Gaia Online Subculture

The Gaia Online subculture is a mixture of anime enthusiasts, those interested in pop-culture / media, and some with a (seemingly) large amount of free-time; allowing them to enthusiastically participate in matters which outsiders may consider tedious - such as theories concerning the storyline of the website, or of the item market which the site features. Even though the site is not generally gender biased, there appears to be almost twice as many females as there are males on the site. The site is currently in alpha testing and it is hoped by users that it will move into beta testing, soon.

General Traits of a Gaia User
As Gaia Online is an internet forum which averages a slightly younger membership than most, they have a rather unique average user profile:


 * The site, while hosting a "cute" look that may appeal to young people, is not necessarily populated by children. Most people range from 13-19, but there are many 20-30 year olds that also enjoy Gaia. Gaia Online is geared for anyone that loves anime or a good forum for chatting.
 * Many enjoy the concept of owning/collecting Gaian items (it’s not uncommon for people to be accused of being materialistic), although a significant minority do not participate actively in Gaian economics.
 * A significant (yet highly visible) minority have poor grammar and even worse spelling, tending to use internet slang/net speak. On the other end of the spectrum there are the Grammar Nazis, who will attack (in excess) anyone with incorrect grammar, spelling, or punctuation. The minority with poor spelling is probably the larger of the two, however, as more users frequent the forum designed for pure spam than any other forum on the site. Different sections of the site have generally different tolerances to grammar (with the 'Extended Discussion’ forum often being mentioned most, in reference to Grammar Nazis).
 * Many will passionately debate points on the site, to the extent that some may land themselves in trouble for excessive personal attacks and/or disruptive behavior.
 * There are also a sometimes less appreciated but still known breed of users. These are usually a band of literate users, speaking correct grammar for the benefit of the community, and help out in many of the forums. Actions of these users include: bumping a shop to support it, donating to a shop or user to help them reach their goal, and helping out petitions. They also often times help newbies on their road to making themselves known within the world of Gaia.

Social Hierarchy
Due to the capitalistic nature of the website (users earning electronic gold based on their amount of posts) there is a common view that those who are richer (i.e. have more gold, more expensive items) are superior to those that are poor. Equally, there are views that those who signed up for the site earlier are more valuable assets to the community. There are characteristics which can typically, but by no means universally, define the place or rank of the user:

Date of Membership
The date of membership could be seen as how much faith the user had in the website. If the user joined when the site was just starting, they are typically seen as valuable contributors (regardless of what their actual contributions were, unless they have a widely known history). They tend to have moderators as friends, and are commonly called oldbies.

Wealth
Everything you do on Gaia Online causes your amount of gold to slowly increase. However, this is not the only way to attain wealth - many users choose to buy and sell the electronic items in an attempt to make a profit (done on the ‘Exchange’ forum, which was created for this purpose). The more profit they make, the richer they become, and the more expensive items they can afford - which act as status symbols (the halo item being the most valuable). As with real life economics, it is estimated that most the wealth on the site (i.e. gold, items) are owned by a tiny percent of the richest Gaians. There is a sharp peak between the ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ economic classes. The richest Gaians are almost always either extremely old users, 'exchange whores', or artists.

Not all users trade items to obtain wealth. Many users that joined the site earlier obtained limited-release items (either donation items, which are obtained by donating $2.50 to the site, or event items, which are obtained by attending official admin-sponsored events on the site) which could be very valuable today. An example of this is the 'Panda Hat', which used to be sold for around 8000 gold in July 2003, is now worth over 90 million gold - this can cause people to become obscenely wealthy (and has also made the act of investing in certain items a common practice. This is also commonly referred to as 'Exchange Whoring' or 'Vend Whoring').

Post Count
In each users' profile, there is a meter that keeps track of how many posts that the user has made. Some people believe this to be another way of measuring "rank" or "status".

Guild Owners
A guild in Gaia Online is a private forum. In this forum, the owner (or ‘captain’) is able to decide on what the topic of discussion will be, and can also set the rules and ban users from posting. Some guilds become highly successful, with membership in the tens of thousands, and the creators can become very well-known. Guilds are also a way to maintain a civilized forum outside of the aforementioned 'flame wars'.

Thread Owners
A highly successful thread (or topic) can mirror the success of a Guild. Some threads are used exclusively for role-playing, or for discussion of a certain subject. One example of this are the ‘price guide’ topics which can be seen around the ‘exchange’ – the owners of these, providing they’re successful, often become well-known by the community. However, these have been known to trigger and fuel intense rivalry.

