I’ve seen this happen way too many times on the SDMB, and I’m just sort of struggling to find a valid reason for it.
I’m not going to search for examples in earlier threads, so I do (sort of) apologize to these posters for singling them out since they are far from the only offenders, but readers of the MPSIMS thread Family Secrets That Ain’t No Surprise have thus far been treated to the following utterly fucking useless posts:
I suppose I have some of those too, as do thousands of other Dopers. Maybe that’s why we didn’t post anything in that thread. :rolleyes:
I know this is a relatively minor subject for a Pit thread, but seriously, what is the point of posts like this?
Just kidding. It’s funny you should mention this; this usually bugs me, but those posts in particular annoyed me enough that I was composing a post in the “Annoyances” thread to address it. Is this some attention-getting trick to make us ask you over and over what your terrible dark family secret is? Or do these posters just really, really need to get the post count up? It’s much more annoying than “OMFG SPITS COKE ON KEYBOARD!!!11” posts; I suppose those are intended as a compliment to the funnyman (or woman), but the “I’m posting to say I can’t post a real reply” posts are stupid.
I guess the Pit tradition of rewording a joke that’s already been made twice in the space of four posts in the same thread is a subject for another rant.
I had actually wrote almost that same paragraph in my OP (though I chose the more acerbic term “attention-whoring”), but then deleted it before posting. I do tend to think that one of these is the case, and the more I think about it, the more annoying it seems.
The conversational tone of the message board encourages useless posts, or Mindless Pointless Mundanity That Must Be Shared.
The author could have been noting that the list of family secrets in the thread would be neither comprehensive nor representative. Those who know don’t tell and all that. Sort of obvious really.
Not to mention, the same damn joke is made at least twice in every pit thread about posting habits. Seriously people, it’s not witty to do exactly what the OP complains about in every thread. That joke got old years ago.
Some people just feel the need to leave little droplets of their shit in every possible thread. I almost started a Pit thread about the same exact examples started in the OP. The board gets bogged down enough as it is without that crap.
I just remembered another example. There was an interesting thread asking if anyone personally knew any Olympic medalists. One out of four posts were something like “not me but my aunt knew a guy” or “not the Olympics but I knew a guy who won a marathon.”
This is about the only explanation that I can find that might have merit. Sort of a “hey, you know this is a pretty taboo topic - some people might have trouble sharing”.