Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Wednesday Roundup

Some favorites and a fucking staggering collection of duds from Wednesday's commenting.

Favorites
, in no particular order:

In the Wake Up Deadspin post, I laughed out loud at MarkKelsosMigraine's sharp George Will joke. Terrific.

In the Rondo Somersault post, I giggled at Fendi Hotdogbun's dig at Shaq. "Summer sausage" is really what did it.

Our guy dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac cracked me up with this awesome recontextualization in the Fantasy No-No post. Great job.

Hatey McLife pumped out a couple of winners on Wednesday. His contribution to the Jayson Werth post was probably the Comment of the Day. Later, in the soul-shattering zone of alienation that was Emma's Boob post, his Brett Pedroia joke was probably the other Comment of the Day. What can I say? Hatey rescued the commentariat today.

Brilliant, wonderful, and deeply-mourned commenter Clinton Portishead came back with a bang in Emma's Boob post, stirring quite the ovation with a characteristically fantastic one-liner. God, please, please, please let the prize for today's misery be the return of Clinton Portishead. It will all have been worth it.

And finally, if only for being spot-fucking-on in its appraisal of the situation, I really appreciated SponsoredbyV8's contribution to Emma's Boob post. It's funny because it's fucking depressing as hell and 100% accurate.

Total Fucking Duds

Strap in, motherfuckers. The little list I make of Duds on a notepad at my desk each afternoon is the fucking white pages. I had a moment today where I considered the possibility that the two Boobs pieces were a not-so-elaborate way of getting rid of my blog. I feel actual pity for those funny featured and unstarred commenters who attempted honest-to-God jokes in that environment. Those efforts were almost entirely swallowed by the most overwhelming crush of flat-out horrible commenting I can remember.

Here goes:

Unbelievably, unstarred commenter shuttledik reappeared, if only very briefly, in the Wake Up Deadspin post, to the dismay of actual commenters. The comment_ninja quickly shut him down again. I'm not sure how this happened, but it's somewhat discouraging. At any rate, our guy Tulos_Mullet earned a warning for his behavior in the thread. I suppose the rule here is Make Jokes, but a warning from AJ is a pretty strong nudge for a mostly harmless reply.

Also in the Wake Up Deadspin post, unstarred commenter CalClutterBuckFutter went with asking for a joke over making a joke. Stop it. Make jokes.

RMJ=H went with an unedited line straight out of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, in the Rondo Somersault post. That's disappointing. Make jokes.

Unstarred commenter Shot_From_The_Musket aimed low and still missed with this lazy offering in the Flying Kick post.

Right below him in the Flying Kick post, unstarred commenter HelenaHandbasket offered a similarly flaccid comment. That's your best effort? Jesus.

I'm not sure what in blazes unstarred commenter 214w was thinking with this comment, but the fact that he offered it in each of the Rondo Somersault posts is deeply troubling.

In the Second Rondo Somersault post, unstarred commenter Terrence_Mayonnaise needed to finesse this comment at least a little bit before submitting it. There's a joke in there, I'm sure.

Terrible unstarred commenter TheMisanthrope had a rough outing today. His first dud came from the NBA Reading post. There's just nothing to like about that comment. Later, a pancake flat, predictable John Amaechi joke drew the ire of the comment_ninja.

And here's another tired John Amaechi joke, also from the NBA Reading post, this time from unstarred guy dondi203. I personally think the John Amaechi topic has been wrung dry many times over, but at any rate, if you're going to use John Amaechi to make a gay joke, it better be clever as hell. Believe me, if it's not mind-bogglingly fresh and creative, it's been made already many times over.

Unstarred commenter Perdueable also had a bad day, first drawing the attention of the comment_ninja with a dreaded photo-joke in the NBA Reading post. Later, in Emma's straight-from-hell Boob post, his was just another totally useless, not-at-all-clever sacrifice to the gods of low-hanging fruit. You're trying already, now try harder.

In the Foul-Mouthed Coach post, unstarred commenter DoxDox left another uninspired "[insert name] is/is not impressed" joke. He's only the 1,324,848,901st person to use that worn out format. Whether that distinction comes with any sort of prize is unclear at this time.

1,324,848,902. (JobuNeedsARefill, No-Hitter post)

No one in the entire universe cares about the plight of your fantasy baseball team, EsotericPopCulturePun, not even in the Fantasy No-No post. In a million years, no single person would laugh at that comment. Be funny.

Also in the Fantasy No-No post, this, from unstarred commenter ttocs. [big sigh]

I did not enjoy this sarcastic quip from wattznext in the Live Magazine post. So there.

