As I get older I am coming to understand the phrase “I’m too old and too rich for this shit”. I hang out on forums and each year, I get a little less patient for the basement dwelling idiots who seem to exist in the comments section of most websites.

It’s not that I think that I’m better than these losers rather than I think they’re just a lot worse than I am. Most of these people (and I use the term loosely) have some serious misconceptions about the nature of the world.

#1 Companies don’t need nor want everyone as a customer. There are people who simply cost more than it’s worth. If you’re the dumb ass who’s calling (on the phone) for tech support for a $10 program, please stay the hell away from us.

#2 Similar to #1, if you’re one of those Internet trolls who becomes a zealot about some piddly irrelevant thing and feels necessary to whine about it on every forum post, please go away. Take your money with you and tell your friends (if you have any) to please stay away also. This comes up in discussions on Impulse and “DRM”. Stardock’s probably the most flexible company out there when it comes to DRM (we generally don’t like DRM) but it’s still not enough for some kooks (and yes, they’re kooks, don’t like being called a kook? Then don’t be a kook).

#3 Armchair anything. There are few things more annoying than some idiot who has never done anything trying to say definitively how something should be done. If you think you know everything, then go away and do it. If you haven’t done something, learn some basic humility.

#4 People trying to tell me how I should act. Yea, I’m the CEO of a $20+ million company. It’s “inappropriate” for the CEO to be out on forums participating right? Most people like having that kind of direct access. But there are still some people who think that my job is the kiss the ass of someone because they’re a customer (or more commonly a “potential” customer). No, I’m perfectly willing to lose someone’s “business” in exchange for saying what I want. If me debating or giving suggestions or ideas or whatever on a forum makes us look like “amateurs” in someone’s eyes then that’s fine with me. Being an opinionated techie doesn’t seem to have gone too badly so far.

#5 People who can’t read before commenting. This gets back to people who comment on forums who just can’t be bothered to know what the hell they’re talking about before commenting.

#6 Mindless Fanboys. I use the term “fan boy” a lot. There’s nothing more irritating than someone who backs a corporation without any rational thought. For instance, if someone’s watermarking your personal info into an EXE and you’re cheering that on, you’re a fan boy. If someone is charging you $10 to enable your bluetooth in your device that you just paid $300 for a year ago and you’re saying “Awesome!” you’re a fan boy. If you’re ignoring the fact that your crappy open source OS requires you to jump through hoops but you scream that installing IE 7 is inconvenient, you’re a fan boy.

That’s why, in the long run, CEOs of companies stop participating in forums. Me, I don’t know better yet. I’ve been a creature of online forums since I was 14 (back when they were BBSes). I’m a slow learner. But I see the writing on the wall. Eventually my obnoxious posts or comments will become “news” and it’ll be the end of my official presence on forums. The day I can’t tell an obnoxious user to kiss my rear end for being a jerk is the day I’m done.

Having the actual development team and management team of a company hanging out on the forums is a double edged sword.