User:Xander/eBaum's World Controversy
“This is an editorial on the controversy between Ebaum's World and YTMND. I figured that it would be an interesting read. Enjoy.”
“Those bastards got what they deserved.”
Controversy Begins[edit | edit source]
eBaum's World is a source of controversy in the YTMND community. In January 2006, a submission posted to eBaum's World displayed the GIF animation from the YTMND site "Lindsay Lohan Doesn't Change Facial Expressions". The image was watermarked with the eBaum's World logo, implying ownership over the image. No credit was given to YTMND as the image's origin. In a January 8, 2006 YTMND news post, max linked ebaumsworld to ebaumsworldsucks.com and "ebaumers" to a wikipedia article on homosexuals.
Counterattack[edit | edit source]
Since the YTMND was already a well-established fad, several devotees of the YTMND network, including Something Awful, LUELinks, Newgrounds, and 4chan, initiated flame- and troll-raids against the eBaum's World Forums. The forum was overwhelmed by allegations of intellectual property theft, copyright infringement, and general discontent towards users of the eBaum's World Forums. In order to enlist more participants in the anti-eBaum campaign, several negative YTMNDs appeared criticizing the incident. Even better, many users began initiating DDoS attacks against eBaum's World content servers.
Neil Bauman's Response[edit | edit source]
On January 10, 2006, Max Goldberg posted a cease-and-desist notice received from Neil Bauman, the co-owner of eBaum's World. The content of the letter has been put into several satirical YTMNDs due to the slightly manic content of the "cease and desist" order (and the fact there was nothing mentioned about what to cease and desist). Goldberg and Bauman came to a compromise over content use: Goldberg pledged to remove all negative YTMNDs related to eBaum's World, as long as eBaum's World removed the image from the domain.
The End[edit | edit source]
“Following eBaum's stealing of one of their site pictures, YTMND users managed to unite 4Chan, Something Awful, Newgrounds, The Clock Crew, FARK and several other websites. They then raided the living hell out of the place for a couple of days. Disproportionate Retribution? Exceedingly. Awesome? Hell yes.”
Even with Goldberg and Bauman's apparently amicable resolution of the dispute, users of the two communities still do not interact well. Hostilities between the two communities occasionally comes to a head, but it quickly dies down. For the remainder of their existance, the two communities will most likely cease to co-exist peacefully. Many of YTMND's users have raided eBaum's forums, causing them at one time to stop all new incoming registration to the forum. Since then, eBaum's has re-opened registration to the public. There have been no major reports of any eBaum users trying to raid YTMND.
Word of Max[edit | edit source]
However, YTMND founder Max Goldberg, while acknowledging that eBaum's World has been "screwing over other authors and other sites," condemned the attacks on eBaum's World as a "vulgar display of power" and said that the users has "really crossed the line". He also stated that the attacks would put YTMND "in legal jeopardy". It isn't that they trolled the hell out of a site that's awesome; it's the fact that they organized a raid of that magnitude and united several rival websites to do it.