User:T-Boy
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Tariq Kamal (born November 6, 1981), otherwise known by the online pseudonym T-Boy, is a not-at-all known web designer, geek, attention whore, busybody, lifestyle blogger, all around twerp, netizen, poseur and Wikipedian. He is usually seen around the fringe of online communities either cowardly lurking or sassing the general public (to their consternation). Sadly, his inability to resort to proper trolling, as apparently a hormonal imbalance in his system (thus causing a severe shortage in hormones like testosterone) means that he is quite unable to do more than sass facetiously and resort to swear words like "dang", and "poot". He is therefore actually quite sad and docile, and, incidentally, fairly attractive to ladies who are in need of a general beast of burden and punching bag.
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[edit] Personal history before discovering the Internet
Kamal was born in Kuala Lumpur, the eldest son of a family of diligent, workaholic over-achievers, who named him after the writer-filmaker Tariq Ali. He almost immediately began disappointing them, prefering a life of drinking soy milk and watching episodes of Sesame Street instead of doing things that over-achievers his age did, like join ballet classes, seducing the neighbourhood Indonesian maids or something, anything really, other than to watch Big Bird and his goddamn liberal friends prance about in a hyper-attenuated surreal version of New York City.
His trend of underachieving continued into his school years, when he was enrolled in SRK Taman Melawati (now known as SK Taman Melawati [1]), a primary school in Gombak. Here, the unfortunate coincidence of his name, hitherto unnoticed, become readily apparent. As it was, his first name, Tariq, which, in Arabic, meant 'shining star' is a homonym of the Malay word tarik, which means 'to pull'. Thus, not only was Kamal mocked for his liberal, skiving, underachieving ways, but his name was really entertaining to make fun of too, as such brilliant gems of comedy like teh tarik (a popular Malaysian beverage) and tarik tali(the Malay name for tug of war) would demonstrate.
Lesser men would have cracked under the pressure, and spent the coming years broken in soul and spirit, before unleashing their fury in some kind of horrible act of retribution, like a school shooting or being promoted to middle management. Come to think of it, Kamal did break, but the repressive and authoritarian atmosphere of his early years meant that there was no way he could get his instrument of retribution, be it illicit firearms, pipe bombs or the funding proposal for a project that would determine the course of life of a former tormentor. Instead, he spent the next few years gibbering in the corner until secondary school.
It was during this period when he thought things would look up. Instead of going to some out-of-the way public school, he was being sent to a private school located in the heart and soul of Kuala Lumpur.
Ha. Some hope that turned out to be.
[edit] Discovering the Internet
Repeating the course of his life until college at this point would only sound like a litany of horrors, so we'll skip all of that and jump straight into his discovery of the Internet in 1994. For many normal, well-adjusted people, the Internet is a virtual cornucopia of knowledge, information, interaction and activism. It's not surprising, however, to note that Kamal spent the next three or so years obsessively collecting an impressive collection of pornography, all downloaded from the Internet. It was only after leaving secondary school did any alternative use of the Internet could be contemplated, and thus records of Kamal's interaction with the online community proper date from this period.
[edit] Early Interaction in USENET
Kamal's first USENET post was made to soc.culture.singapore, and set the tone of the rest of his communication on the Internet. No, folks, it does not get any better than this. A quick search of this period revealed a overly playful, tremendously naïve young man who had set out to... what, one cannot exactly tell. Troll-bait everyone to death? Who knows? It was during this three months, his trial by fire, that Kamal learnt the Golden Rule of Internet communications:
If you have something important to say, for the love of God don't post in public fora like USENET.
[edit] The forum years
He then spent the next few years bouncing around Internet forums, particularly ones like subdimension.net (whose pages are archived by the Internet Archive here), where he honed his skills on... um, Americans. They were really hard! Honest! They were educated and everything.
Stop laughing!
[edit] Blogging: A fucking disgrace
It is hard to say much good has come from Kamal's foray into blogging. He began his foray during late 2000, initially setting up a blog here, and then moving here, after realizing that that's how you spell "Nyarlathotep", dumbass.
While there were a few gems in this period, but otherwise, his output was a disgrace. It was all introspective navel-gazing, with no thought of the real world. It comes as no surprise that luminaries and major blogging Gods like Jeff Ooi have expounded their disappointment on bloggers like Kamal, and despair of ever making Malaysians educated and well-informed in their dealings with the government and local corporations.
There are things Kamal would like to say to Ooi about all his comments about the state of the Malaysian 'blogosphere', but he suspects that half the things he would be suggesting Ooi to do would be illegal, as well as technically physically impossible.
[edit] LiveJournal: Holy moley, this guy sure joins a lot of shitty communities
It cannot be said that Kamal's activities in LiveJournal are any better, as he is a member of Fandom wank. This makes him a cliquish lesbian poseur-wannabe, as all members of fandom wank all are, no exceptions. This of course tends to be problematic, as he has a fully-funtional penis.
He initially joined LiveJournal out of reluctance, fearing that hordes and hordes of yaoi-obsessed fangirls that would allegedly swamp him and turn him gay, and then watch him get it on with some other guy before retiring to their dens of iniquity to write fan fiction. For some reason this hasn't happened quite yet, and Kamal is pleased to report that he is still quite manly and studly and quite willing for the ladies, and there's no doubt that. No sir.
[edit] Today's role in the Modern Internet
He today maintains three presences on the Internet: his blog, his LiveJournal account and this Wikipedia userpage.
As it is, his roles in these areas tend to be closer to the fringe, and thus his feedback is rarely received, much less appreciated. It's probably a good thing that he didn't install any website monitoring software, as the revelation that really, nobody gives a shit about his life would probably be depressing.
[edit] Contributions to Wikipedia
Er... there aren't a lot of contributions made in his name. Most of his work tends to be minor corrections and reverts. It should be noted that he tries very hard to make sure that NPOV is enforced, and treats vandals as quickly and cleanly as possible, even if he gets pissed off with a few of them.
[edit] A Final Note
You know, it's really disturbing how easily it is to write in the third person once you get used to it. I can't believe I spent one and a half hours working on this thing. Wow. -T-Boy 15:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
