MarcusCicero

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“	Fuck you... Fuck any friendship we ever had, fuck it all. You sicken me completely. You represent everything vile. I hate you with a burning passion.	”
—MarcusCicero, to B♭maj7, 9 November 2011 [1]

“	...for the love you once bore me as a close friend... please reconsider your present course	”
—MarcusCicero, to B♭maj7, 40 minutes later[2]

MarcusCicero, aka Big Mac, is one of the most controversial members of RationalWiki. Unlike most others on the site, he usually does not indiscriminately bash religion and seems somewhat partial to articulately defending religion. He has excised several articles of perceived non-credible speculation or hearsay.^[3][4].

Various people have accused him of being immature^[5], a hypocrite,^[6] and of "doing a TK".^[7] He has also been accused of "unilaterally removing content without discussion"^[8] (although the first time he objected to material in an article he did comment using the article's talk page, even it he waited only three minutes to act^[9]).

On January 25, 2009, he was sysoped^[10] by Radioactive afikomen, who apparently thought he would be "mostly harmless." He was wrong. Big Mac promptly went on a rampage of blocking,^[11] blocking more than 20 people before Toast (who had been the victim of one of his blocks) promoted him again.^[10]

He is not a fan of Toast's political views.^[12] When not logged in he has edited from the IP 134.226.1.129^[13]; from that IP, he says that Toast outed herself as a sock of SusanG.^[14]

Despite having occupied himself with trolling throughout most of his time at RationalWiki, he "retired" from it on August 19th, 2010,^[15] and was taken out of the vandal bin by Lyra Silvertongue^[16]. This "spasm of conscience," to use his own words (see below), has no discernible catalyst, but it certainly made the site much more peaceful. During this period, he also began to carry on correspondence with AD, a practice ended by the latter when MC began excerpting out portions of the emails and sharing them with others (out of context and accompanied by absurd claims of villainy).

He returned to make a comment on the new WIGO:Cz, only to be vandal binned by LArron. Though Ace paroled him minutes later.

AD vandal binned him (yet again), but Big Mac unbinned himself. So in response AD de-sysopped him on 4 May 2011.^[17]

MC considers himself to be a puppetmaster troll or an idealistic reformer, depending on whatever suits his ego most at the moment. When he's ignored or scorned - most often - he rails against RationalWiki and hurls out intentionally hyperbolic insults. He's not very effective at this, thanks to his narrow knowledge base and difficulties with spelling.^[18] After sufficient pestering or when he gets a reaction, he claims victory and scuttles away, petting himself and muttering, "I am the winner, they all dance to my tune, I am the winner."

He has been known to praise other men's testicles.^[19]

Contents 1 Reform society and blocking incident 2 Troll admission 3 Socks 3.1 Likely socks 3.2 Marcus hands it to his socks 3.3 Spotting a real sock 4 Moderator action 5 McWiki 6 Awards 7 See also 8 Footnotes

Reform society and blocking incident

Big Mac returned again in September 2009, accusing RationalWiki of being "just a frivolous perpetuation of internet memes and teenage angst"^[20]. ToP sysopped him again, but Theemperor promoted him, ^[21] which resulted in a brief fight between the two.

Despite saying that he didn't want to be constructive,^[22] he started the The Rationalwiki Reform Society with the aim to restore RationalWiki to its "former glory", and rid the site of internet memes (against which he presumably once had an unfortunate childhood incident), juvenile jokes, and the Saloon bar. Naturally, this was met with significant derision, so he abandoned the idea in favor of trolling some more,^[23] which led to the Great MarcusCicero Blocking Incident.

Troll admission

In a sudden and quite unexpected spasm of honesty he "came out of the closet" as a troll in early December 2009. ^[24]. He then asserted that he would be leaving, and was blocked by Ace McWicked. This then led to a block war between himself, Ace, Kels, Gooniepunk2005, and others. He followed this up with a fairly childish little vandal rampage and was ultimately stripped of his sysop rights (which he probably shouldn't have had anyways) and vandal binned. Presumably even trolls can be overfed.

