Does anyone else do this? I seem to do this to myself all the time.
Just now I opened a thread called ’ Quirks of your local TV newsanchors’. The OP and the first half-dozen or so posters were all current contributors. Then…panache45?!? I had assumed panache had passed on, and for a half second or so I was happy to see panache45 back! Then I checked the date: Nov '20.
This has also happened to me with posters I know to have passed on: “current poster, current poster, dropzone?!?” Ah damn, zombie thread got me again. It’s a bit jarring.
Another thing that sometimes happens to me with a zombie thread: I often read threads on my iPad, and pinch-enlarge the screen until the post type is edge-to edge, as large as possible, with the avatar hidden off the left edge of the screen. The username is still visible of course, but for whatever reason I often read a post first and then check who wrote it. So I’ll read a post and think “hmm…this sounds a lot like something that happened to me”. Or, worse yet “what a cringey writing style this poster has”. And of course, it turns out to be me from the past. I thought this was possibly something only I did, but apparently it has happened to some other Dopers.
Yeah, the other day I wiped out “new” posts by accident, and Discourse helpfully suggested some other threads for me to look at, but they weren’t current! I was wondering how the newscasters thread came up again (and surprised that I had written it. “fuzzy blanket of normalcy…whaaa?”)
Oh yeah. Being surprised by now-gone posters in zombie threads happens a lot. But since it’s now been a few years since we transitioned to Discourse, any thread I’m alerted to (via unread) that is a zombie automatically picks up where I’d last been reading. It’s only the recently resurrected pre-Discourse zombies where I start out at post #1. Which itself is a clue I’m looking at a zombie.
I don’t do the zoom the screen thing, and I do read the name & icon of each poster before I read their post, so I’m not surprised by reading my old prose then recognizing it was me. Despite my 43K posts I have a decent memory of which threads I’ve contributed to and which not. So it’s always a little bit surprising to encounter an old post of mine unexpectedly. But the surprise happens when I see the username, not 4 sentences in.
Of course you can re-create the function of [New] by doing a search for threads created after a few days ago. And once you click into any of them them those threads become part of your unread history:
A search like [in:first after:2024-01-15] will do the trick.
But your larger point is spot-on that poking at the Latest page, or the suggested topics section at the bottom of any page, is the best way to be exposed to fresh and oh-so-aromatic zombies.
Sometimes I recognize a name of someone who’s gone.
Sometimes I look at the names and think ‘wait a minute, who are all these people? Not recognizing a name or two is usual, but I don’t recognize any of these – wait another minute, is this thread from fifteen years before I got here?’
Sometimes I think ‘wow, what a horribly sexist post, I’m going to report it – there’s a whole string of them, why didn’t anybody complain? – ohhhh. Really old thread. That explains it.’
Sometimes it’s a news story. ‘Why is that being reported as news? I thought that happened – oh. Right around when the post was made.’
Of course, the root cause almost always seems to be some spammer resurrecting a comfortably dead thread and then taking their rightful place in the cornfield. Apparently, there’s no way to undo that one side effect of making that topic look like it’s had recent legitimate activity.
There had been considerable speculation about him when he suddenly went silent in Aug '22. Nobody had any IRL connection to him or his spouse, and so he now exists in a limbo state: officially still an active member but presumed lost forever.
He was a fine man and a great addition to the community.
I’ve had the situation where I’ve opened a zombie thread, started reading, got to a post and thought “This guy knows what’s up.” And I get ready to make a confirmational/reinforcing post for emphasis.
Then I see the poster and realize it’s a post from myself from years past.
I’ll often read along and find something I want to say. But I need to keep reading to be sure no one has already said it. Then I find my name. Well, looks like I said it.
A big “me too” to the above experiences. Although now that we have avatars, it is unlikely I will read an old post of mine without seeing my avatar at the start of the post, so I know before I start reading that it was me (whether I applaud or cringe at what Past Me posted is another matter).
