Internet Detective
Never Live It Down embodied in an Online Persona, the Internet Detective is what happens when Encyclopedia Brown gets an Internet connection. The Internet Detective, also described in part as the Archivist on Mike Reed's Flame Warriors, seemingly fancies himself or herself to be the ultimate diviner of truth from lies, a righteous warrior fighting against falsehood on the Internet.
The Internet Detective will archive information on an individual or individuals from any period of time. Unlike the traditional Archivist, however, this extends well beyond one location, and may well reach into Real Life in more thorough "investigations." Internet Detectives may pose as someone else to get or compile information that is protected from the Internet public for one reason or another, or directly contact the "subject" of an "investigation" and/or his or her friends. Anything found or said will be subjected to intense examination, taken in the worst possible context (even if that involves removing it from its original context), and of course, applied with heavy doses of Never Live It Down to every Old Shame or even something that does not mean what the Internet Detective is absolutely sure it does. Even the slightest typo or perceived mismatch in facts or narrative will lead to a Conviction by Contradiction.
Unfortunately, being an obsessive stalker or jumping to conclusions both lend themselves very well to the Internet Detective persona, making it a great disguise for a Single-Issue Wonk whose single issue is another person (or group of people ) or a Troll. In the most supreme of Irony, occasionally someone trying to defend a false claim or a series of false claims will become an Internet Detective under the assumption that no one will risk challenging their "authority." Sadly, it often works.
Web Original
- CWCki has done a lot of research on the webcomic's author and everything in between.
- The Kiwi Farms forum has a whole section dedicated to "lolcows" like Andrew Dobson (of So.. You're a Cartoonist fame) and Darksydephil (a notorious Let's Player).
- Kiwi Farms happens to straddle this trope: the main rule of being a Farmer is "never abuse the lolcow, let the lolcow itself be a fool". The practice of abusing lolcows is known as A-logging, after a particular troll of Chris Chan's - A-logging will almost certainly net yourself a thread on the Farms and the title of "lolcow orbiter". On the other hand, any restrictions go out the window if the cow committed a crime: Chris Chan in particular was reported to the police in 2021 after evidence of him raping his own demented mother cropped up. The charges (which were for some reason categorized as "incest" rather than rape) were eventually dropped, but Chris will probably not be returning to his home near Charlottesville VA ever again.
- Lolcow Wiki has a similar objective. The Deagle Nation gang in particular, which they covered extensively, was discovered to be a hoax made by Kiwi Farms users.
- The Kiwi Farms forum has a whole section dedicated to "lolcows" like Andrew Dobson (of So.. You're a Cartoonist fame) and Darksydephil (a notorious Let's Player).
- The trolls at Encyclopedia Dramatica can be informative and lulzy with their articles, but they do have subjects they don't care about.
- Partisans of Gamergate, primarily of the pro-GG sort are very vocal about using archive.is to save webpages from "unethical" publications and controversial opinions from their opposition. Which is also justified by how said "unethical" publications and opposition have been known to rewrite if not erase certain "inconvenient" articles or comments.
- A number of these have popped up on Reddit with their own subreddit sites, with mixed results and with various motives.