Josh Lyman learns about Web Forums the Hard Way

This may be one of my favorite little side stories in The West Wing ever.

In the third season, episode 16 “The U.S. Poet Laureate” there is a sub-story about a “fan site” devoted to Josh Lyman called “LemonLyman.com”.

In it Josh falls prey to one of the most sinister traps on all the Internet, summarized brilliantly here in XKCD #386:

Unfortunately for Josh he doesn’t seem to realize the futility of this, and (even worse) ignores the sage advice of the lovely and smarter Donna, who tries repeatedly to warn him.

Enough preamble. Here’s the clip (7min 32sec, about 12.5mb):

Some highlights (note that the times are of the clip above, not from the actual episode):

Starting at 1:33:

Josh: Sit down, we’re going to post a response on the site.
Donna: What site?
Josh: Lemon-
Donna: No.
Josh: Yeah, we gotta post a response to someone.
Donna: It’s a bad idea.
Josh: Why?
Donna: You don’t know these people.
Josh: Neither do you.
Donna: Yes I do.
Josh: What’s wrong with them?
Donna: Nobody knows.

3:00 Donna: [After typing the response Josh insists on sending] What Josh doesn’t know is that some of these people haven’t taken their medication. Let’s watch what happens now.

3:18 Josh: Donna… something weird is happened here.
Donna: What?
Josh: Lemon-
Donna: No…
Josh: They don’t seem to have taken my response in the spirit it was intended.
Donna: Yeah
Josh: Seems to be a very unusual social structure…for instance, there’s a leader who seems to pride herself on her organizational skills and a certain amount of discipline…
Donna: Right, that’s what’s called a “control freak”.
Josh: She does seem to do an awful lot of scolding: “You posted in the wrong place… Stay on topic, people… Don’t use capital letters… I don’t have time to tell you twice” when clearly she does have time to tell us twice.

4:58
Josh: (dictating) “… and I believe I’ll use capital, lowercase, or san-skrit right up until the moment that the ‘font police’ cuff me and read me Miranda.”
Donna: That’ll show ‘em.
Josh: I think these are good people by and large, but they’ve come under the thumb of a dictatorial ruler, so as with a small central american country, my role is to incite the people to topple her.

5:28
Josh: The internet people are going crazy…
Donna: (mockingly incredulous) You’re kidding!
…
Josh: … a page and a half of posts debating whether or not I was mocking Egyptians with the san-skrit reference.
Donna: I told you they were hysterical.
Josh: I thought you meant they were funny.
Donna: They’re not!
Josh: I know they’re not! It’s Lord of the Flies in there!

(Around 6:06 C.J. comes onto the scene.)

6:40
CJ: The people on these sites, they’re the cast of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Brilliant. And just as accurate now as it was six years ago when it first aired. Maybe even more.

ps: “LemonLyman.com” is not a real website, by the way. It simple redirects to Warner Brothers website.

Tagged as: west-wing