Stories

These are the folk stories of the internet, sometimes stretching into long, sprawling epics. They're pretty much books in themselves, and gripping reads at that.

• The Bibliotheca Anonoma's Workroom contains a large stack of stories we're still reviewing. You can comment on it, track our progress, even help out.
• If you just need to drop off new stories/content, toss it in our thread at Vyrd.net, the team can build a page for it here.

Something Awful

Stories gleaned right out of SA's paywall.

• The Great Scam - A tale of Nightfreeze's investment scam in EVE Online. It shows how people are forced to turn to evil when everything goes wrong, and showcases the immateriality of video gaming in contrast with the zealotry of its players.
• American Dream - A once-hardworking forgotten manager gets paid doing absolutely nothing except browse the internet. This is a tale of his struggle to maintain his lifestyle against the forces of Human Resources and jealous bosses. As time goes on, he realizes that he has achieved what few others have experienced: The American Dream.
  • Cubicle Jungle - A tale of a plucky worker stuck in a horrid savanna of office blocks, where a herd of white collar workers are constantly tormented by the fear of a supervisor looking over the walls, licking their chops, and going in for the kill. But one day, he grabs a Nerf gun, the predator becomes the prey, and life changes forevermore. It's all fun and games until everything bursts into flames, apparently.
• P-P-Powerbook - A SA goon tried to sell a Powerbook on eBay, but is contacted by a scammer instead. He decides to play along with the scammer, and hilarity ensues.
• AOHell - How a man started out as a 15-year-old AOL hacker, growing up to become a powerful spam king.
• Something Awful - Comedy Goldmine - "The Comedy Goldmine examines the funniest and most creative threads from the Something Awful Forums. Includes hilarious Photoshops, amusing work stories, parodies, and other types of oddball humor."
  • Many of the most famous Something Awful tales ever told over it's storied history end up here. True to it's title, it's a massive goldmine, a decade of content and counting. Though they don't have everything.
  • Something Awful - Frontpage Directory - Other compilations of content.
• The Let's Play Archive - "The Let's Play Archive is a collection of entertaining video game playthroughs of all genres and styles."

4chan

Disclaimer: While no NSFW images are displayed, be warned that 4chan is a website where where rape jokes and pornographic subtext were par for the course. However, as Nurse-kun states, "4chan, at it's core, is simply humanity without it's formalities."

• Bob Anderson's 4chan Story Collection - An anon known as Bob Anderson has been archiving original literature and greentext from 4chan since 2013.

Feels Bad Man

Stories that will leave you crying.

• Lee Won - An anon from /r9k/ decides to start his own crappy rock band. They call themselves "The Korean Pop Robots 9000" after their star guitarist, Lee Won.
  • Hilarity ensues. And drama. And all those other emotions you see in a good band movie. It's a story definitely worth making a movie about.
• Tramp Anon - The recollections of an anon thrown out of his house as a youngster, left homeless in a cold and hungry world.
  • He faces tremendous pain and struggle in a vicious cycle of poverty, relying only on his will to survive. But one day, an immigrant girl decides to cut him some slack when no one else would, and bring him back to a normal life.
• Cool Story Bro - When an anon from /r9k/ opens his door one fine day, he sees a woman on her knees, begging him for help; one that betrayed his love, shattered his trust, and stole from his family.
  • And despite the odds, Dan, conflicted between deep-seated hatred and lingering love, reluctantly gives a safe haven to a woman whose transgressions he once deemed "unforgivable".
• Ella - In high school, an anon and a bro is instantly mesmerized by the "girl next door": Ella. The bro, named Pete, enrolls in a fashion class to have something to talk about with her, and ends up knowing more about fashion than most seniors do about economics. But fearing that they might be perceived as a "gay couple" for spontaneous interest, they develop some kind of "manly handshake": A douchebag version of Cirque du Soleil. It was embarrassing, but she caught on to his unrequited love... and decided to ask him out on a date, and they hit it off.
  • It's one of these amazing Hollywood/HBO-quality stories with temptations, love triangles, twists and turns, drama, tragedy, and obviously intercourse. But at the end of it all, it's better to have loved... than to never have loved at all.

Rage

• The Tale of Fionn

WTF

These stories will make you hurl.

