Friday, May 20, 2011

Friday Roundup

Some favorites and a few duds from the waning moments of existence as we know it.

Favorites
, in no particular order:

Steve_U dropped the day's first winner in the Thrashers to Winnipeg post, earning a round of applause. Nice work.

I enjoyed this thread, featuring dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac, Tulos_Mullet, snoop-a-loop, unstarred commenter Rare Endangered Vuvuzela, Eddie Murray Sparkles, and Body By Bacardi. The excellent original comment from dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac worked because of its self-aware use of the Emmitt Smith meme. The silly thread that followed expanded upon that characteristic, including a couple of tongue-in-cheek bare-bones iterations of other popular memes. At any rate, I chuckled at this. Nice work.

Hatey McLife's Iron Sheik joke in the Macho Man post rendered me disabled for several minutes this afternoon. I laughed and laughed at this. I'm still laughing.

DJ Jazzy Jeff Weaver's comment in the same post also killed me. That's just ridiculously funny. Excellent work.

Not to be outdone, Eddie Murray Sparkles dropped this outrageously funny joke in the same post. I'm not kidding here - I laughed until it hurt while reading these three comments today. I mean I was dying. I can't tell you how many times I scrolled back and forth between this comment and the photo at the top of the post. At a certain point, laughing became crying. It was embarrassing.

And finally, in the Jared Max post, President Camacho showed the commentariat how to kill with a photo-joke. That's a job well done. The photo is not the joke, it's a reference for the joke. It accompanies the joke. Nice work.

Total Fucking Duds

Our first dud comes from unstarred commenter 1jaxstate1, whom I suspect has no future as a Deadspin commenter. One of these days, I'll abandon all dignity and start investigating in even greater detail the commenting histories of people like 1jaxstate1. I will unearth the identity of the featured commenters behind these approvals, and I will publicly shame them. It's either that or be disemboweled during tomorrow's Rapture.

Unstarred commenter Paolo.Lex returned from the void today and left this pile in the Thrashers to Winnipeg post. I suppose absolutely nothing was learned during the exile. Ah well. And to unstarred commenter CarlCarlerson, I'd be real careful about calling out another commenter like that. The same rule that makes Paolo.Lex's comment inappropriate applies to any replies as well: make sure you're being funny. I would take it a step further, even - if you're calling out another commenter for not being funny, be damn funny. Extra super-duper funny.

I was disappointed to see Hit Bull Win Steak leave this unadorned clip from The Simpsons in the Thrashers to Winnipeg post. I probably don't need to rehash my issue with this kind of comment. It boils down to the difference between being funny and observing funny, and the rule is be funny.

Unstarred commenter dondi203 apparently gave up on commenting for good after being slapped by ClueHeywood for this mostly terrible offering in the Thrashers to Winnipeg post. It's a bad comment. But I have to say, it's a bit of a shame to see a commenter more or less jettisoned from the commentariat, and in the case of dondi203, he actually seemed to be improving as a commenter. I'm not saying he was on the bullet train to Featured Town, but he'd started regularly submitting halfway decent comments of late. This joke, from Thursday, while certainly not groundbreaking and having been denied a promotion or any feedback (until now), at least reflects an honest-to-God sense of humor. I'm not saying ClueHeywood's assessment was wrong, but herein lies the danger of sniping another commenter's work in this way; it would be a shame if the commentariat took to actively cannibalizing itself in full view of readers. I say, if you don't have a kick-ass joke to use as your snarky reply to a bad comment, and without the benefit of personal messages, use the time-tested method of going way back to a DUAN comment from the person's history to give them this kind of feedback. You save them the humiliation and keep this kind of incident out of view (says the guy who routinely refers to people as morons and degenerates from the safety of his blog).

As for dondi203, this was a bad comment. But I disagree with the overall assessment of Deadspin's commentariat; for the most part, Deadspin's commenters are a goofy, gregarious group of solid people, and I think time and exposure would lead one to agree. I'd recommend a return to commenting, albeit much more conscientiously.

In the Rotationplasty post, unstarred commenter BeerbogganingGoldMedalist left ye olde The Simpsons clip with the flimsiest of captions. I'm going to assume BGM is a new commenter, and I'll use that assumption as an excuse to point out that it often takes new commenters a while to figure out that there's more to commenting than searching YouTube for an appropriate The Family Guy or The Simpsons clip. Of course, it would help if featured commenters like Hit Bull Win Steak would stop reinforcing this behavior.

And finally, we can thank unstarred commenter FutbolGenius for filling our quota of lame, worthless porn jokes with this uninspired offering in the Bear Tennis post. Think bigger!

Hey, in case I never see you again because the world is coming to an end ohmyGodohmyGodohmyGod, you magnificent sonsofbitches crack me up, keep doin' what you're doin'.

Enjoy your last DUAN ever, and have a great weekend.

7 comments:

  1. Of late there has been both incidents and duan discussions pertaining to the relationship between starred and unstarred commenters.

    Just because you have a star, it does not mean you are the be all and end all of this bloody site. For the most part, the starred commenters are hilarious and consistent, but almost daily, a starred commenter, often one who rarely comments, will leave an absolute abortion of a joke for all to stare at in wonderment.

