Friday Roundup

Some favorites and a few duds from today's commenting. (Pretty sure the links work everywhere.)

Favorites, in no particular order:

Here's a damn funny wordplay joke from The Amazing Sneijderman in this morning's Daily Screencap post. It seems like every Deadspin post lends itself to at least on great pun or wordplay joke, doesn't it? Like you could just scan down the comments for "the pun". The problem is, it's gotten to the point where everyone is racing to get to "the pun" first, and so we wind up with a lot of bad puns and one-liners. This is a great joke, but in general, wordplay jokes and puns might be a bit over-represented these days.

I say that, and then I chuckle at another wordplay joke in the same post, this one from unstarred guy Lamont Sanford, III. For his efforts, his comment was promoted and earned a handful of +1s. Nice work.

Here's a gut-punch paragraph from President Camacho in the Fun With Graphics post. Eat it, Dan Gilbert.

Unstarred guy RonZookonRedBull dropped this terrific one-liner in the Fun With Graphics post, earning a promotion and a huge round of applause. That's a hell of a comment. 

Here's a classic its-funny-because-it's-stupid joke from BronzeHammer in the Silverback Williams Update post. This is pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey commenting; the rate of success for this kind of joke is ridiculously low. Sometimes, it's charming and goofy and endearing and everyone chuckles, and sometimes you just come across as a lazy moron. Nice job on this one.

Theodore Donald Kerabatsos dropped this evil set-up joke in the Silverback Williams Update post, earning a round of applause. In an effort to make sure I fully understood this joke, I got so far as typing "goatse" into the search bar on Google. Rest assured, there's no way this joke would be in the Favorites right now had I pressed "enter". We don't see too many practical jokes on Deadspin.

DJ Jazzy Jeff Weaver made an appearance today with this breezy deadpan comment in the School or Modeling post. I chuckled at this one. Boy was that post a fucking trainwreck, though. Friday felt like the Deadspin staff was making a concerted effort to bring in as many disastrous pink commenters as possible. One dummy-magnet post after another.

Here's a fantastic, savage dig at Brent Barry from Madoffs Mets in the Starfuckers post. I laughed aloud at this one. I'm still laughing about it.

Eddie Murray Sparkles earned a laugh with this elegant word-association joke in the Starfuckers post. For those of you who are able, check out that pink comment in the replies. That's rude? Rude? If there is a common distinguishing characteristic of Deadspin's pink commenters, it's not that their jokes fail or they can't spell (although those traits are represented in spades), it's that they are the most thick-skulled dimwits on the internet. I have never seen so many people miss the point. From the Naughty NL Matchup post to the Starfuckers post to every goddamn LeBron James post, they just don't get it. They miss the sarcasm or the gist or the punchline at an outrageous rate. Rude is the very last word in the English language I would use to describe this joke. It's more banana-like than it is rude, and it is not at all banana-like.

When PowWow comes, it will be incredibly important that those of you who do get it do not engage the ones who do not. If some schmuck mouths off about how stupid and wrong a post is, if some Jezebel interloper takes umbrage with the tone of a piece, if a knucklehead misses the sarcasm or punchline altogether, for the love of God, ignore it with all your might. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don't look at it no matter what happens.

Finally, a last-minute entry from All Over But The Sharting in the Heart Attack post. The timeline in this joke might be a bit off, but All Over But The Sharting has a really funny habit of airing out his personal grievances in these unexpected digs. It cracks me up. He took a seemingly-random shot at Henry Abbott earlier this week, and I laughed at that one, too. It's one of his moves, if you will, and like the established moves of other great Deadspin commenters, it gets funnier over time.

Total Fucking Duds 

Jesus fucking Christ. Today was a constant onslaught, a virtual deluge of duds. I picked one, and I'm not sure it's the worst comment of the day, nor is it really illustrative of one particular type of bad comment or another. It's just the one I picked, the dud that made the list before it became apparent the list would not be manageable if I kept at it. So, to the poor schmuck singled-out below, hey, today just wasn't your day. Go get 'em next time.

This is a clumsy and particularly ugly stereotype joke from unstarred guy American Magpie in the Daily Screencap post. It has a few things in it I hate: bad, hastily assembled structure, words like "fat" and "chick" used without irony, and a lazy stereotype. I don't have any problem with jokes that make use of this tone, but the punchline of the joke has to be the tone itself. In other words, fat white chicks aren't funny. Lazy stereotypes aren't funny. But jokes that make fun of the kind of low-life sacks of shit who say things like "fat white chick" and subscribe to such stereotypes can be funny. UweBollocks cracked me up this week with a quick parody of hipster style that accomplished exactly the feat of using the tone of a moron to expose the moron's stupidity. That was funny. This? Ugly.

Hey, you silly, silly sons of bitches, have a great weekend. Sleep late, cook and eat outside, and wear t-shirts and flip-flops and nothing else. It's your birthright.

Thanks for reading.