Protocol Snow

For virtually all forums on the Internet, getting banned isn’t a big deal. Just register a new account, maybe create a fake email address, and you’re back in business. Something Awful forums, however, requires a one-time membership fee of $10. That doesn’t include access to threads over a year old or the ability to search, both of which cost extra. But more on that later. Once you’re banned, you can re-evaluate how much the forum means to you and whether you want to pay $10 to re-activate the account.

Before I say why I was banned today, let me backtrack a bit and explain why I thought it was a good idea to pay for an Internet forum in the first place. Back in 2005, Amazon was running an experimental service called Mechanical Turk. In short, Amazon was paying people to look at photos of storefronts and pick the most appropriate photo for a given address. At $0.02 per storefront, this was hardly an efficient way to make money.

But I was linked to a Firefox script posted in a Something Awful thread that somebody there had created which streamlined the entire process, minimizing load times and number of mouse clicks. With that script, I made almost $100 in about 6 hours spread over a week, doing nothing but clicking while watching TV.

Without a SA account, you can browse through some of the subforums, but there’s ads everywhere that interrupt the experience. I figured it was worthwhile to pay a mere $10 out of the $100 that I earned to register an account and get access to all the subforums, ad-free. Over the years, the deals I’ve purchased from the SA marketplace and the entertainment I’ve received from the threads have repaid me manyfold.

But back to the banning. My mom had asked me to sell some a couple of hair and beauty products. One was from the UK, one was from Japan, and neither could be found on eBay. I didn’t want to spend eBay listing fees for some items that most likely wouldn’t get any views, let alone bids, so I decided to try listing them at the Something Awful marketplace. I took photos, grabbed product links so that people could read for reference and reviews; in short, made a proper thread. When posting a thread, you have to pick an icon to categorize the contents of what you’re selling. None of the icons really fit, so I chose “HOT” because, well, these were beauty products.

Bad mistake. “HOT” is apparently one of the icons that only moderators can use to draw attention to official threads. I didn’t even have a chance — the instant I pushed “post thread” with that icon, I was automatically banned. The screencap above is what I saw, minus a nasty picture of an old lady that I quickly ad-blocked.

I appealed to the moderator of the SA Marketplace, but there’s nothing he can do since it was an auto-ban. And while it is my fault for not knowing all the rules, it seems just a bit draconian that a mild transgression like this gets an auto-ban. What sucks even more is that if I pay $10 to re-activate my banned account, I’ve lost my archive and search privileges and will have to rebuy those.

Lesson learned: read the Terms of Service! I’m annoyed now so I probably won’t be buying my account back anytime soon, especially since it looks like most of the forum is now open for browsing to the public. Next time I need the SA Marketplace though (which really is awesome), I’ll probably have to fork over the $10.

Related posts you might find interesting (automatically generated)

1. How awesome is Amazon Prime? I signed up for Amazon Prime a few months...
2. Costco love Everybody knows that the Internet is a crazy place and...
3. Southwest airline Wi-Fi at 30,000 feet On my flight home to Los Angeles, I was lucky...
4. 9 years of 9/9/99 A big happy birthday to the Sega Dreamcast, which launched...
5. ETA: One Month Anytime I get a break from hardcore med school studying,...