Also in the Live Magazine post, this, from unstarred commenter FedorovsGoldenMane. (Running out of steam, here.)

And now we've come to it: the Boobs duo. Holy fuck. [deep breath]

This, from unstarred commenter packman_jon. You were the 100th person to make that joke in that post. Read the Commentist Manifesto.

This, from unstarred commenter slagmire. Have I mentioned my problem with photo-jokes?

This, from unstarred commenter Pyrowrx (slapped by comment_ninja & FAILBOT).

This, from unstarred commenter TorontoMapleBeef. Boy did you read that situation wrong (slapped by comment_ninja).

This, from unstarred commenter Operating_Thetan_VII (banned by AJ).

This, from unstarred commenter Big Willis Style. Lazy, already made by a thousand other bone-heads.

This, from unstarred commenter PerkisPower (banned by Craggs).

This, from unstarred commenter DogRidingRodeoMonkey (suspended by comment_ninja) Hey, that's Scrap-Meta Commenting. I coined that term.

And this, from unstarred commenter Punkin, who managed to miss the joke entirely. Or maybe not. Either way, fuck off.

That's it. God damn every last one of you straight to hell.

Eat DUAN and die.




13 comments:

  1. I'm going to go to bat for Operating Thetan if only because I thought he and I made relatively similar jokes in that post.

    I took that as an entirely satirical comment in tune with the tone of the post. While it wasn't the best comment (nor was mine) I didn't think it was terrible. If Drew still commented, would anyone have been offended if he wrote the same comment?

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  2. I withheld my specific commentary on the case of Operating Thetan, and I'm still going to avoid getting very into it, other than to say the following: I did feel that your comment toed the line, so to speak, but was otherwise a clever juxtaposition of the relative positions men and women would take on the subject of sexual groping under such circumstances.

    Of course, it's possible I've over-analyzed your comment, though I think I've done nothing other than write a daily blog over-analyzing the comment section of a sports humor website to indicate such a pattern.

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  3. Operating_Thetan_VIIMay 4, 2011 at 8:16 PM

    Let my former user account serve as a strong reminder about commenting rules to the commentariat. The ninjas act swiftly and precisely. So ends quite a mediocre run for me. I had my fair share of comments promoted, never received copious +1s, but also was never warned, flamed or exiled for a comment prior to being banished from the island today.

    I accept my punishment. My comment violated rules stated here, on deadspin/gawker, and in cheese_mac's precious manifesto. I attempted to make a purposely inflammatory comment to raise the ire of the jezebel commentariat. To summarize, my comment was lazy, misguided, and meme-ish, since similar sexist/inflammatory comments appeared in the thread. While I accept the punishment, I am somewhat bummed that I was singled out from the masses. For what it is worth, as soon as I submitted, I was strongly considering redacting for the aforementioned reasons. However, my post was quickly put on blast to the ninja by Landy (rightly so, I suppose). At that point, I felt like it would have been chickenshit to redact, so I left it. The proverbial kid caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

    That's all. Heed the good words and advice here and don't do what I did. Most specifically, think real hard before clicking submit, because you never know when it could be your last comment.

    Tip of the cap to all the starred commentators. You all know what you are doing and add tremendously to the content of the site.

    Sincerely,
    Operating_Thetan_VII

    /Commenter save failed

    ReplyDelete
  4. Operating_Thetan_VIIMay 4, 2011 at 8:23 PM

    Just finished posting my comment only to see cheese_mac's comment. Thanks, I appreciate the support for my lame comment. I do agree with MS that your comment utilized a play on words, and I suppose it can also be considered a strike against my comment that it was similar to a previous comment. At any rate, I appreciate the words.

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  5. Yeah, mine was sort of like the "hey, you don't like it? Suck my dick" sort of retort the targeted meatheads might make while also playing off the obvious sexual nature of the post.

    That said, as the comments turned, I began to feel like it may have been over the line, or at least misinterpreted to be over the line, but refrained from changing it for the same chicken shit reasons Operating thetans mentioned.

    Perhaps consuming comments should be like constructing comments. Don't succumb to the knee jerk reaction at first and think about the context, etc.

    Or maybe we just made lazy jokes. All food for thought.

    RIP Operating_Thetan_VII, you were not the worst, but you were the first.

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  6. Operating_Thetan_VII

    I'll admit, I took your comment the wrong way when I read it. I thought it was a "broseph-type" comment, and reading what you said here it makes me feel bad that I did. That's the problem with reading sarcasm, is that it's hard to do.

