Thursday Roundup

Favorites and duds from today's commenting.

Favorites, in no particular order:

Have a look at this devastating one-liner from Universal Enveloping Algebra in the Oscar Pistorius Ad post. What a joke! Simple and dynamite. This is the Comment of the Day.

This humdinger, from Eddie Murray Sparkles in the Oscar Pistorius Ad post, was right there in the running. That's just an incredible pull. Later, here's another terrific pull, delivered in as bone-dry and straightforward a manner as possible, from the Darren Rovell post. Let the strength of the reference do the heavy lifting. And finally, here's a hilarious dig at female athletes in the Kangaroo Delay post. I laughed aloud at this one. Great job today.

I chuckled at this silly comment from Bring Back Anthony Mason in the Oscar Pistorius Ad post. This is a fun angle that relies totally upon the author's creativity and imagination. Also, here's a knockout from the Kangaroo Delay post. That's great. Good stuff.

Here's a quick, excellent joke from SavetoFavorites in the Trevor Bauer, MC post. It turns the [drops mic] action into a terrific dig without a whole lot of dense trickery. Nice work.

This funny little poem, from Gene Shalit's Merkin in the Shooting Insomniac post, could have yielded a thread - it sort of did, in fact - but I think it's funny enough all on its own. Stick around and make jokes, you.

Here's a simple enough little joke from BronzeHammer in the Shooting Insomniac post. Sometimes - often, in fact - it's the simple, silly, easy humor that really connects with the audience. There's nothing more exotic than a funny nickname driving this joke, but it works. Great job.

Here's the best of the tiptoeing jokes in the Shooting Insomniac post, from cobra, brah!. The picture helps, but I tend to think it's the way this joke dances around the angle instead of going right at it that makes it so successful. Many other commenters took less subtle approaches to this same line of text, without nearly the same impact.

I laughed at this line from David Hume in the Shooting Insomniac post. Simple enough angle, and of course imbued with that easy David Hume touch that gives the joke some personality to help accentuate the humor of the reference.

This is a great joke, from a burner called ChoosyMomsViewGIFs in the Vikings Logo post. It's so encouraging to see this kind of stuff from unknown commenters. It gets seriously exasperating following the comments closely from day to day. Every fucking day, it's hur dur what's with all the jokes and yadda yadda too soon!!1! and Gawker blah blah liberal blah blah gay worship blah blah, etc., and there are times when I so desperately miss the presence of moderators that even looking at Deadspin's comments ceases to be interesting and becomes a miserable chore. I won't go on and on about dismissing, you guys know how I feel about it. We have reached the point, though, where smart, funny, thoughtful commenters are being almost literally shouted down by complete and total morons. The optimistic view at the onset of Kinja held that new commenters would learn how to stand out as commenters by watching the best and most prominent commenters. The people who wanted to stick around and make jokes and, in general, be interesting and fresh and thoughtful and intelligent would survey the comments, figure out the landscape and tempo, and work their way in, adding their own voices to the mix. The rest would sink to the bottom of the page, be ignored, and move on. And that just hasn't happened. Why? Because every tourist who leaves is replaced by another ten the next day, and all these people have the exact same things to say, and it's all incredibly boring and stupid, and they can't possibly fall away at the rate they're being replaced.

There's a brain-dead, utterly false point hanging out there, and it's this: commenters are just learning to act like one another, all Deadspin commenters are interchangeable, etc. But it's AMAZING how different commenters' personalities and quirks shine through their comments. Yes, from time to time, everyone makes a bone-dry one-liner, but the whole rest of the time, the different commenters I've stalked the last few years couldn't be more distinct. We haven't written a Profile in Commenting in a long while, but trust me, we could write a fresh one about virtually every regular Deadspin commenter by now. Even new guys, like DougExeter, have established noticeably different voices. The respected regular commenters aren't known the way they are for all being the same, they're known for being smart and funny and interesting and distinct. And they're being overwhelmed by a never-ending horde of virtually identical burners and tourists and idiots. And it's frustrating as hell.

Anyway, ChoosyMomsViewGIFs, stick around and make jokes. We need the numbers.

Speaking of DougExeter, here's a funny one-liner in the (hilarious) Ancient Chocolate post. He wasn't the only commenter who took this particular angle, but I like the straightforward, unfussy approach here. It makes a quick turn on the wordplay and finds a funny, indirect way of converting it into a LaRussa The Drunk punchline. Good stuff.

And finally, here's a gross recontextualization from FreemanMcNeil in the Ancient Chocolates post. It's funny how recontextualizations have slowed down in the past year or so. There was a time when they were the dominant joke form on Deadspin. You still see them, but they're more often tucked inside different joke structures, obscuring somewhat their pivot-point. Because they're a bit less common, it's actually nice to see a good, old fashioned line-of-italics recontextualization.

Total Fucking Duds

Burner KevinYoungsHair gives us today's dud, and it's this shameless hack job in the Shooting Insomniac post. I don't believe for a second that this is a coincidence. This might be taking the "do as the best do" notion a little too literally.

Thanks for reading, folks. Look for Friday's Roundup a little bit later today.