As tempting as his tantalizing promises of vast essays, voluminous novels, and scintillating commentary might be, it is worth remembering that at no point has his discussion of RationalWiki ever risen above clumsy name-calling, even when he had an entire wiki of his own within which to spin them. His oaths about vengeance and brilliance function as a shield, as they are sufficiently bombastic that he can hide under them and pretend to be a puppet-master. Ultimately, he is nothing more than a poorly-educated, rather tedious, and utterly conventional troll, fully aware of how shameful his behavior has been^[25]. Promises to the contrary are simply further trolling.

Socks

Mac has a history of creating transparent socks like Lunacy and hidden socks. He once claimed that he had at least one sock which took an active part in RW activities.^[26]

Theemperor (AKA Thedictator, Theautocrat, Dear Leader, Exalted Leader and Glorious Leader) has been identified elsewhere as a possible MC sock, but it is interesting to speculate about others. One can assume that a Mac sock will have some or all of the following characteristics.

• It will engage with Mac even though the rest of the site is interested in not feeding him.
• This engagement may be supportive as in the case of Neveruse or abusive as in the case of Theemperor.
• The sock may pretend to have philosophical pretensions or some Roman connection like EdmundBurke and Theemperor.
• The sock may try to be deliberately provocative like Conservapederast.

Of late (summer 2010), MC has given up on random sockpuppetry, and edits from a range of IPs in the 86.40.x.x area. He has focused his laser insights on hate for David Gerard, thus giving David carte blanche to break any longstanding RW conventions or guidelines he wants to.

Likely socks

• EdmundBurke
• IAMELIPHAS
• MarkCarthy

Marcus hands it to his socks

On the 9th of January 2009 Big Mac posted one of his regular departure messages:^[27]

• This thread has given me a spasm of conscience. Seeing pictures of people here (Especially Kels, who's 'concept drawing' is much more powerful than a mere picture) has led me to realise that I've been thinking of you as non entities, in short, that there wasn't someone behind the computer screen. Man, what a dick I've been. I'm sorry folks. I'll leave you alone from now on.

Despite this promise, he returned shortly afterward, and has continued in his usual behaviors, showing little to no further sings of remorse, save in occasional trolling stunts, such as when he pretended to be his "brother" John, and stated that Marcus had a serious mental illness and was seeking treatment for his abusive behavior online. He later reversed his stance and claimed this was simply another attempt to troll RationalWiki. Marcus tends to go on the defensive whenever this incident is brought up, as it offers one of the strongest examples of his trolling and disruptive behavior on the site. After his relapse, the intellectual level of most of his antics underwent a considerable decline; in the words of Ullhateme:

“

Marcus only has four insults: "fascist" for everybody that proposes a rule that wouldn't benefit him, "virgin" for everybody that dosn't agree with him, "aspie" for anybody that wants to follow any rule and "geek" or "nerd" sometimes paired with "your mom's basement" or "go play World of Warcraft" for anybody whom he just can't fit into a category.[28]

”

Spotting a real sock

From time to time, one sock or another will claim to be MC, in an attempt to muddy the waters, even when it was obviously not him. Because he has a highly distinctive style, as well as all the creative flexibility of a particularly unimaginative lump of kelp, MC's socks are easy to recognize. Look for the following traits:

• Even simple statements will be laden with poorly-spelled bombast. Simple conversational messages will frequently be addressed to some larger audience: "You will all regret this when my dad gets home!"
• Any predictions of the future will be unlikely, approaching impossible: "After I finish my novel about RationalWiki, that's when the accursed Sophist will bow before me!"
• Genuine socks will include references to one of MC's extremely narrow fields of knowledge, such as recent Irish history, Edmund Burke, or error: third item not found: "Much as the Lord Mayor of Cork once starved to death for his principles, so will I!"

Moderator action

As of July 2011 Big Mac was in hot water yet again; his attempted cooping of several editors for "bullying" prompted proposals to ban him.^[29] RationalWiki's newly-elected moderators intervened on July 9, handling their first case. This resulted in a one-month block of MarcusCicero, all his socks, imitators, and IPs, and also in his being desysopped permanently barring further moderator action.^[30] Human unilaterally gave Marcus userspace.

McWiki

See the main article on this topic: MCWiki

Marcus set up his own wiki. Turns out, he doesn't like being trolled, is a technical incompetent, and has no friends.

Awards

See also

• Aspie

Footnotes