Thursday Roundup

A few favorites and duds from Thursdays commenting.

Favorites, in no particular order:

I chuckled at this winner from Same Sad Echo in the Jeremy Roenick post. Another commenter took a  hack at this same idea, but Same Sad Echo's is much more creative and doesn't stop at assigning a known personality to the Twitter troll. Nice work.

Universal Enveloping Algebra earned a few +1s for this simple caption joke in the Poor Pistons post. There are a couple angles at play here: first, UEA draws a familiar reference into the joke based upon something he sees in the photo. We think, "oh look at that, there really is some of that at play". That's not really unlike any other reference, be it a Simpsons quote or a photo or a dreaded YouTube clip: this reminds me of that. But the picture doesn't perfectly fit the reference with which we're all so familiar, and so he has to rewrite it to fit the circumstances. And like any good jokester, he uses it as an opportunity to impart fresh humor into this thing. In this case, a perfectly elegant, totally absurd literal interpretation of the stance of the third player. The very idea that such a saying could ever exist is, itself, funny, and I laughed aloud when I read it. It's still funny, in fact, all these hours later.

Here's a simple, hilarious dig at Charlie Villanueva from Sponsored by V8 in the Poor Pistons post. One-liners, as I've probably said a bunch of times, are difficult, and they're difficult for a couple of reasons. First of all, in the context of Deadspin commenting, they're tough because, look, everyone's doin' 'em. They're practically the Official Joke of Deadspin Commenters. And that means that every standard structure has been well worn by now. When you use one, most of us can project the trajectory of your joke within the first, what, four words? And that can sap a lot of the humor right out of your comment. And they're also hard because they absolutely rely upon an economy of words or even syllables and, in most cases, letter-perfect structure. A few too many syllables, a tricky or awkward or clumsy sequence of vowels or consonants, and just like that a very good idea becomes another flat, punchless, forgettable little blurt. Ultimately, what I'm saying is this: there are very few Deadspin commenters who can build their repertoire out of mostly one-liners, and Sponsored by V8 is one of those guys. He has a special talent for one-liners, and that puts him in rare company.

Madoff's Mets, on the other hand, is someone who I think does his best work when he gives his jokes a little room to play. Like his goofy retorts to Marv's HATE posts on The Balog, his best jokes stretch out and layer on funny ideas and mini-punchlines and generally rely upon his talent for constructing personality with words. Now, this particular joke, in the Rajon Rondo post, is actually very much like a one-liner, but it could have been a one-liner, and instead Madoff's Mets worked it into a dialogue joke, one of a couple he put together today. For some commenters, just that little extra bit of space puts them more inside their comfort zone.

Will Raysism understand when I say he happens to do stupid very well? You know what I mean. This joke, in the Rajon Rondo post, earned one of those "Idiot" +1s, and those are great. Great. Because sometimes, when you read a comment, you laugh at both the punchline and the cheesiness of the joke. And it's fun! And I tend to think we all know when we're making that kind of joke, and we're all secretly hoping we get one of those "Idiot" +1s. And, well, this one earned it.

This is also one of those stupid jokes, from snoop-a-loop in the Magazine Contest post. It's a goofy little observation that has its goofiness magnified by a construct as ridiculous as the Oxymoronomatic 3000. Well worth a chuckle. Good work. Idiot.

Total Fucking Duds

HollywoodTom did this in the Movember post. I guess we're doing these again. Someone fucking shoot me. There was a lot of really, really bad commenting today.

And here's more of the same, from SonofSanfordandSon, also in the Movember post. And look at that! A total fucking moron decided it was "classic". No, really, shoot me to death.

Here's this fucking guy, Lamont Sanford, III, long an abysmal commenter, doing what he does, which is stink up the comments, this time in the Jeremy Roenick post. There used to be a time when I could beat up a terrible commenter for a couple of weeks knowing full well the ninjas were on their way. Now? We might be stuck with this lousy butt-head for the foreseeable future.

Hey, so I'm a bit late tonight. I've been preparing my cabinet for four more years in the White House. These are busy times!

It's probably a bit late for DUAN. Yes? No? Yes-No?

Have a great night.