See, this just shows how wrong I can be. I thought the hijack was pretty funny (and not just my post). Boy, you sure told me!
I think the problem is that all this time, I’d had the strange opinion that no one Doper was the arbiter of “wit”, “coolness”, “interesting” or “funny” and here you go proving me wrong.
I’d appreciate a list, hierarchical from best to worst if possible, listing subjets and writing styles that you consider “witty”, “cool”, “interesting” and “Funny” so that we can all tailor our writing to meet your high, demanding standards.
Fenris, humbled in the presence of The One True Doper
Have you ever been at a party where a few people were shouting back and forth about Bosnia or something, and you just rolled your eyes and went to get a drink. When you came back, those same people were laughing their heads off about 70’s sitcoms?
And when you said “I can’t believe you guys are still talking about this”, they just looked at you funny?
Sometimes people talk with no ulterior motive other than to be talking. No political statement, no incisive meta-conversation. Just MPSIMS.
It isn’t all “General Questions” and “Great Debates”. Requiring people to define their conversations by choosing an initial title for them and then sticking to that single subject is artificial. Requiring a person with something new to say to choose from a finite number of “active” threads one that exactly matches, or else start a new one can be frustrating. So, you get to see threads (d)evolve.
“Topics” seem to die a natural death. I’m skeptical that you can stop a “conversation” by fiat. Obviously, the moderators have special powers in this area.
As to bizarre comments on your user name, it wouldn’t really be a non sequitur if it had anything to do with something that was previously said, would it? Feel free to repay in kind, if you wish.
Obviously, if the extended life of this hijack is “bizarre,” my personal definition of bizarre needs updating. Slightly unusual, even amusing, that the mods would let it live so long after a highly successful hijack? Yeah. Annoying? Sure; that was its original intent. MPSIMS material that has no business in the Pit? Yep. That’s how an intentional hijack works. But it’s far from bizarre.
Arbiter implies that I want to control it. While it’s true that I’d be more than happy to see this kind of thing come to an end, it wasn’t the thrust of my post. The thrust was pointing out the dichotomy between what the hijacker ultimately wants- presumably a dead thread, and the reality of what was actually being accomplished- constant bumps to a thread that should now be long gone.
That irony, to me, seems bizarre- it goes directly against what the hijackers have argued to me before, that all that can be accomplished by the threads existence is bad feelings, yet the hijackers themselves feel compelled to keep the thread front and center.
Is that bizarre? To me it is. To you, to him, and to the others, if you don’t like ‘bizarre’, find you’re own word, because I’m sticking with bizarre.
Wouldn’t letting this thread die, as it this thread seemed to be doing before the pop hijack came up, accomplish what the hijackers ultimately want, a dead thread? If not, then what’s being accomplished with the daily bumps? Wit? Humor? Substance?
If you ask me, I don’t see it. Does that mean that since I don’t see it, it isn’t there? Nope. Fifty, a hundred, five thousand people could come along and say that’s funny and smart, and give me all kinds of reasons why it is so, but it doesn’t change how I see it.
That’s just my opinion.
But again, in this instance, it wasn’t so much the issue that I find this kind of tactic childish and inane, I’ve been down that road before without much success. If it had been, I’d have posted my ire the second it happened. I didn’t. But when three or four days pass, and all that’s added are a few measly comments continuing the hijack, it definitely begs the question to me, “Why?”.
Maybe I assumed someone would come back and say something profound, like they wanted everyone to see the earlier discussion who may have missed it before, and the ensuing controversy, and adding a pop comment like that was a sly way of re-introducing the thread to the forum. While I like things that are as deep as that, and complicated yet sneaky, I guess I also would have expected someone to come back and say, ‘It’s fun, that’s why’. Even as I typed that I noticed the predicament that puts me in, simply because I’m trying to have someone explain to me why something’s “fun” to them.
I suppose we could go hours on that one, without resolution. That’s no fun.
I guess I’d like threads like this to simply petter out and die on their own, instead of having others come in and add their bit of ‘fun’ to it. I suppose it’d be pricky too to say those things have their place in other forums and other threads, but I know that ain’t going to go over well either.
So about all that leaves me with is my opinion, since the explanation of what’s fun will probably never sink in with me. And apparently, from your post above, you don’t like my opinion on the matter.
Oh, Ok. So if I describe how I like to give myself an enema with Coke[sup]TM[/sup] in order to rid myself of the vitriol displayed (and forgiven by Guinistasia) by manhattan, but I think RC[sup]TM[/sup] is the far superior drinking cola, you would agree with me?