Site Moderators / Admins
Arguably, the most respect a user can earn comes with being a Moderator for the site. "Mods" are chosen by the administrators based on their ability to uphold the rules and set a good example. Their names appear in purple text, although different types of Mods have different name colors such as teal or green, instead of the traditional black assigned to regular users. Admins' names appear in orange.

Forum Helpers
When a Site Moderator finds someone being very helpful who knows the rules of a forum that they moderate, they will sometimes take them under their wing as a Forum Helper, a user who helps clean up an individual forum. Moderators sometimes have multiple Helpers, and forums usually have multiple Helpers. The Helpers have black usernames, like ordinary users, and their moderating abilities are limited to tasks to keep the forum they’re assigned to clean, like moving threads- if there is a Terms of Service violation, such as someone posting pornography, they must bring it to the attention of a Moderator. Because of the black usernames, they can sometimes go unnoticed, but when a Helper is known they generally receive a lot of respect.

Newbies / N00bs
There are some differences between a newbie and a "n00b". A newbie is new to the website, but may have good intentions and a strong will to learn. A n00b often disrespects the rules, acts cocky/bratty, and is commonly known for their overuse of the electronic emotions that the website provides (common slang for this is "emoticon-rape").

A more common trait of a n00b is to "bump" pages for the sole purpose of obtaining the gold that comes with posting. In some parts of the site, it's not uncommon to see topics which are made exclusively for this purpose.

Elitists/Prommies
Most people see elitists as an uncultured, though usually almost completely literate, user that defines themselves as "cool". These users may speak with smaller, centered, or colored texts for the sole purpose of being "different" or "intimidating" but this is not always the case. Elitists hang out in cliques, usually in their own threads among their own "kind". Most elitists have high post counts or early join dates. It is not surprising to find that elitists tend to fantasize about having fanboys/fangirls and often keep a running track of how many people think they are "cool."

Elitists are often criticized for appearing snobbish to users who they may consider to be of lesser worth than themselves. Another criticism of this type of user is that they have the financial capability to drastically affect the Gaian economy for their personal gain - causing what is referred to as artificial inflation.

Elitists tend to believe that their knowledge on Gaia far exceeds the norm of the general population. There is no room for debate on the subject since an elitists obviously knows the answer. Though they tend to believe they are better than everyone else, they may pick and choose whoever agrees with them to be a part of their social group. They are not necessarily outcasts but try to find others that will heighten their sense of prominence.

One of the most controverisal subjects refering to elitism happened during the 2005 Halloween event, where one had to post several times to increase their grunny count. Many threads were made with titles banning those users under a certain number of grunnies to avoid them 'leeching'. The elitism peaked when the creators of these threads added leechers (if a thread was for users with 70 and above, a user with 20 would be considered a leecher) to their Ignore lists, effectively blocking them from posting in that thread. As a result, several users would not continue or could not achieve the third level, when the avatar changes. As VO posted later on, the whole idea of the event was for people to work together to raise their grunny counts.

Some users argue, however, that "leechers" prevented other users from increasing their grunny counts, thus making it virtually impossible for users to achieve the ultimate level. They believe the grunny event was merely a game one would care to succeed on and spent hours trying to obtain the nearly impossible 5th level. Some debate that posting without reading the rules of a thread could be considered trolling since they are disobeying the thread owner's wishes to follow the rules.

Some forums have a disliking for the idea of conceit and elitism, and they attempt to discourage it.

The term 'prommie' is typically only used in the General Discussion forum. It stems from the word prominent and can often refer to elitists and flamers, though is also generally reserved for especially popular or well-known users.

User Name
If a user on Gaia is deemed to have a "cool" name by the user population, they can sometimes earn vast amounts of recognition. A lot of beginners to the site have made themselves popular quickly by having a unique, shocking, or funny name.

A user's forum name can work against them too, for instance, people with anime titles or characters in their names, such as "Inuyasha", will often get less respect from other users than someone with a more unique name. Other things that could contribute to loss of a a user's respect include advertising their sexual preference, religion or race in their name.

