Concentricus
Concentricus is a webzine for amateur writers to show off their shit. Unlike this swirling miasma of shit or DeviantART, however, concentricus features the revolutionary idea of having a shit filter, specifically, a five-person staff of editors that decide what does and doesn't get shown. Much of the drama generated on concentricus stems from disagreements regarding these editors' decisions, usually from the authors themselves, indignant that their masterpieces replete with spelling and grammatical errors, clichéd phrases, and all around sucktitude weren't chosen to be shown off with the stuff that can actually be read without having a degree in dipshittery.
How It Works
The current system concentricus uses allows users to submit written works to the editor's queue, where each of the five editors will give each piece a thumbs up or down based on their own opinion. Once a piece receives three of either, it will either be published to the Issue, which is released bi-monthly, or be shitcanned with a message sent to the author telling them that it's not going up. Many users have executed the final solution due to repeated rejections.
Pieces published to the Issue can then be voted on and reviewed by the users. Scores are calculated from an average of the votes. The selection and rejection of pieces and the scores published pieces receive are the main source of drama on the site.
The site has a point system that awards points for doing certain things. Voting, reviewing, publishing pieces, and signing in all earn points. The more points you have, the more sway you have. Someone with say, over 9000 points can knock a piece’s score way the fuck down if they give it a zero.
However, give too many zeroes and it won’t affect the scores as badly as the system takes the vote you give most often and counts it as a five. In order to fuck people over, you should vote tens on most everything and reserve your zeroes for really shitty pieces or people you don’t like.
Revenge Voting
Revenge voting is the most popular conspiracy theory for shit writers and whiny bitches. It’s when you have a piece with a steady number of votes in one part of the spectrum, usually fives or higher, and all the sudden you get one zero or one. Although not always, this is usually done without leaving a review so whomever you’re voting on can’t tell it’s you or why you did it. It’s also a popular tactic for shitty authors and whiny bitches.
FanFiction
Because concentricus is for real writers, the official statement is that fanfiction is not what they're looking for, as concentricus actually values the idea of the copyright, unlike some. However, there are currently at least two fanfictions on concentricus and both are in the Top 25. DjangoDurango's Mr Rieper is about the videogame Hitman. aribaby's Unmountable Boot Volume is about DjangoDurango.
The Editors
These people decide what goes and what don't:
- Stephen: Goatse and ruiner of fake marriages. He's the reason your shitty cutter poetry didn't get passed.
- movieguy: Writes movie reviews. He's the reason your movie review didn't get passed. He beat you to it and did it better than you could ever fucking hope to.
- Mind_of_Neeko: pwned the fuck out of everyone once but otherwise, who the fuck cares?
- Kristin: Mormon and a school teacher. She's the reason your crap short story about killing your parents didn't get passed.
- Gonsopher: United Kingdom. Enough said.
The Drop
Previously, with the introduction of version four, there was the Drop. The Drop was where all the shit went. Much lulz were born of beginning authors having their pieces published to the Drop instead of the Issue. Drop pieces where generally used by members to give low votes to lower their Character scores in order to look more intimidating as a reader and to raise your points. The more points you have and the lower their character, the scarier you are.
Unlike the Issues, the Drop was accessible only to members. It was marketed as the bonus material of the site, the "deleted scenes" as it were. As Stephen once said, if the site was an iceburg, the Drop would be the huge pile up crap that's hidden under the water that fucks up your ship if you get too close.
The Drop was gotten rid of because no one but the people who couldn't get into the Issues liked it, and who the fuck cares about them?
Previous Versions
concentricus is currently on it's fourth version, going on it's fifth if Fred, the owner of the site, would ever get off his ass. However, as everything from versions 1 through 3 is no longer accessible, all lulz from them have been stricken from the pages of time. Oh, well. Nothing interesting happened until version four anyway.
Version Four
Archiving lulz even on version four is extremely difficult. The message board system, while perfectly acceptable for their use as the joint is fucking dead, lists threads chronologically, according to which one was posted in last and has no search function so the only way to find previous lulz-ridden threads is to search through the boards manually, page by motherfucking page. Too much of a pain in the ass for most isolated incidents.
Before the Great Failure to Press the Button, concentricus published one issue with all the crap the editors deemed worthy every two weeks. This stopped at Issue 42 when Fred decided halfway through designing the new version, Version 5, that everything had to be completely redone. We haven't heard from him since.
Notable Members
Since most of the lulz on concentricus occurred before an effective lulz archival system was put into place and the message boards do not lend themselves very well to hunting them all down, most of the lulz have been passed down generation to generation in the form of character-specific stories. But instead of just trusting their word, specially trained lulz archaeologists went through and unearthed supporting evidence.
These people are notorious for the drama they created.