    That said, you've gotten approved once, promoted, etc., you're obviously funny, so just start a new account. You'll get approved again in no time, I'm sure. Sucks you were the one who got made an example of, though.

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  7. There are posts when I know I can safely go into the comments sections and get a lot of laughs and give lurking +1s to the commentariat, and there are posts that I know will be quagmires of fail. The boob posts apparently were examples of that.

    That being said, when I checked Pyrowrx's comment I was expecting nothing but suck. And there was, from him. The reason I clicked was because I wanted to see the Comment Ninja and FAILBOT's responses, and was greeted with the Ninja posting the Final Jeopardy music. I honestly laughed harder at that then anything else I've read in the comments from a long time; even more so than the TPIR fail horns from the Ninja.

    That's one of the things that keeps me going to Deadspin; even the fails have the potential to shine; if not from the commenter redeeming himself, then from the mods destroying them. Ultimately, this day's Total Fucking Duds are why I lurk and not comment; I don't think I'm going to post 'jokes' that bad, but I know comedic comments aren't my style, so I don't try to force it.

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  8. Operating_Thetan_VIIMay 4, 2011 at 9:30 PM

    @Miserable Shitehawk

    Just curious as to why you are specifically withholding comment on the topic of my comment/ban. As you indicate, you are in the business of over-analyzing the comment section. Sorry, I'll stop comment-jacking now.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Look, I felt like the comments sections from the Boobs posts were embarrassing to Deadspin. I write this blog mostly for fun, but pouring through and chronicling something like that when all I really want to do is forget it and move on is a miserable experience, and I can only imagine how much worse it is for the Comment Ninja Squadron. Because of that, I imagine it becomes exponentially easier to pull the trigger on banning someone for what could be interpreted as a boorish comeback at the author of a piece.

    My feeling on these types of posts is this: make your best fucking comment ever or stay away, especially if you don't have the built-up credibility of someone like cheese-mac or Hatey, etc. The comments section becomes a devolved wild-west crap-shoot, and you don't want any part of that.

    I firmly believe most comments are flavored with the particular spirit of the day, time, and/or specific post in which they are submitted. Think about that when you comment - am I joining the crowd in a low-brow, rowdy, unattractive free-for-all? And if so, is that the best version of me, the Deadspin commenter? And if not, should I walk away before I submit this thing?

    It's just another layer of commenting, I suppose, but one any commenter should consider.

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  10. Also, Operating Thetan, you're welcome here any time, even if you never comment on Deadspin ever again. Comment-jack away. You've got just as much to say about the noble art of commenting as anyone.

    Cheers.

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  11. Also, and I think this is probably why AJ banned Thetans and why many had such a negative reaction to the comment: it appears, at first glance, that he is saying that Emma needs a cock in her mouth. He actually was referring to the text that Emma quoted, though. So, he was saying Simone de Beauvoir needed a cock in her mouth. That's the joke, and its a lot less offensive than the misconstrued personal attack on Emma.

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  12. As a way to ease the workload on the duds section, I would recommend less of the bans/ninja actions. We all know they should be there, and probably saw them, unless they were a complete trainwreck (see: Charlie Weis' Fupa). I think the dud section would be best used for those "almost" jokes from people who didn't work on the presentation long enough.

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  13. Operating_Thetan_VIIMay 5, 2011 at 11:17 AM

    @Miserable Shitehawk
    Ah, now it is me that is over-analyzing your comments on the comments. When I read your replay to cheese mac, I took it to mean that you were specifically not commenting on my case, not the thread as as whole. That makes a lot more sense as there is far too much to get into in those massive free-for-all cross-posts. And, as usual, you are spot on in describing these posts as being a dangerous place to tread. When done properly, you need an umbrella to protect you from the showering +1s (think CPH), but when you execute poorly.... well then, you can just get executed.

    The second point that both you and cheese mac bring up bums me out even further. It honestly never entered my mind that my comment could be construed as being directed at Emma. That sucks. Not that it would change anything, but perhaps I'll send her an email to let her her know that this was not at all the intention. As cheese mac points out, the joke is in the idea of putting a cock in the mouth of a dead, proto-feminist philosopher, which as he states, is "a lot less offensive". That gave me a laugh as well.

    Finally, Miserable Shitehawk, I honestly don't know how you have the stamina and willingness to undertake this daily operation, but it is informative and entertaining as hell and I'll continue to check it out as long as you keep it going.

    ReplyDelete