Qwertyasdfg’s Constant
The SDMB will always take 5 minutes to load. 5 more minutes to open a message board, and 5 minutes to open one post.
Qwertyasdfg’s Law of Returns
Every post gets at least one response.
Qwertyasdfg’s Law of Legality
Posts asking about how to buy drugs or about Napster like programs will always be locked/censored for being “legally questionable.” However, posts asking how to commit the perfect murder and how to get a hooker will go into multiple pages.
ThinkSnows Law:
If the question of gender, sexual-orientation or name pronunciation arises, the wrong one will be selected.
Corollary to ThinkSnows Law:
A respondent will point out the error and foretell the forthcoming wrath and abuse that will befall the OP.
Axiom of the Corollary to ThinkSnows Law:
The forecast shall become direr as the relative “position” of the slandered poster increases
(i.e.: Mistaking manhattan for a cross-gendered midget prairie-gopher cowgirl will earn a more harsh prediction of doom than misinterpreting SuaSpontes name as “Sue.”)
Jonathan Chance’s Law:
The greater the need for a poster to open his or her mind the less that poster will acknowledge that fact.
Corollary:
The more a thread suffers from Chance’s Law the more likely it is to appear in Great Debates.
ultrafilter’s first law: You do not talk about ultrafilter’s laws.
ultrafilter’s second law: You do not talk about ultrafilter’s laws.
absouls law-
The likliness of multiple spin-off threads is multiplied by the idiocy of the original.
Max Torque’s Law:
A search for your own name on the message board (to see if people are talking about you) will inevitably return a hundred times more false positives (say, people talking about automobile engines, being angry at something, or Inquisitors) than threads of interest.
A little while ago I started a haiku thread, and I think I may have set some sort of a record in flouting Gaudere’s law. There’s something like forty original haiku in there by your’s truly, and not once did I blow the syllable count (depending, ironically enough, on how you pronounce “Gaudere.”)
It’s all about sex.
Introducing… Gaudere’s 2nd Law:
Any poster who attempts to point out a logical fallacy in the argument of another will invariably rely on a logical fallacy of his own.
Attrayant’s Predicament:
The search engine never works.
(Alternately phrased as “The search engine appears to work, but in fact it does not”.)
Corollary 1: The time & effort a poster has put into composing an OP is directly proportionate to the likelyhood of there having been another recent, virtually identical thread addressing the same topic, which the search engine has failed to locate.
Corollary 2: The time & effort a poster has put into composing an OP is inversely proportionate to the number of replies it will receive. If the author of the OP feels that it is his best work ever, the OP will receive zero replies.
Veb’s Law of Simulposts
Writing, previewing and submitting a post to an active topic will immediately reveal someone else’s new post that sneaked in first, saying what you meant to say only more wittily and clearly.
This results in agonies of private envy. Sometimes sheepish little follow-up posts can result, like “uh, yeah, what he/she said”.
Francesca’s First Law
The funniness or interestingness[sub] (why yes I did just make that word up)[/sub] of a thread is proportional to how much you want to add to it and how much your mind goes completely blank when trying to think of something to say.
Francesca’s Second Law
Any thread with more that 30 replies will contain a Simpsons quote or reference.
Well I was going to post the law that “the post you’re most proud of will garner the least number of responses”, but Attrayant beat me to it, alas. So…
jr8’s Law: Any poster located outside the US will refer to this fact as often as possible.
And a non-SD law:
Cappuccino’s Paradox: Halfway between any given starting point and any given Starbucks will be another Starbucks.
I was going to post a law of simulposts. But Veb beat me to it, and expressed the idea more clearly than I would have done. Dammit.
spooje’s law:
The important words that are meant to add meaning and wit will always be misspelled or misused.
Thinksnows Second Law:
If any comment, no matter how serious the topic, can be taken as a sexual enuendo, it will.
Some laws are not very funny or interesting.
Pete’s 1st Law of Offensive Behavior
If a poster in the Pit precedes the main point of the rant with:
Normally I wouldn’t say this type of thing…
I don’t mean to be offensive…
Just for the sake of arguments…
-or-
Then what follows will be the most heinous, obscenity-filled, tripe volcano imaginable. But it’s okay, 'cause they didn’t mean it.
Unless of course I do it, then I’m just trying to make a point.
THespos’ Law: Anytime you say to yourself, “Aw, screw it. The vB code looks fine. I don’t need to hit ‘preview,’” you will find that you DID miss something and your entire post will look retarded.
First law of Unoriginal Trolling:
No troll ever starts a thread merely to see what kind of response (s)he will get; (S)he is always posting as a “social experiment” or some other selfless, NEVER self-serving, reason.
Second law of Unoriginal Trolling:
People who respond to trolls with disparagement over the trolling are never merely tired of trolls; they merely “have no sense of humor,” “just don’t get it,” or “wouldn’t understand anyway.”
Third law of Unoriginal Trolling:
Despite repeated statements by damned near every “old hand” on any message base, people will ALWAYS feed thr trolls…even while patting themselves on the back for recognizing said troll.
Fourth law of Unoriginal Trolling:
A real troll knows that the response, “DNFTT” counts as feeding the trolls. Knows, in fact, that ANY response constitutes feeding.
Hamadryad’s Law of Diminishing Quality of Responses:
Any thread containing a single flirtatious post will, within three hours, become nothing but another damned flirt thread.
Corollary:
Any person being called on his or her apparent desire to turn every thread (s)he participates in into a flirt thread will immediately conclude that his/her accuser only finds this annoying because (s)he “isn’t as popular as me,” “isn’t getting any,” or “doesn’t want anyone else to have any fun.”