Has anyone else noticed that, in addition to the trolls that lurk among the boards, another cunning lifeform is prowling these posts in search of prey? I am talking about the “hijacker” who derails a thread with a clever but off-topic remark, and then watches as the thread goes careening off down a tangent, never again to embrace the original topic.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this practice is not always bad; some threads deserve to be hijacked, and without it, they would have withered away. Sometimes the hijacker is so skillful, the subsequent posters don’t even realize they have been hijacked, as they logic themselves further and further off topic.
I can usually spot a hijacking in progress just by watching the topic menus; a topic that has been languishing near the bottom of the page with 8 or 10 posts, then it suddenly zooms up to 40 posts, and is always at the top of the menu.
Without naming names, a recent good example of this is the “fee fi fo fum” thread, which has mutated into an argument with no resemblance to the OT. Likewise, the “DVD v.s. VHS” has become an arcane dissertaion of the physics of audio, and “child killing” is showing all the signs of flying off to Havana at any moment.
I’m really not bitching here, just making some observations on the dynamics of message boards. By way of a topic for this thread, who are your favorite hijackers, and what are examples of their best work?
TT
“Believe those who seek the truth.
Doubt those who find it.” --Andre Gide
Damn, Thuff, this is extrememly perceptive of you. I was thinking the same thing last night, kicking back in the kitchen, drinking a nice chilly Rolling Rock.
I had gone to get a glass, but then I decided to just drink it straight from the long-neck.
I think it stays colder that way, don’t you?
In fact it reminds me of the thread in GD where they were discussing UFOs, and somebody brought up the tendency of the government to keep everything possible classified “for national security reasons.” I think that’s horrible; don’t you?
Hey Ukelele Ike, while you were drinking that Rolling Rock, were you watching the playoffs? It sure seemed like the grass looked especially lively for this time of year? Do you think they give it a special type of treatment?
I got a lot of energy ready to be wasted on somebody - Mookie Wilson
Mullinator: IIRC, the treatment of grass for Major League Baseball fields used to be horrendous for the environment, what with nitrogen and pesticides and everything else. But it is better now as groundskeepers have learned about environmentally friendly turf management from the golf course industry.
Do you think the Europeans are serious about boycotting the next Ryder Cup in the States? And what’s the latest on the Americans being able to direct money to their pet charities?
Well, if the Yankees, under General Meade, had moved their forces AROUND Cemetery Ridge instead of proceeding directly through, Lee’s forces would have been taken by surprise and the battle would have ended a day early.
Cemetary Ridge sounds an awful lot like a movie I enjoy called Heartbreak Ridge. The two aren’t related, but are named vaguely the same. Can anyone else come up with examples like that. For instance, Yellowstone Park and the Yellow Rose of Texas.
Then again, some threads get “hijacked” by random drift. One poster mentions a slightly off-topic thing, then another poster feels obliged to comment, and so on, and eventually the thread lands at Fidel Castro International Airport all by itself. I think that this is a perfectly natural thing, I mean, conversations always take on a life of their own, and the only thing you can do is say “Yes, but getting back to the original topic…”
Oh, well. Just my view on the subject. Oh! That reminds me of an amusing anecdote about my Aunt Maude…
Manny, it goes back to the disease of jaundice, first detailed by the famed Victorian novelist Charles Dickens in his epic novel BLEAK HOUSE, which featured as a central plot device the hoary legal proceedings of Jaundice and Jaundice.
Krook, one of the cowardly characters in the book, expired through a case of spontaneous combustion.
Cecil discusses this somewhere. I’ll look for the link. Be right back.
