Learning Day: Ruin Life Tactics (Patreon)

How are your enemies?

Hopefully they don’t exist, or you don’t know. That’s not what I think or feel, but saying it keeps us sane. History’s rough patches are full of revenge for comeuppance for payback. It’s cliche to call revenge self-destructive. It’s also cliche to keep forks out of wall sockets.

Ruin Life Tactics paid lip service to mirth. But anyone reading or testifying about it had revenge in mind. It aspires to be 4chan/7chan/8chan/420chan/pichan's worst product, and falls mercifully short.

The list hails from the invasion wikis, and a particular era of internet history. Unlike today, when faceless trolls hound undesirables, Ruin Life Tactics helped fun-loving anons own lolcows. When you feel down on the present, remember yesterday’s headlines. The nicest day in recorded history was Caligula biting it, unless someone would lie about a dead enemy for political gain.

Of course. We’re on a roaring rampage of pettiness. Ruin Life Tactics has everything a jilted youth needs to reach prison.

In theory. It kind of sucks. Not just in the spiritual way the title and topic imply. Some ideas are tied with Mary Poppins in whimsy. Others are half-assed jokes, which few seething 3 AM readers want. The rest embody the rot in web culture.

Granted, the third’s the goal. Let’s review the Art of Flamewar. We’ll rate this Arya Stark daydream by three key metrics:

Note for the reality-minded: I’m combining multiple versions of Ruin Life Tactics. Various groups with names like LolWagon, White Work/Time, and The Blaze forked, rewrote, stole, and reverted the original list. Again: If automated theft has you down, we used to do that shit by hand. In any case, all their work adds up to half an idea, and I have shit to do. My chimera gives you all the hits and half the worms.

Let’s see what the sages say:

God damn it. Laziness always makes more work for someone else. Namely me, ten years later. Now I’m stuck citation mining prank ProTips.

Can’t be helped. Let’s see what “RedBoxChiliPepper” gave us in 1992. Likely just Ruin Life Tactics for people willing to go outside, but there may be some surprises.

“Ruining Someone’s Life” is a blip on “The Avenger’s Page,” home of several longer, more discursive revenge fantasies. The authors of “Ruin Life Tactics” should have plagiarized the rest of the site, which includes better written and more achievable schemes. But that requires reading, and today’s audience was radicalized by frog sketches. And “Ruining Someone’s Life” has their flavor of comedy.

A lifelong revenge expert? Slick. The writer’s either a liar or the Count of Monte Cristo. I’m guessing the Count. I read the 4chan list first, so this prose seems brilliant and tolerant.

I know getting dumped had to come up. It’s baked into the premise. Yet paragraph one of the source text still feels premature. That kind of early climax usually leads to…getting dumped. Got it. Carry on.

I’m not unmovable. “Cactus” as a verb is wonderful, and worth bringing back. If we can swipe “Chad” from lunatics, there’s no reason we can’t take a plant.

I’d worry about reprinting Chris’s name, but I’m pretty sure he’s already swirlied the author into a coma. Be gracious in victory, Chris. Your ego got us into this mess in the first place.

Here’s the first of Chris’s trials:

I love a good period piece.

I’m surprised. Beyond the nonsense dialogue and sheer scale of effort, this is workable. Assuming, of course, you make up your own line, instead of repeating “I am Loki LieSmith. Welcome to my maze of deceit.” And that you’re fucking insane, and willing to call every video store in your hopefully rural enemy’s zip code.

But consider the audience. You’re either insane or LARPing, so this is a winner either way.

And here I thought banks recorded calls for “quality assurance.” I’m torn. This plan’s simple, doable, and more likely to backfire than an upside-down landmine. Banks are assertive about fraud that isn’t theirs.

This one sucks! It’s crushed by a recycle bin, eats as much of my time as Chris’s, and is undetectable in a world running on ads for ads. But it’s also the foundation of the sequel, so we’re noting it.

Life’s hard. Don’t add “beaten by a librarian” to your story. If your neighborhood’s any rougher than Sesame Street, they’ve thrown out Angel Dust hobbyists by hand. In red states, there’s a gun under the front desk called “the pen.”

This one feels incomplete. Maybe asylum stenography’s getting to me. But we’re tracking down someone’s employer, school, and social network and…making low-concept prank calls? There’s a hilarious felony with these ingredients, but this isn’t it.

Another issue with these anonymous schemes: they aren’t. Forget call tracing, or deduction. Most targets only know two people this crazy: you and you. All the burner phones in the world won’t undo your screaming oath to get even, in this world or the next. That Chili’s had a lot of witnesses.

Again, we’re fucking with everyone but Chris. Is this an anxiety issue? Because at some point, you have to take off your opera mask and hold eye contact with the enemy. You can only spray paint his name on so many bodega walls. Otherwise you’ll have eight blood enemies instead of the one.

I’m fine with lying. It’s fun. I enter a booth every November and pick my favorite fairy tale. But I’m holding you to all the craft demands of fiction. This list stabs my suspension of disbelief in the heart, whispers “You killed my father,” and kicks it into a ravine.

I expected more.

The worst person in a hit-and-run is usually in the car, but the internet changed things.