WolfenStorm/justphaedrus
Quite possibly the biggest attention whore the site has ever seen. In his first incarnation, WolfenStorm was the site golden boy with thirty pieces in his anthology, all of them published to Issues. For some reason, despite this obvious proof that someone in the editing staff liked him, he claimed that everybody hated his work and were constantly giving him poor reviews. The reason for this was largely believed to be that out of all thirty of his pieces, thirty of them were either about homosexuality or his disdain for religion. While the pieces were acceptable for publication, the readers were bored with the content. In a fit of butthurt, he requested that Fred delete his account and all his pieces be removed.
As soon as he left, user MoonTears and started this thread celebrating his departure. Everyone jumped her shit and, despite the fact that they too were fed up with Wolfen's emo bullshit, defended his decision to leave. It was later discovered that MoonTears was actually a Wolfen sockpuppet which he said he created as part of a "social experiment". He promptly lost any remaining favor with everyone.
Wolfen was also responsible for The Great Cunt Debacle, which resulted in Fred instituting concentricus' swear filter.
Nowadays, under the name justphaedrus, he visits only sporadically and said visits spurn only venom and distaste from other members. Usually, he only shows up to either whore his shitty website or leave subtle statements about how concentricus is dying "just as he said it would". Way to go, Nostradamus. Why don't you use those powers of omnipotence on something useful like not being a douche bag?
Other Known Sockpuppets
- celestial_body88
- MrExypnos
- Wolfenism
Links 'Attention Whoring'
- Website Whoring 1
- Website Whoring 2
- Website Whoring 3, He deleted most of his posts on this one when no one replied. Doing so actually garnered some. Go figure.
- Website Whoring 4
- Wolfen wants you to rest assured that he is okay.
- “You look like a queer Professor Snape.”
- Even moar attention whoring disquised as an apology.
- He's deceived us all and he's sorry.
- Yet another “friendly” visit GTFO
- It's Oscar Wilde! Fuck Yeah!
'Shit and Shit'
- His current website. It's still on hosted freewebs, lol.
- Is he on Myspace? He’s a whore, isn’t he? (Warning: I’ve never met a queer this bad at design.)
zerozorro
This user was dedicated to some hardcore vigilante justice. By which I mean he was the sockpuppet of another user who to this day remains anonymous and used to give zeroes to practically everything he ran across. However, unlike most assholes who do vaguely the same thing, his presense eventually came to be accepted among concentricus members as Fred, who is the only person who actually knows who zerozorro is, says that the sockpuppet has never once voted on a piece that the owner of said puppet has as well.
When Fred instituted the average vote curve (which takes whichever number you give most often and counts it as a five, zerozorro left this response.
He is, for the most part, no longer active, as his votes all count as fives now.
checker_board/Battleforlove
Dumb 13-year-old twat who refused to spell correctly or use proper internet publication format. After months of listening to her bitching and moaning about how the editors hated her writing and how everything she did wasn't good enough, her problem came to light, quite by accident, when she left a message claiming that she had never once seen the editors correct any of her spelling mistakes in her rejection letters or Drop pieces.
Since concentricus' definition of "editor" is the same as most real magazines, which means one who edits content of the publication, not the pieces themselves, the probelm was not, as checker believed, that she was submitting shit, but that concentricus' editors weren't doing their job, amirite?
She was promptly lulzed to death in the usual fashion for being so ignorant of concentricus' elite ways. After all, even if it was the editors’ jobs to spellcheck her crap, all the standard English spelling in the world wouldn’t fix her dull delivery and sub-par storytelling.
Which she later proved when, convinced that she could no longer publish anything without being made fun of, she made a sockpuppet named Battleforlove. Battle claimed to be checker's cousin and wrote the exact same emo/punk drug addiction stories with the same shitty lack of double-spaced paragraphs or correct spelling of homonyms. Most everyone saw though this facade, but pretended they didn't to see how many inaccuracies she could tangle herself in.
In a surprising lack of judgment, the editor's passed the piece "Life", much to the chagrin of everyone else, and the piece was voted down accordingly. As with all examples of literary failure, the reviews are pretty lulzy.
Links
- checker_board's anthology
- Accused of copyright infringement
- Y'ALL HATE MY WRITING
- checker on connotation
- concentricats wait paitiently for checker to say something coherent.
dementedsoul
Unlike most concentricus users who require several weeks to become notoriously asshatted, dementedsoul managed to do it in one try. Upset that his poems, mostly misspelled and poorly written, received reviews that were mostly about his misspellings and poor writing as opposed to their "feelings or opinions" on it. Never mind that the obvious opinion expressed was that the audience felt he needed to spell and write better. After all, his writing comes "from his heart, YES FROM HIS HEART" and shouldn't be "taken, picked apart, and called nothing but bull shit" like everyone else's shit.