Trolls
Trolls, especially serial trolls (those who return after being banned, usually with a similar name that has new numbers on the end), are a large part of the culture of the General Discussion forum, though less popular or common in other forums. There are many types of trolls, including but not limited to:


 * Spam trolls: Those who post large amounts of spam in non-spam forums. This type of troll tends to have a fanbase, as their posts are often creative, or at the least contain humor.
 * Jesusbots, a type of troll known for posting Christian promotional messages in both their own threads and random threads of others. Many of these are seemingly run by automated programs.
 * Porn trolls: Trolls who post pornographic images, either in their own threads or in the threads of others. There are many subcategories of these trolls, including guro trolls, Goatse trolls, and others. Most of this type are not serial trolls. These users and their images are generally not celebrated, as most other users do not want to see such images.
 * Image trolls: These sort of trolls post threads with images that, while not shocking in themselves, have little or no relevance to anything or are occasionally unpleasant without being pornographic in nature.
 * Gimmick posters: Unlike the other types, gimmick posters are rarely given bans. This type generally creates a wild, fictional persona and posts discussable yet strange threads about their alleged personal experiences. Often, these themes involve caricatures of people from various cultures, cavemen, robots, or small children.
 * Sophisticated trolls: These types of trolls are a very rare breed. They commonly post up offensive messages dealing with racism or attacking another 'group' in society. However, what sets them apart from the rest is they would go so far as to craft near essays on the matter, using proper grammar and even intelligent language. Sometimes the troll will go so far as to give several reasons for the inferiority of the group, as well as proposing ways of 'purging' them from Gaia and in some cases society.
 * 4chan Crapfloods: On occasion, it has been known for /b/ members on the popular 4chan imageboard to sloppily organize Gaia floods. While these types of attacks are typically brushed off by the Gaia community, some prominent trolls, such as the infamous negrogotshot! have lead numerous crapflood attacks against Gaia.

Scammers/Hackers
These users can barely be referred to as part of the social hierarchy due to their deviant and illegal behavior, but they are present, none-the-less.

The term "scammer" refers to a user that uses various methods to cheat other users out of their items and/or gold.

Common methods include:


 * The scammer requests another user's password, claiming to be part of the Gaia staff with intention to log into that user's account and steal or sell that user's items. With the addition of red-font notes in the Private Message center of user's accounts as well as several stickies regarding the staff never asking for a user's password, there have been less reports of this sort of scamming.
 * A seemingly more common form of scamming arises when a scammer will claim that they will trade "x" item for someone else's items (usually "x" will be an expensive item and the person wishing to buy it will have an offer that is too low and contains over the maximum bank trade of 12 items, but contains quite an amount of worth, instilling a sense of eagerness and gratitude in the buyer). The scammer will then claim that they will insert item "x" into the last trade to finish the deal, however, they will not. This procedure is normal when a trade is to be made with someone having over 12 items in their offer, so it takes an amount of trust to participate in this sort of trade.
 * Relating to the previous method of scamming, thankfully less common, the scammer will claim that the item they are trading is what it is not (usually regarding donation letters), or that it is actually in the trade window, though not visible. Most users do not fall for this sort of transaction and it does not result in a scamming.
 * An older, now less common method of scamming involves a user selling wrapped gift boxes claiming that it holds a certain item when it does not. These sorts of "sales" are seen as lotteries rather than normal transactions and will be viewed as scamming if there is a direct claim that one, specific item is contained within the wrapped gift box (it is acceptable if the user states that item "x", "y" or "z" might be in the gift box) or if the user attempts to sell the wrapped gift box in the Exchange forum as a specific, wrapped item.
 * Lotteries are also subject to scamming. The user scamming will claim to be holding a lottery, sell tickets for a fee, then never actually hold the lottery and use the gold for their own purposes.

The term "hacker" tends to be exchanged with "scammer" on Gaia, though it should be only specific to those that guess or use a program to decipher another user's password with intent to gain control of that user's account, thereby stealing or selling that user's items, destroying that user's credibility, and/or getting the user banned.

Scammers and hackers, if caught, are banned. If there is any discrepancy over what may have taken place, accounts are locked/frozen until the dispute is sorted out.

Typical Problem Posts
In Gaia Online, there are many different forums and sub-forums. Each of these may have a slightly different subculture - in that they may all use common slang / jokes that usually only the regular members of that particular forum would understand. They may also share similar annoyances - such as topics created:


 * Asking for a boyfriend or girlfriend (normally referred to as BF/GF)
 * Asking for a friend (Acceptable in the Friends Chat forum.)
 * Asking a question which has been answered many times, and is included in a sticky at the top of the forum
 * Asking for Neopets points or any other thing from another game/website.
 * Asking for charity (This is acceptable in the Charity forum)
 * Asking for pornography (This may be more common then most users are aware, but these topics are often deleted quickly)
 * Asking to "cyber" with someone (though such may be considered an offense, seeing actual soliciting for such is illegal on the site)
 * Asking for gaia items for free but not in a quest thread.

