Did you read the thread at all? (Supremely mild)

The BBQ Pit
1

I don’t have any specific examples because I’m not pitting any person, just the habit, and it’s way too prevalent to pick out one example. It seems to be happening more and more frequently, or maybe I’m just noticing it more, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m missing something here.

It never seems to fail; I’ll read through a thread, and realize that a large bulk of the responses all say the same thing. Sometimes it’s just downright ridiculous:

(Dramatic re-enactment)

OP: What’s the third word ending in -gry? (I know angry and hungry, what’s the other one?)

Post1: It’s a riddle.

Post 2: (Five minutes later) It’s a riddle. There’s no third word.

Post 3: If you took the time to Google this, you’d see that it’s just a riddle and there is no third word.

Post 4: (two hours after the first 4 posts) I think I read on Snopes.com that it’s a riddle, but I’m not sure. Maybe one of the Snopes fanatics will come along and set me straight?

Post 5: (link to Cecil column, nothing else said)

Post 6: I agree with poster 4.

Post 7: Not sure about the third, but I know the first two are hungry and angry.

Example 2:

OP: OMG, did you hear about <AmazingIncident>
Post 1: I know! I’m shocked!

Post 2: Me too! It reminds me of <PreviousAmazingIncident>

Post 3: (two hours later) Is it just me, or is anyone else reminded of <PreviousAmazingIncident>?

Post 4: IIRC, a <PreviousAmazingIncident> happened back in 1999, and there were <JawdroppingAmazingStatistic>.

Post 5: Yeah, I’m with Poster 2. This is just like that <PAI>. Anyone know what the <JawdroppingAmazingStatistic> finally amounted to be? It happened somewhere around 1985, IIRC.

I can understand simulposts. I can agree with Poster 2 reiterating what 1 said, and adding a little more info. Fine if you want to second a notion and add your own two cents. But half the time, I find it hard to believe that the thread was read at all. Either you have someone totally ignoring part of the OP, or not reading ANY of the responses that precede their own. And then it gets to be a vicious cycle, because by the time I’ve gotten to post 25, and see that everyone is just saying the same thing over and over again, it seriously curbs my desire to keep reading through the thread.

In GQ, especially, this often strikes me as being as some kind of confidence thing. First you have your blast of people simulposting the answer as quickly as possible. Then you have a few stragglers coming in and saying “Damn, PosterSchmoe beat me to the punch” And then you have the real latecomers who just answer the question all over again as if it’s never been answered.

Obviously if a thread has reached epic proportions before you’ve gotten to it, it’s insane to think that you’re going read through them all. But one could at least read through the first and last pages of a thread - it gives a pretty good idea of what’s already been said.

So is it just me?

if I cue for the witty, ironic, all-too-predictable posts here, will that stop people from making them?

2

It stopped me from making one.

I still didn’t read the thread beyond the title, however.

3

Have you tried Googling for solutions to this puzzle?

4

It didn’t work the last time this thread was posted.

5

Jackmannii took my answer.

6

I like the ones that come in on page 3 or 4 and scream, "You total fucking idiot, you must be a green, female, Roman Catholic, queer, fool, 15 years old, that just got out of high school because blah blah and I’m a Ph.D. in xx and yy and you have never and I KNOW and you have never done anything blah blah … While all that stuff was covered in the first 10 posts about being purple, 7th day Adventist, paralyzed from the waist down and don’t have sex anymore, (fool is okay) , are 55 years old and you are BA in woodworking, and are a professional chair maker.

I personally will read a 3-4 page thread if I’m going to get into it at all beyond a drive-by, a 9 pager I will skim for posters I know have substance or humor before saying anything. (I still screw it up once in a while )

When I see these type of foul brained screamers, I always hope they are so used to acting that way that they do it out in the physical world and in front of some of the less tolerant folks I know exist in great numbers and I picture the looks on their faces just a ½ second before they get their heads handed to them on a stick.

Bawahahahahaa

7
8

You guys are too much.

shakes head bemusedly

:smiley:

9

Sometimes it’s just an accident. I had a response keyed up and in review to a question about military rank, last week, and was posting in another window while waiting for my Preview screen to return. I then got called away from the 'puter to resolve some domestic crisis, following which we ate dinner. When I came back and closed the other window, I found my Preview waiting for me. It looked good, so I hit Submit–only to discover that David Simmons had answered the question more completely about 10 minutes after I had keyed up my answer–but an hour and a half before I actually submitted it. (I don’t think my post harmed the thread, any.)

10

I completely agree.

There’s another thread in the Pit right now, wherein a poster says between a choice for A, B and C, he’s not choosing B. He provides a link. In the link, it clearly says that he’ll be choosing A.

Poster X comes along, quotes his post, and asks, “so, which one are you choosing?”

11

You may have a mild rant on it so I’ll let my hatred substitute.

I Fucking hate it when I post something and then 1 hour later someone comes along and gives the same info I just did! What the hell is wrong with you people don’t you take one second to check to see if the answer is already out there? Do you just see something you know the answer to and put your head down and type without reading any further?

I can understand with opinions (after all many people can have the same ideas in slightly different forms) but when someone comes along with a fact and you restate it you’re just wasting time!

