Beware: n00bs!

[Excessum]

This guide is designed to give you a better understanding of what a noob is, how to recognize them, some details about them, and how to avoid or get rid of them. It mostly applies to online forums, which are the main targets of migrating noobs.

DEFINING 'NOOB'

Contrary to the belief of many, a noob/n00b and a newbie/newb are not the same thing. Newbs are those who are new to some task* and are very beginner at it, possibly a little overconfident about it, but they are willing to learn and fix their errors to move out of that stage. Noobs, on the other hand, know little and have no will to learn any more. They expect people to do the work for them and then expect to get praised about it, and make up a unique species of their own. It is the latter we will study in this guide so that the reader is prepared to encounter them in the wild if needed.

Noobs are often referred to as n00bs as a sign of disrespect toward them, and it's often hella funny, but I will refer to them as noobs during this reading.

* Usually the topic at hand on an internet forum.

COMMON NOOB CHARACTERISTICS

o I. Noobish

Often, but not always, noobs will attempt to communicate in their own primitive language, known as noobish. It is a variant of the hacker language that exposes them as having little intelligence or will to learn. Here is an example of some noobish. Do not attempt to comprehend it: it cannot be discerned without professionals at hand.

stFU //an, i r teh r00rz liek emin3m, u cna go tO EHLL OR ATLE4St help m3 wit hthIS!!111!!!!!!!1~~1!!``!! LOLLOLOLLOLOLlOoLLOlollLLl u n00b

Although you may find this unbelievably funny and/or annoying, it is best to restrain yourself and keep from talking back to them, as they are very territorial and easily angered. This will result in their attempted verbal abuse of you, possibly backed up by other noobs, because they work in packs when doing offensive tasks. It is not an easy task to learn this language because our intelligent accent will keep it from sounding quite right when spoken. You can write some simple noobish of your own, however, by slamming your face into your keyboard repeatedly.

o II. Where to find noobs

On the internet, noobs make their colonies on forums. They migrate in waves, usually on weekends, and proceed to clog up bandwidth with stupid questions and sometimes even stupid answers. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to be on a board large enough to attract migrating noobs, there will hopefully be authority in charge who is smart enough to take extermination measures before they can make nests and larger colonies.

Larger colonies can result in the mutation of some into spammers. Not commercial spammers, but pointless spammers. A noob can become one of these at any point, but the larger the amount of noobs, the more chance pointless spammers will appear.

Off the internet, noobs appear anywhere the focus is on learning or discussing something specific.

o III. Behavior of noobs

Since noobs are basically ignorant bastards, they have a lot in common. The most often seen characteristic is their fluency in noobish, which is why it got its own section. They will also be very self confident as if they were the absolute best at what they are in fact the worst at. Also, they are quite agressive and self-centered, and tend to laugh a lot using many L's and O's in rapid sucession (the noobish word for laughing like an ultimate retard).

It is their instinct to assemble in packs for defense, and they often attempt to organize packs that they call teams. Unfortunately for them, teams usually result in a total loss of communication and they can often begin to fight amongst each other. These teams are quite unlike those formed by non-noobs.

Noobs have difficulty reading english and cannot comprehend the idea of authority. Therefore, they have an all-out disregard for rules, basic or not. A good way to identify a noob (bad) vs. a newb (good) is to tell them (or have an authority tell them) which rule they are unknowingly breaking. If they respond with an apology and fix it, they are probably not a noob. If they react by insulting everything around them in rapid noobish and causing general mayhem, it is because they are a noob and have had a small seizure due to their inability to understand what is happening.

o IV. Noob religion

Noobs follow a variation of the 1337 (sometimes 7331) religion, in which they worship the number in odd rituals and put altars in their forum avatars and signatures. They often call themselves 1337, which experts say is somewhat like calling themselves godly in a human language. It's best to not interfere with their religious fantasies and practices because that can lead to a noob uprising, which can turn a forum to mush in less than a week.

o V. More about noob habitats

Noobs often attempt to maintain their own web pages. Some common features of these lairs are a terrible lack of content, background music, lots of pointless animated gifs, and pages that say some variation of 'tHEir isnothinG H34r yEtt LOLLOLOL!111!1!!~~~!!`! 13371337', which means 'Nothing here yet' in noobish. They will also have large, seemingly infinite marquees of 88X31 affiliate buttons replaced with red X's scattered here and there, and possibly a hit counter showing a number less than 100. These habitats are numerous but fairly easy to avoid because only noobs link to them. So if you can identify a noob, don't go to its homepage. Simple as that.

AVOIDING NOOBS

o I. Make sure you aren't one

Note: This section is bilingual so even noobs can make the discovery if they haven't already.

English (T4lk)-
Read the above parts of this guide carefully. If you find yourself unable to comprehend any of it but are instead beginning to think about how great you are and how awesome 'teh 1337' is, you might want to take one of the many available online quizzes to check your noobancy.

Noobish (133713371337)-
Liek, u gott4 re3D teh gudieCAREFUl1y and tehn OMG LIEK I AM R0XX0RZ ya anD ify 0u turn into teh reTARDED u gota go 2 MY WEBP4GE LOLLOLOL!!111~11 ad check 4 warez n stfuu. if u r a n00b go2HELL LOLLOLOlROFLMFAO11!!!11!!!! a/s/l pos gtg n00b su0rz ur b00rz OLOOOLOLLLL HELP HELP HELP 1337133713371337

o II. Major noob avoiding strategies

The main factor in attracting migrating herds of noobs is a large, active forum. If you find one of these, look to see if it has the management to avoid noob infestation. If not, look for a small or mid-sized forum that covers the same topic so you can enjoy your time there before the noobs find it.

Another way to keep noobs from interfering with your life is to become part of the authority on one of these forums. But that's often hard to do so you'll probably be better off avoiding larger forums first off. If you do manage to become part of the authority, however, take full advantage of it and establish extermination policies so that normal people can have a nice time without noob infestations.

[saphire]

XD Thanks for the helpful advice ;D

I'll be sure to watch out for n00bs from now on.

As if I wasn't before, but oh well.

[Eiri]

I find this histerical, but yeah thanks for the advice

[Yuna7780]

Nice. Did you write this up?

[Excessum]

Originally Posted by Yuna7780

Nice. Did you write this up?

Nah, just re-posted it from some other forum i sometimes hang out on... where it had been reposted from some other forum...

[Koir]

Originally Posted by Excessum

Nah, just re-posted it from some other forum i sometimes hang out on... where it had been reposted from some other forum...

...which goes to prove once more there is no such thing as originality on the Internet.

[Excessum]

Originally Posted by Koir

...which goes to prove once more there is no such thing as originality on the Internet.

It depends on your definition of originality

[Acidreptile]

Was not "Noob" a Mortal Kombat character? 0_0.

[ivi0nk3y]

Originally Posted by Excessum

It depends on your definition of originality

I've used the term n00b for years now, even for people offline. I have 1.6 to thank for that
I'd say the original term "newbie" is as you said it was but n00b has so many more definitons. Hell, if you're pissed at someone for taking too long in the bathroom.. just throw a "n00b" in there. Tension gone!
Also, there's fr00bs and Nubbertons and Nubile Nublets, which is all pretty Nubtastic grammar really.

[Koir]

Noob Saibot. Last names of the creators of Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon and John Tobias, spelled backwards.