    From my perspective, as somebody who has been commenting for a year now, the consistency and frequency with which stars are handed-out puzzles me at times, and I wonder just how some of these people were starred. Having said that, I am not denegrating the system, and for the most part, I believe it works. Kudos to AJ and whoever the fuck the ninja is for their efforts - they're much appreciated.

    If I'm being confused with a whiny twat - I'd like to acknowledge that 90% of the starred commenters are brilliant. The speed with which you folk execute such comedy astounds me.

    Am I saying I deserve a star? no. I have my moments, and then I also have the keyboard equivalent of verbal diarrhea at times and 'submit' button afflictions that set me back ten steps for each productive step forward.

    Note - this is not about me, nor is it about anybody in particular.

    Perhaps why I'm taking the time to write this today is because I felt a tinge of sympathy today for that Dondi character. I have no beef with Clue Heywood - dude makes me laugh. We all have good moments, and then those that suck, but the element of deadspin that I love is that we are a community of people, from all walks of life and who support various sports to varying degrees that share but two commonalities; we love sports and to laugh.

    Some of us are funnier than others. That's life - let's just try to get along and feed off of each other without putting each other down.

    Having said that, enjoy duan - shout outs to MBA for all your efforts and to those that make me laugh, incl. EddieMurray, SameSad, Steve_U, Phin, Cyrus, Hatey, WalkOff HBP, Ron Artesticular, David Hume, LenBiasCoke, where the fuck is Lionel Osbourne, CBronson, IronMikeGallego, AzureTexan, Sharting, TastesLikeBurning, Yuni, MaverickisAirborne, Bevraj, Uwe, WashForeskins, SaveTofavorites, HitBullWin, MacNCheese, Sheed'sBaldSpot, Delonte Interrupted, Desi, Tamzarian, BodBy Bacardi, BirdLaw, DrjamesAndrews, EddieSuttonSOCO, Fendi, PolkPanther, Maloik, DonteStallworth, Always Winning, Tulos Mullet and Vodkanaut - you guys continously make me laugh and I thank you for it (if I missed you, it's probably because I forgot - except you shuttledik!)

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  2. Awesome stuff. Thanks for another great week.

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  3. Dondi was not funny. Plain and simple. Either he's just not funny, or he wasn't trying hard. Regardless, the end result is the same.

    As for stars v. unstarred - Obviously not every single joke you make is going to be a winner. I know I've left some real duds out there recently. Also, the way stars were initially handed out was not based on merit. Or at least, they weren't subjectively given out. You had to amass a certain number of followers and once you reached that threshold you automatically got one. That's how I was starred.

    Now, there is kind of a correlation there, the funnier you are, the more followers you will get. But, then there's DUAN. Where everyone buddied up and you had the midnight gossipers all getting stars.

    So yeah, some stars suck ass. But I guess they were grandfathered in.

    The last thing I'll say is: if there are people making an effort to genuinely make people laugh, it's just annoying to have someone else take up space with whatever stupid thought popped into there head and sent electrical messages to their fingers forcing them to type something about old men and onion belts or whatever that fucking episode was about.

    It isn't one commenter thinking they are better than the other because of some electronic caste system. It's one commenter saying "Hey, we're all pulling this wagon and you're just sitting on the back end like that? Either pitch in, or get off the fucking wagon."

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  4. I agree that dondi203 isn't funny. And I agree with ClueHeywood's evaluation of that comment, which is why I included it in the duds tonight. But as a general rule, I think it's somewhat out of line to call someone out in that specific manner. It's humiliating, and Deadspin doesn't gain from that. The same exact reply could be delivered in an old thread or old DUAN and make the same point, sans the humiliation.

    As for my own two cents about featured vs. unstarred, I do not perceive a broad conflict. But the fact is, the vast majority of comments from unstarred commenters are not very good, and the comments that are most likely to be flat-out lazy and, at times, hostile to the mores of commenting come from unstarred commenters. When you spend your time on Deadspin taking pride in your contributions and valuing the role you play in providing Deadspin content, it can be massively frustrating to see someone submit unrevised, unadorned, and utterly irrelevant lyrics in a post.

    The lesson here is this; take pride in your contributions, and remember that all promotions come from a group of featured commenters that follow and respect a very specific set of commenting guidelines. If that awareness guides your comments, I think you'll do fine.

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  5. This being the first time I've "slapped" another commenter, I was unaware there was a SOP of replying to a prior DUAN thread. So I guess I regret the public flogging--that's how we did it in Deadspin's medieval times. Still, I've been noticing a proliferation of late of the lazy of laziest comments: wholesale quotation of song lyrics that have only a tangential relationship with the subject. Shitty comments like that are the turd in the punchbowl. So I ripped him a little. Did I think that Mr. Sensitive would take his ball and go home? No...in fact, a good commenter would insult me right back.

    In sum: I regret nothing!

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  6. Although I've certainly been guilty of it many, many times, I agree that commenters should refrain from calling each other out.

    But its just as you say, most of us try to tow the line, so stop being the weak link who doesn't try.

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  7. Based on ninja comments, I think stars currently go out to people who bring the funny during the prime day-time, weekday hours. That's as it should be. If you only occasionally post, or rarely pull together a run of good stuff during the weekdays, a star might not be in your future. But does having a star matter to whether a joke is funny or not? Keep striving to be funnier, learn what a low-quality comment is and avoid it, and the rest will take care of itself.

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