The fuzz might wonder why Chris’s undamaged car doesn’t match the description, and every pizzeria in town is outside while Chris curses out his bank. But the intent here is rotten. Like a child feeding a doll bleach.

Back to spam after two felonies? Weak. Nonfiction doesn’t have to worry about escalation, but this isn’t nonfiction.

Just punch Chris.

There’s ten sexual fixation jokes here, but I’m stuck on this point. You can just punch Chris. That door is open to you, at all times.

Think about why you don’t punch people. Social norms, ethics, laws, and getting the shit kicked out of you. These ideas are embarrassing, unethical, and illegal roads to an ass-beating. If you’re considering them? You’re free. Punch Chris. Crack him in the face. Quote Captain Falcon while you do it. Keep your thumb on the outside, and he’ll at least be annoyed.

I’d say this bit ages badly, but it’s worse in the next section, a decade later. And my Thanksgiving table would giggle at both. If I showed up to Thanksgiving, instead of beating Bayonetta without dodging. Try it! It’s more fun than making voodoo dolls of Chris. He doesn’t remember you’re alive.

The what? Right, Ruin Life Tactics. Define those for me again?

Solid, we’re in a cyberterrorist mall dojo. Let’s break some boards with our ki.

These worked! Old sites assumed users had shame, which is adorable. This trick might seem wasteful now that we’re a decade closer to strangling the Earth. But remember what Chris and/or darklings did to you. Why have a planet if they’ll share it?

Ah, there’s the theft. Let’s hear 4chan’s cover:

To translate: this doesn’t work. But if it did, you could bury Chris in dickshots. At least a Tinder afternoon’s worth. Wouldn’t he hate that? If this tip worked, at all, when written? Imagine your triumph.

Now that this joke’s back: why steal from someone defined by vengeance? It’s not a growth move. Like spitting on lone wanderers, or testifying against Boeing. You’d live longer writing traffic tickets in Port-au-Prince.

This is how the next Karl Rove spent his youth. Staring at mediums, and turning them into dicks. Damaged ones, in this section. Every Senator has an aide exclusively tasked with filtering out dicks and checks from Egypt.

More mail. More gay porn lines. More stunts that already didn’t work. We’ve hit the Stormfront version of the jokebook problem. Countless web-defining pranksters pooled their thoughts and ran out of shit.

Let’s skip to their second idea.

Classic! Let’s roll.

Worthless! The authors gave up on this before I did. On to idea three. Or two, since RedBoxChiliPeppers did prank calls.

I remember those! Man, wasn’t viable publishing nice? Aside from the following hate crimes?

I’d say the police don’t have time for this, but I just got a warning for suspicious breathing. Bad habit, I know.

I was wrong. Go back to stealing from RedBoxChiliPeppers. The kindest imageboard is twice as sinister and half as self-aware. The only thing separating the authors and Hannibal is IQ. And talking to a willing woman.

You heard them. What have you got? Loading “Ruin Life Tactics” implies a full notebook of failed schemes.

Here’s mine.

Things escalate a bit from here.

The same idea! Seasoned with extra hate. For all the stale and stolen jokes, the entries without them fare worse.

Behold: Bronze Age Swatting. The middle ground between the Rosetta Stone and a murder scene. This feels like reading FDA test results for anthrax. Or watching bored cavemen sharpen a stick.

I’d love to be angrier about the unwinding of human decency than parroting South Park’s most famous joke. But comedy recycling is really annoying. No one wants to hear you play “Smoke on the Water.” There’s already a notable cover.

“Chris? The neighbor boy is mailing us homeless panties again. I know you used to bully him. Could you do it again, but more violently? Less words, more fists. I tried, but he always starts sobbing before I can get an insult in, let alone a good backhand.”

There’s something here, in abstract. But it’s beyond the subterfuge skills of a Habbo raid veteran.

Incredibly pointless. Depending on the situation, this might even be a favor. Thanks for the break.

Pardon? Are we mailing Chris a baby? Wearing a onesie covered in dicks?

Ah, I get it. We’re after revenge on Trey Parker. We’ll take every mainstream South Park gag, and stomp until there’s nothing left but glurge. I dig it.

Beyond the intense insanity, who needs an article to know this? Is this WikiHow for mass shootYes it is, nevermind.

It takes vision to see the original list and think “No sex crimes? Fuck that. The War on Chris is temporary, but the War on Foids is eternal.” This assault requires subterfuge and sunlight, so don’t panic. But eventually these lunatics might trip into a workable, cardio-free plan. The only question is the number of attempts. We’re in a Pinky and the Brain and SVU crossover.

I was fucking around with the SVU gag. Don’t introduce Chris to Ice-T. That episode ends with you stitching shoes together, learning the details of the thirteenth amendment. Optics are the only barrier between prisoners and tobacco harvests.

On to the judges:

Generous.

The cycle of revenge is real. But it’s just you rehashing one fantasy, forever. While Chris builds Earth’s largest box fort, records it on vertical video, and turns it into a career.

After all, times have changed. Once, the internet was rife with open bigotry, endless vendettas, and porn. Now we have night mode. The porn is much easier to watch.

Or movies, if you’re into the heavy shit.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jaber Al-Eidan, who has received so much spite cardboard he built an ark to hold two of every way you can go fuck yourself.

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