• Cheerios - A man who loves Cheerios. A bit... too much.
• The Bridgekeeper - One man's tale of woe about his mistake of a life, and the hardships and wrongs he's faced.
• b-sides - This is a collection of stories written by /b/, where writers, after looking at some strange pictures, decided to write up a crazy side story behind them.
• Pools Closed Novel - WTF is this? A mess of memes created as a copypasta by anons on /b/.
• Horrible Monster - 5/10 story from /r9k/

Technology

• In the Beginning There was the Command Line - Neal Stephenson's satirical treatise of UNIX, personal computers, and the merits of graphical vs command line interfaces.
• The Curse of the Text Editor - The title says it all.
• A Brief History of UNIX - A satirical history of UNIX, written in biography form.

2channel

• Densha Otoko - A sentimental love story of a fashionable businesswoman and an awkward nerd, who posted his story real time to the users of 2channel (a direct ancestor to 4chan). With the steadfast support of these users, he manages to get the courage to break out of his shell and go out with the girl. There's a good reason why it became 2005's most popular book, movie, and TV Drama in Japan.
• Chikan Otoko - An innocent 2ch user accidentally gets mistaken for a Train molester, though he survives the experience with a bit of charm.
• The Story of Denko - (´･ω･`)

Progrider

• Neurotypical idiots - a story about neurotypicals and how relationships aren't that important at all.

Reddit

• 65 Mustang GT - A story about a 24-year old classic car restorer, who is given the responsibility of looking after a neighbor's kid, Rachel. They eventually become the best of friends, working together to rebuild a '65 Mustang GT Coupe. But time stops for no man, and those nostalgic days simply can't last forever.
• The iPhone Scalper - Marc Rebillet happens to be first in line for an iPhone, when an eBay scalper offers him $800 for his spot, planning to buy out the entire store's $100,000 worth of iPhones and sell them at extreme markup. But she probably should have read that only one iPhone should be sold per customer. And Marc happened to be have friends who were 10th in line, so they got 2 iPhones and were $800 richer.
• Rome Sweet Rome - A story of what happens when an American Battalion suddenly finds themselves in the Roman Empire. It got a huge following in it's initial release, and even a movie deal.
• The Automator - A story akin to the American Dream, where a redditor, hired to manually type numbers into a computer, decides to create a program to do it for him. And thus, he manages to rake in bonuses while doing no work at all for 8 hours a day.
• Sweet Home 1985 - A story of what happens when a man from 2011 wakes up in the year 1984, and is forced to seek help at his own childhood home. Due to a similar inception to RomeSweetRome, it was put into the subreddit /r/1985Sweet1985.
  • We were unable to find the original Reddit threads of this story on our own, but a user named Vestrideus discovered that we had mistitled it 1984, rather than 1985. Many thanks, bro.

Hackers

419 Scambaiters

The men who decided to do something impressive: To scam the scammers, to distract them from victims, to lead them to ruin; such that the scammers will feel what it is like to be a victim. These are the stories of the Scambaiters.

• NPR: This American Life - Interview of 419Eater Admins - An amazing introduction to the world of scambaiting.
  • 419Eater - NPR Listening Thread - The thread where the 419Eater admins hear their own interview and make comments.
• 419Eater Letters Archive - The very best safaris and mad antics that scambaiters have sent scammers on.
  • 419Eater Letters Forum - Scambaiting is happening every week.
• Yeawhatever's Scambaiting Website - Yeawhatever's website was lost to time, unfortunately, but the Internet Archive has snapshots of it. Here are the stories that were lost:
  • The Road to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest - Forum Post Edition
  • The Road to Abu Sunbul - The scammer stopped replying after a while, but it was a great run.
  • The Road to the Hot Zone

Stories from the Anarchist's Cookbook

Mostly from the Anarchists Cookbook.

• The Cuisinart Blade
• Bad as Shit
• Secrets of the Little Blue Box

External Links

Links to good stories hosted outside of the Bibliotheca Anonoma.

• Danny Choo - How Discovering Japan Changed My Life - An inspirational story about how Danny Choo, a poor Chinese Malaysian kid in Britain, became obsessed with Japanese culture, and went to great lengths to learn Japanese and even just visit Japan.
  • While Danny Choo drifted worldwide through a variety of admirable careers, he is most famous for a startup that created websites and translated English for Japanese companies. That startup evolved into today's well-connected Culture Japan; which he made to promote Japanese culture throughout the world, to reach people just as it had inspired him.
  • >He will soon be known for bringing about the enslavement of humanity by sexy robot dolls. hue hue hue
• Narcissu - A heartbreaking visual novel of a road trip by a man and a woman, both of whom die. Safe for Work.
• The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans - spoopy

Comics

• Kate Beaton - A comic artist whose simple anachronistic comics about literature and historical figures have become a staple of internet culture.
• The Perry Bible Fellowship - Comics filled with outlandish surreal humor. Heavily referenced around the internet.