Another problem that frequently happens is a user will advertise their topic in somebody elses post without the post owners permission.

Common Methods of Earning Gold
Methods include:


 * Posting, including "bumping"
 * Lurking The most common behavior of the more reserved Gaians which involves reading countless threads with no real intent to post. Possibly the slowest method.
 * Visiting threads with polls, voting in them, then leaving to obtain the reward of 10 gold for voting (also known as "poll whoring"). Some user-started polls have the "poll whore" option for those who are simply voting for gold with no interest in the associated topic.
 * Buying items, then selling them for a profit; known as exchanging or "exchange whoring."
 * Avatar contests, where a variable number of users participate according to a theme (best-dressed, cosplay, demonic/dark, angelic, color-based, etc.) with the outcome decided by poll or judging. (Stereotypically, these contests are biased in favor of those that have the most expensive items, rather than how well the avatar actually fits the theme.)
 * Obtaining rare/random events, including: Pink links (1000 gold), Enchanted Trunks (poor random item), Blue Giftboxes (fair random item), and Pink Giftboxes (good random item). These events happen randomly so are not a dependable source of income, however, they happen frequently enough that many users do obtain gold or items to be sold in this manner.
 * Artistic users can sell artwork based on another's avatar for profit. (Seen in the form of commissions and auctions.)
 * Artistic users can also create unofficial items/services to sell in the minishop forum, as well as unofficial pets to sell in the breedable/changing pets forum.
 * Participating in art contests where a user requests drawing(s) of certain character(s) and the winner receives a prize. (Such contests are usually focused toward a certain style or method of drawing, commonly anime-style portraits.)
 * Rating another's artwork in the 'Art Arena'
 * Collecting fish, trash, or bugs in minigames and selling them in the marketplace
 * Gambling in the casino and selling the tickets for gold in the marketplace
 * Using a reloading browser to gain a lot of gold (over 2k per night). Cheaters use this method, but if caught, they will get banned from the website.
 * Winning "lotteries" run by users who disperse tickets for a fee, with the winners chosen by an online randomizer, or, rarely, the pulling-from-a-hat method. (Lotteries are a common instance where "scammers" will cheat a user out of their gold.)
 * Receiving donations from other Gaia users who are kind enough to do so. However rarely this occurs.
 * Setting up a countdown board in the "chatterbox" subforum; since each post earns gold, by the time you reach 0 you will have gained more gold than the number the countdown starts at.

Gaia Fanthreads
In recent times, fanthreads have formed around items, users, and NPCs alike, amassing huge amounts of fans. One of the most popular figures is the zombie rabbit from the Halloween events in 2004 and 2005, named "Grunny." Grunny is a green zombie rabbit that was part of the H2K4 plot, and currently has a huge fanbase. Even the admins have recognized this, adding Grunny desktop backgrounds available for download, as well as a "Grunny" theme to the new profile system. Grunny also played a large role in H2K5, the main game being to hunt an army of Grunnys in the Gambino Mansion (the owner of the mansion being conveniently absent).

Other NPCs have fanbases as well, such as Ian; in response to his popularity, he has been featured in recent plot updates as an ambiguously malicious character. A NPC portrayed as Ian's rival, Liam, has appeared in the new town of Aekea, providing more drama for the fanbase.

Among the other NPCs, the only NPC that could contend with Grunny in terms of sheer popularity is Gino Gambino. Several threads ranging from threads concerned for his safety (For the time when he was missing) to harems dedicated to the sole purpose of obsessing over Gino have emerged as very popular hangouts in the community. Johnny Gambino has similar fame, but he does not have as many fan threads. Many users are still concerned for his safety, however, and eagerly await his supposed return; while it was indicated that Gambino was shot, many people are still unsure if he is really dead. Gambino's rivals, the Von Helson Sisters, have significantly less fame and popularity. Many times when a poll of popularity has been released on the home page, Gambino has led by a significant margin over the Von Helson Sisters. Their whereabouts are unknown as well, but fewer are concerned.

Fanboys and fangirls are also common of certain users. These users are usually very popular over one or more forums, usually have expensive avatars, and frequently have high post counts or early join dates. Mods and especially admins have huge followings as well. If an admin happens to make an appearance in a thread or in the newly released Towns feature, an MMORPG-style environment linked to Homes, it causes a huge positive uproar among the users. Similarly, if an admin is ever shown to be Online, it is not uncommon to find threads suspicious that those admins are up to something, such as testing a new feature for example.