It’s even more annoying (though this hasn’t happened to me lately) when the second person gets the thank you’s and everyone agreeing with them.

12

Darkhold, exactly one of my points. I sometimes can’t figure out if a person only read the OP before posting - it’s the only way to explain seven people over the course of three days giving the same exact answer.

What are the primary colors? Red, Yellow, Blue. That’s it. We don’t need 7 people answering the question 7 times - the answer doesn’t change, there’s no amount of nuance that you can add to such a basic question.

One that just kills me is when someone blasts in saying “I can’t believe that NO ONE has mentioned <RandomOddTidbit> yet!” when there were five posts dedicated exactly to that.

That said, I do realize that sometimes it’s unintentional, and hell, I’ve done it myself by accident. When the hampsters doze, it’s really easy to hit submit with previewing first to see if anyone has jumped in with the same info that you just did. Sometimes I even miss the fact that there is one more page of posts that I missed.

My biggest gripe is when it’s clearly outside the realm of accident; when a thread has long since lost focus on the thrice-answered OP and has wandered off onto other things, and someone comes in and answers the OP as if it had never been addressed.

Oh and to all you smartasses… It occurs to me that in being such smartasses, you’re actually making it clear that you DID read my post, so nyah :stuck_out_tongue:

13

I hear you, TellMe. I have often thought that my perhaps more British style of answering has led people to not fully understand my answers or comments, or the fact that I’m not well known on the boards has lead people to totally disregard my responses. They repeat what I have basically said. Makes me feel quite invisible. I take the time to read responses and make sure that I’m not repeating anything that has alread been said, unless it is to agree with someone.
I recall a time when someone was asking about a Japanese phrase. I answered it first, then about 7 or 8 people answered too, with virtually the same translation.

14

There’s no p in hampsters.

See, I not only read all the posts in a thread, I scrutinize them just so I can nitpick stuff like this. Oh, and I agree with the OP from lno. That brings me to one of my pet peeves. I hate it when people don’t check who actually made the post they are quoting or agreeing to, or who made the OP, and yes, I did that on purpose earlier.

15

Duh, actually there is. I meant to say: “There’s no p in hamsters”.

Gaudere’s Law strikes again. :smack:

16

Oh yes there is! Haven’t you ever smelled a hampster cage?

17

I had my own personal version in GQ a couple days ago in “Why do athletes wear black grease paint?”

Poster asks a legitimate question, I reply with a Yale study showing that it indeed does reduce glare and improve contrast perception.

Then three posters chime in with anecdotes saying “it’s psychological.”

Then another poster says “You can get stickers that do the same thing.” Um, no, you can’t. That was the entire point of the Yale study I posted, to see if either thing worked. The paint does, the stickers don’t.

Then it gets slightly more on-topic, but there’s still a few saying they think it’s psychological, YALE BE DAMNED!!!

Slightly frustrating, to say the least. I was wondering when we started accepting anecdotes over Ivy-League studies published in peer-reviewed journals in GQ.

18

This question — What are the primary colors? — maybe isn’t the best example to bolster your point. There is actually a fair bit of nuance to it after all.

In fact this very question has sparked many pedantic debates I’ve seen over the years, in this and other discussion forums, among people who: (A) don’t know what they’re talking about; (B) do know what they’re talking about, but can’t explain anything worth a damn, and have to have their explanations re-explained by others, who then get it slightly wrong, and so have to be corrected by yet more people; and © people who know what they’re talking about, but are obliviously arguing past each other in misplaced disagreement caused by a simple difference of word usage.

Come to think of it, most Internet discussions eventually reach something like this state, don’t they? Maybe the particular question doesn’t really matter.

Anyway, with the hope I won’t bring on the very behavior the OP and others are justly complaining about, I offer this:

[ul]
[li]The primary colors of light (televisions, computer displays, etc.) are red, green, and blue. This is because the human retina has three types of color-sensitive cells, the cones, which have peak sensitivities in these three parts of the spectrum. You can therefore reproduce almost every possible color that humans can experience by adding together various amounts of red, green, and blue light. Almost, anyway.[/li]
[li]The primary colors of pigment (newspapers, printer output, photographs, etc.) are magenta, cyan, and yellow — not red, blue, and yellow, whatever your grade school teachers might have told you. With pigment, the basic trick is the same: to fool the human eye into perceiving a particular color at a particular spot by stimulating the retina with various combinations of red, green, and blue light. However, with pigment you can’t generate light, you can only eliminate it from the ambient white light that (presumably) surrounds the image. Magenta pigment eliminates green light, cyan eliminates red, and yellow eliminates blue. (Also, for newspapers and magazines and the like, black pigment is often used to reduce usage of the other three pigments, and to improve picture quality. But I’ve said too much already.)[/li][/ul]

19

Darkhold, that attitude is childish and totally beneath the quality expected on this board…

and I agree with every word of it!!! It burns my ass when I give an answer that is correct, then 12 posts later someone else says the same thing, and get quoted for the rest of the tread. I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like it! WAHHHHHHHH!
:smiley:

20

TellMeI’mNotCrazy - you forgot to use my Template.

(Right down to the asterisk last-sentence plea to ask people not to make those specific types of posts. I’m off to Vegas. :))