Goon

From WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia.

A Goon is a netizen who has an active account on the Something Awful forums. Goons have become infamous for trolling groups such as the otherkin, anime fandom, and furry fandom. This often involves gimmick pranks, stirring up trouble in those communities via defacing, or an invasion in the form of a swarm (referred to as a Goon Rush, an homage to the Zerg Rush from Blizzard's StarCraft).

It is notable that not all goons act this way -- Something Awful's rules explicitly state that defacing, harassing, or invading other forums or communities is not permitted and subject to account banning.^[1] However, action is rarely taken against users who turn their online behavior into real-world harassment.^{[citation needed]} Compounding the issue is the large volume of lurkers and unregistered users on Something Awful's forums who take it upon themselves to commit such acts of harassment, both on the Internet and in real life.

1 Goons and furry
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Goons and furry

The relationship between the furry fandom at large and Something Awful is strained, due in large part to the actions of the Something Awful writers' regular "showcasing" of personal furry websites in their "Awful Link of the Day" feature throughout the early 2000's and the resultant trolling and DDoS attacks taken on the owners of such sites.

[edit] Real life trolling

Along with the normal forum/community/journal trolling, some individual goons have taken it upon themselves to "invade" a furry convention or similar meetup. Incidents have been reported at Texas Furry Con^[2], Feral^{[citation needed]}, and Anthrocon^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Griefers

Many online games (such as Second Life) refer to this trolling as Griefing. Some better-known goon griefer groups include the Second Life-based W-hat and the now-defunct Voted 5. While W-Hat has become a mostly benign group in recent years, the Voted 5 group was the more outright destructive group, and as a result was banned entirely from the Second Life grid in the fall of 2006.^{[citation needed]}

The latest SL based goon griefing group are known as The Patriotic Nigras, who, while they are more well-known for targetting John Edwards and CNET, they claim their main target is furries.^[3]^[4]^[5]As a griefing group, they follow more on the footsteps of it's now banned cousin, "Voted 5."