I think of topics everyday for this place. A lot of them are just too mundane even for here and a lot of them are just plain stupid.
Sometimes I will answer my own question before I get round to posting it in GQ and sometimes I will type out a thread starter only to delete it on a weird instinct.
So what threads were you going to start but then never?
I recently thought about starting a topic to decide whether fox-hunters should only be allowed to hunt grey squirrels. Or maybe the whole country should hunt them for a bit to give the cuter Red Squirrel a chance. In the end I decided I could not be arsed checking my facts on this one, currently I am under the impression that Greys kill and maybe even eat Reds and they outnumber the native British species by 10-1. I have a feeling this topic may have sucked me into the pit.
Another topic I was going to start was one comparing the LOTR animation with the recent LOTR movies. IMO the death of Boromir was handled better by the cartoon and mirrored the book and my own image of what it should look like best. Also the Nazgul standing by the beds at the Prancing Pony in the recent movies looks like it was lifted straight from the cartoon.
Obviously the main difference is that the cartoon only covers half the story which is dissapointing. I once tried to do the whole thing in flick-book form but like the earlier movie I had to abandon this due to time and money restrictions and only got as far as having the tiltle ‘Lord of the Rings’ bounce about in a crap pencil rendition with a couple of stick men in pointy hats running around.
So post in here the ideas you had that never quite made it to the Dope in their own right. They deserve a chance people.
btw anyone notice that topics come in 3’s from time to time? It’s like no one will mention hats or something for ages the all of a sudden there will be 3 topics about hats in GQ. What’s that about?
I was going to start a thread about how I noticed certain obsessive compulsive tendencies in myself. Then I realised my rubbish wasn’t properly folded and Leechboy was using a soup spoon to eat desert :eek: so I had to go fix all that instead.
The thread I started called “Non Sequiturs” (still active as of yesterday) was an attempt to deal with this very issue, if in a fun way. There have been any number of topics I have considered. Some I’ve gone ahead with. Some have actually had a few replies. Quite a few have just sat there.
I have yet to do any extensive searches for topics. I will look back three months for whether a keyword might have been used, but that’s the extent of my effort to avoid reusing an old topic. I believe the bumping rules and the idea of not reopening topics are in conflict with each other, especially when the idea of extensive searches is frowned on for making the hamsters run too hard.
All that aside, some I’ve been intending to post include:
Sopranos speak – efforts at understanding the Jersey Italian slang and pronunciations
Favorite jazz recordings
Movie-based morality – have we been taught our ideas of right and wrong by the movies?
Was TV ever an entertainment medium and not a commercial venture?
Should Southerners come up with some terms to subdivide the non-Southerners into various classes analogous to redneck, hillbilly, white trash, etc.?
Has star status become disposable? Who are the long-term stars of the 2010 era?
Who are the funniest Dopers? The least funny?
Which Doper has the cleverest handle/nickname?
Is there any one topic that could be posted such that there would be an equal number of “views” and “replies”?
Bunches of others…
Let’s see if somebody considers any of these worthy enough to be posted. You have my blessing if you do.
The funniest dopers should run for a bit and it always gets a lot of views, you should do that one Zeldar, it’s low maintanence and you could knock it out in a minute or two. It’s a good twist to have people nominate least funny as well as this will mean increased viewing.
leechbabe the ocd thing is a winner, trust me on this if you build it they will come.
yoyo3500 I am going to have to say this one (the shoe thing) would sink like a stone, you may try sexing it up a little by saying you have actually eaten some shoe bubblegum but that will only garner 7 extra posts at best.
I knew it would sink. That’s why I never posted it. I really would have posted it for mainly theraputic reasons, but did folks really need to know what’s been on my shoe?
Besides, it’s not really how many responses you get that counts. It’s the quality of the feedback!
After astro’s backlash against my “You might be white trash if…” thread, I almost started one in GD about when it is and is not appropriate to make disparaging remarks about a certain race/group/ economic status but decided against it because it would land me right back in the Pit and possibly banned.
I was going to start a Cafe Society thread asking if there was anyone who didn’t cry during “Grave of the Fireflies.”
I was going to start a Cafe Society thread called “The Big Giant Robot Invitational Tournament Committee” wherein we would decide which BGRs would receive the 32 invites. Maybe we’d even get into how to seed them.
I also discarded the idea of starting an IMHO thread called “Scary Bedroom Experiment 2.” A sequel to my lost thread about how great the compulsion is to open your eyes once you’ve imagined something nasty when you’re in bed with your eyes closed.
That’s about all I can remember. I generally discard a thread a day. I think my POV is a little too off to start successful threads.
I’ve thought many times about starting a thread called “Ask Me How To Care For Your Antiques” since I work in a museum and am somewhat knowlegeable. I decided there probably wouldn’t be too much interest, so I just thought I’d answer when I see others post a question.
I’ve been toying with (and so far rejecting) the notion of posting links to the threads I started that went nowhere and asking why they failed. I was even going to provide possible reasons to see if I can deduce what’s better not to consider as a thread topic.
Among those reasons:
Didn’t even notice the title
Thought the title was too vague
Had no interest in the topic
Saw too many other similar titled threads
Don’t care for the person posting the topic
Other. (please elaborate)
I have only bumped one thread I started. It got maybe three replies after the bump. But several I started never got any satisfactory resolution (for me) and I can’t believe there’s no real interest in some of those topics.
This mini-rant is about all the energy I feel like wasting on the issue, so thanks for the opportunity to do that without having to post my own Pit thread.
Technology prophecies anyone? was supposed to invite opinions and speculation on where technology might take us and our future abilities to look back on this current period as “primitive” or “how could people live in such squalor?”
I type out entire posts with links and formatting and preview and then decide it’s too dumb and just go back to browsing. I probably do this twice a day.
Zeldar it’s weird but that 1st link should have taken off, the 2nd one is too much work, not defined enough and people could spend all day researching I think and never be able to prove anything.
MonkeyMule You have to post that. hell I was even clicking on your post in a vain hope there was a link in there somewhere.
Bruce_Daddy, I can’t remember how many times I’ve done the exact same thing! One in maybe five I will go ahead and submit and the hamsters will eat it and I decide “thanks!” and let it die without trying again. The other four of five I will just delete and say “naah, not today.”
I’ve saved myself quite a bit of embarrassment in replies that way, too. I get the vicarious thrill of telling somebody how full of shit they are, and then just delete the post. Feels fine, as Lee Marvin said in Cat Ballou.