for useful change. I can at least sympathize with hacktivism when it’s targeted at a company that has draconian copyright enforcement policies or at a government that supports the suppression of human rights. It’s still wrong, but I can see why they might feel it serves a greater good. But attacking a site like TV Tropes that exists solely for the enjoyment of its users, makes no profit, and seeks only to be a useful resource for writers and fans of media in general just makes the perpetrators look petty and makes their cries for freedom of speech sound hollow.	„
	—Bear in mind this website exists simply because Fast Eddie has stated he allows it to, does make money in the form of advertisement sponsorship, and has gotten to the point most notable writers don't give a rat fuck about it anymore. Also, it's rather ironic that Fighteer accuses other people of being petty when he and other moderators literally fuck over entire IP ranges to deny anyone the right to even view TV Tropes if they have slighted the moderation staff

Fighteer Crying Like a Bitch Part 2

In this blog post, written around November 2013, Fighteer decides to drop the dog whistles from last time and delivers more whiny drama.

	“	I mentioned last time that TV Tropes had been subjected to both DDoS attacks and direct vandalism. As far as we know, the former has ceased; it certainly hasn’t been effective, so a shrug is all it merits. Security has continued to improve and we have plenty of tools to catch and eliminate vandalism, so in a sense the attacks have served a useful purpose. We still get them, though, and they seem to come in two flavors. One is the clueless wannabe editor who just can’t get it through his skull why we don’t want him around. One fellow, presumably from India by his account info, has evaded bans no less than a half-dozen times, pleading in mangled English to be allowed to edit the wiki despite our insistence that he learn to write comprehensibly. Another has risen to a kind of stardom even outside TV Tropes, and despite my distaste for linking to trolling sites, he could not have had a more fitting fate than to end up featured on one. (Warning: that link has a lot of HIGHLY NSFW content behind it. Follow at your own risk.) He has managed to achieve a kind of record in terms of sheer number of handles created — they must number in the 400-500 range by now. Clinical insanity.	„
	—The tools Fighteer refers to are a sockpuppet detection tool that allowed the Goons of Something Awful to discover Fast Eddie had two sockpuppet accounts he claimed were real people for years. That and banning tons of IP addresses and Tor nodes. The India troll was banned because Fighteer has little patience for non-native English tropers and decided to throw the guy out like an asshole, and the guy decided to ban evade because Fighteer had to be such a assbag about it. The other is Nate Spidgewood, a particularly stupid wiki troll that has threatened Fighteer with death and severe bodily harm more than once, also because Fighteer is an asshole.

	“	The second flavor is the kind that has an agenda and insists on telling us all that we’re a bunch of retards for not following it. Such was apparently behind the DDoS attacks a while back and they’ve returned of late to attempt to lure loyal (but sorely oppressed, apparently) tropers away to a copycat site that promises “freedom from our censorship”. Oh, and “good wiki software”, which amuses me to no end; these folks miss the fundamental point that it’s the content of a site that matters, not its delivery plaform. (Yes, our derivative of PMWiki is a kludge, but it works for us.) They’ve tried to spam links to their wiki all over ours, apparently in the belief that we are some form of free advertising for them. They’ve sent messages to various tropers and staff members, apparently in the belief that we care, or that telling us how much we suck is going to get us to change our ways. I even got a comment on this blog, which is amusing because I moderate it, so the only person who saw it was me. I really have to wonder what they’re trying to persuade me of. I’m not going to stop banning them and erasing their spam. I’m not going to accede to their Internet Tough Guy act. I’m not going to suddenly realize the error of my ways and decide to strike a blow for FWEEDOM!!!	„
	—This post is Fighteer being a paranoid idiot and trying to connect two separate events to an overarching conspiracy like he did with Something Awful, then basically giving at least one entity grounds for a libel lawsuit for publicly blaming them for criminal actions with zero proof. In fact, the administrators of All The Tropes (the site Fighteer was pointing fingers at) not only denied the allegations, but promised they would consider any further attempts to accuse them of criminal acts without proof would result in legal action, so this paranoid fuck is goddammed lucky his bullshit didn't get Fast Eddie sued.

	“	There’s also apparently someone (probably the same person) trying to spread some kind of weird meme about our site’s current admin, a meme to which they can’t even get basic facts right, like names. I have to wonder what genius thought this up. It’s not like he has some kind of online reputation to worry about being tarnished by amateur trolling, nor does anyone intelligent care what kind of crap shows up on ED. Admittedly, the site can be fun if you are of a certain mindset, but to use it as a primary source? You have got to be kidding.	„
	—Like his boss, Fighteer hates ED and thinks that anyone who believes it is an idiot, but then again his boss censored ED's mention because it said mean (and true) things about him, and it was the Goons who discovered Fast Eddie's real name, and since they hate tropers, it's incredibly unlikely they'd have anything to do with another troping wiki in trying to expose Fast Eddie's real name. Then again, Fighteer is a paranoid idiot, so it probably made sense to him.

	“	And all this because we won’t let them use our site as a platform to masturbate over lolicon fetish works and cheap porn. I mean, okay, maybe I could see getting mad if we got rid of all the anime, but seriously, folks. When their right hands aren’t too busy, maybe they could consider the utter waste they’re making of their lives. And yes, I fully recognize the irony of writing a blog post about this.	„
	—And this post is just loaded with irony, since he masturbates just as furiously over banning people as he claims all dissenters of TV Tropes do over porn. As the cherry on top, the most publicly notable thing he's done with his life is becoming a hated wiki moderator, so he doesn't exactly have a lot of justification to hurl insults at others

External Links

• A thread on a TV Tropes spinoff bitching about this asshole
• Some tartlets bitching about this asshole
• His Troper Page
• Yahoo! Profile
• His crappy Wordpress blog
• His Failbook
•  His Twitter
• His Jewtube

Fighteer is part of a series on Homosexual Deviants Visit the Faggotry Portal for complete coverage.