The argument between him and everyone else didn't reach legendary proportions until he finished one of his badly written rebuttals to everyone else's logic with this epic display of unwarranted self importance.
Oh, and so you know who it is that opposes the system to the fucking ultimate, here is my name. And I bid you remember it well, for it shall be the last thing you hear before you die. James Lewis.
Oooh, scary.
Needless to say, a merciless lulzing ensued.
pure_aquafina and Analicious
A pair of bitches (not just regular bitches either, I mean the kind who enjoy being called bitches, the kind of bitches who buy bumper stickers for themselves that say so) from Las Vegas who thought their shit didn't stink. They were most notable for leaving exceptionally cruel and oftentimes funny reviews on people's pieces and generally believing their poetry was better than everyone else's.
pure and Anal have the illustrious distinction of being two of only four people to have ever gotten the banhammer on concentricus. Their banning was the result of writing several acrostic style poems that contained messages defaming editor Stephen and user SororityGroupie. Although almost all of the poems were in Issues and thus deemed worthy of publication and the fact that neither of the members mentioned in them seemed particularly upset by the incident, Fred still wasn't havin' none of that shit on his site and exerted his authority.
Some people disagreed with their banning, but others said "good riddance". Most of the second group were people who couldn't write anything much more legible than that.
The two were also notorious for giving themselves tens and scoring everyone else much lower. Technically, there is nothing wrong with this, but it still makes you look like a pussy and when asked about it, pure stated, “I have a lot of revenge votes to even out.”
The suggestion to stop being such a bitch in reviews was disregarded.
scott_kernaghan
A psychology major and model who wrote several well-liked pieces on the subject and practically dominated the Top 25 with them. Most of his scores, however, were given to him by his fans who joined concentricus only to vote up his pieces and vote down everyone else's. Much drama and lulz were had by his fans trying to defend their actions. the fact that scott himself was often too busy doing photo shoots and selling t-shirts with his own picture on them to respond to threads on the subject only made the situation that much more dramatic.
A completely different incident of drama occurred after scott's piece "Subculture Cesspool" was published in which scott apparently said that the residents of Meat Cove were inbred and didn't shower, but he did it in a satirical Jonathan Swift sort of way. Of course, the residents of Meat Cove, being inbred and all, didn't get it and were pissed. scott actually took time out of his busy schedule to address concerns on this, much to everyone's shock and surprise.
Eventually the speculation about his fan base rigging the votes led scott to quietly request that all of his pieces be removed. Much celebration was had as the Top 25 could now be dominated by SimulatedSnowman, as is the rightful order. His departure left fellow Canadian Canucklehead worried though. "A world without Scott Kerneghan material...my heavens...who's going to write unresearched hate literature about Atlantic Soviet Canuckistan now???" he mused.
opsman
opsman is an eleven-year-old boy who found concentricus by following users DjangoDurango and Canucklehead from a MAD magazine fansite. His initial activities involved attempts at satirical news briefs in the style of an eleven-year-old Jon Stewart. He was decidedly unfunny. He said in one thread that he was leaving the concentricus message boards "forever" but apparently lied and came back for a couple more posts.
Links
- the opsman report 1
- the opsman report 2
- the opsman report 3
- Stephen pwning him.
- The thread that made everyone sigh in relief.
- lil_writer_boy_2 makes an attempt
skamikaze
The first member to be banned. For plagiarism. Not just once, but twice. Fred gave him a second chance the first time and he shat all over it. Thus, he became the first to feel the wrath of concentrigod and his people. Fred decided to let the members with more than 2000 points decide his punishment and they voted to kick his plagiarizing ass out.
Crash_Zero
Aside from Fred and the editors, Crash_Zero is the remainder of the concentricus staff. If you call "Newsletter Gal" a staff position, that is. She is a vastly important part of the site as she writes the monthly newsletter to inform the members about all the shit Fred has thought up for V5 but will never actually get around to putting into effect. Ever.
Nevermind the fact that there hasn't been a newsletter in almost a year now. Crash is still staff and therefore must be noted. So there.
jmmiller
This member signed up for the site simply to "teach the members a lesson about identity theft". To do this, he pretended that editor Stephen had somehow convinced his fiance to send him nude photos of herself and as a result the engagement was broken off. Stephen said that he did not know who the fuck he was talking about and his word was taken as the truth. Given how lecherous he is, it was accepted that if he had been quilty of ruining this marriage, he would've been proud of such an accomplishment.
After his thread became much tl;dr, jmmiller admitted that he was lying the whole time and exhibited much troll's remorse. It was never determined what lying about someone accepting naked pictures from your girlfriend had to do with identity theft.
Everyone was very surprised that jmmiller did not turn out to be WolfenStorm in disguise.
The Future of concentricus
There is none. Unless you want to buy the domain.
External Links
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