Star Syndicate

The Star Syndicate Banner

The Star Syndicate is a Newgrounds flash group known for making the popular Dailytoons series, and are also notable for trolling areas of Newgrounds for entertainment value.

History

The group first started in April 2004 and really got going in September. In that month, they began making their appearance with holiday themed collabs, and little-effort movies which gave them a bad reputation with the Newgrounds community. In October 2004, they submitted their first ever Dailytoon which would become the group's most popular series to date. The formula for Dailytoons was very simple- ask for submissions from anybody and lump them all together- then submit in a little colab group- one per day. It doesn't matter if some or even most of the toons are poor quality, so long as people believed that others would protect them, enough stat whores would vote them through and they would not be blammed. This Dailytoon recipe has made the Star Syndicate one of the best known crews on Newgrounds, without having to create their own material. Five years later, they had submitted over 400 pieces of flash, and had become Newgrounds's top uploader. Although they became mostly inactive after 2007, in May 2010, they [http://thestarsyndicate.newgrounds.com/news/post/471587 announced] through the Star Syndicate User Page that they would restart Daily Toons.

Star Syndicate Official Account

With hundreds of Dailytoons, Daily2oons, Star Day subs, SS Time Trials etc. the SS Account has the largest number of Submissions of not only any Crew Account, but any account- As of August 2010 it has nearly 1000. The Account boasts 41 Awards including many dailys and two Weekly 3rds.

Recognition by Newgrounds

They have a day dedicated to Star Syndicate cartoons, called "Star Day" celebrating the day when the Star Syndicate was formed, April 23rd, and a large Collection including not only selected toons from Star Day, but those from Daily Day and Dailytoons, amongst others.

Notoriety

A typical angry review.

They are most well-known on Newgrounds for their tendencies to submit large amounts of low-quality submissions, angering users. They are submitted to get uneducated, and poorly written reviews or comments, which can be funny for how poor the review is. They are also submitted because it's fun for the group to submit flash, no matter how crappy and try to get it through judgement. However, this does not neccesarily reflect an SS member's true ability to make movies, as they have also been known for submitting high quality movies, many getting awards such as Weekly User's Choice, Daily Feature, and frontpage on many, many occasions. The best known legitimate members of the group are rtil (and his alt xtil), ZekeySpaceyLizard, cr0mZX, Sinista, HLG, JettoNinjin, StarBerry, f0d, GFC and Gavin.

SevenStar, a key member of the Star Syndicate, added to their notoriety, when after his account was deleted for submitting child porn, he was treated as a martyr by the SS.

Abusing and Exploiting Newgrounds

Main article: Abusing and Exploiting Newgrounds

Goldencat (also famous for rapping in his earlier years on NG) and Chrome- have made many attempts to annoy the userbase. Goldencat made a book telling how to exploit the Newgrounds voting systems. Within a month after the release of the book, the link (hosted on xh4ck) had received over 7000 unique views.

Other

Also, they have made viruses that they trick people into downloading them onto the victim's computer, one being a famous artist with the username of Wonchop. The virus got mixed reviews from SS members; the people who hated Wonchop liked it and thought it was funny his computer got messed up, while other users stated that the virus had gone "too far" and it wasn't in the spirit of the SS.

Chrome-, now going under the name cr0m, is still around today even though many have thought he has disappeared. He is alleged to have made many malicious scripts such as a SWF exploit that he named "Operation: BSOD". When the user hit the frame which contained the malicious code, he or she would instantly see the Blue Screen of Death if running a Windows OS. He has allegedly hijacked several thousand NG accounts created within 2000-2003.

4chan Fandango

In 2008, another such virus was released, this time disguised as a game called "4chan Fandango." Several high-level accounts were hijacked and used to advertise the game via PM and BBS spam. The "game" was hosted on an external site (4chanfandango.co.nr, which has since been suspended) and contained a highly malicious virus. First, a keylogger script would collect the victim's site passwords and relay them to a central e-mail account while other scripts would open unescapable browser windows that forced victims to view poorly made (and often overtly pornographic) Flash movies while blocking access to Newgrounds. To add insult to injury, the virus embedded itself in System32 and disabled the right-click feature, access to Command Prompt and many administrator privileges (even on administrator accounts) so it could not be removed without formatting the affected hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. Eventually Newgrounds user and Lock Legion member TrashLock traced the hacked passwords to an email account and destroyed it.

External links

• The Star Syndicate on Newgrounds