Sigs! Remember them on the old board?

One of the features on the old vBulletin board was custom signatures that would appear at the end of us oldtimers’ posts. Once you’d made up your own you could set it to appear always, or never, or (the preferred practice) just the first time you posted in a thread.

How many folks still here remember what your sig was? How many are willing to share it?

My own sig – in teensy tiny type to fit within the allowed space – was this:

Brought to you by EddyTeddyFreddy Industries Inc., purveyors of wit, wisdom, and badinage since 1949.
Your credibility, which was already in the toilet, just took a plunge into the Earth’s mantle. ~ iampunha

I had several over the years. Which were more like mottos than witty sayings. I can recall the spirit but not the exact words of some of them.

It was vexing when I changed mottos because vBulletin didn’t inject the motto when the post was created, but rather when it was viewed.

So all the older posts with my older motto(s) suddenly displayed the current one.

Which in many cases was a wildly inappropriate sentiment for the content.

Oh, yes, I recall the sig substitution – change it and vBulletin retroactively changed it all the way back.

I suppose you could do a “Regards/Shodan” individually typed sig rather than setting up in your user account.

“Nothing is impossible! Not if you can imagine it! That’s the wonder of being a Scientist!”

I really miss CalMeacham’s clever sig lines.

I’ve read a gazillion old threads and they are always interesting and fun.

I think they fell out of favor when they started getting risque or hurtful.

@CalMeacham

IIRC

“Welcome” said the king in a smooth, rolling voice that could only come from semi conductors “To The Island Of Mosfet toys.”

“Praise tin!”- The Stannic Verses.

If you read a vBulletin era thread on Discourse, none of the sigs are there.

They were never a part of the post itself. They were part of the “chrome” that surrounded the post on the thread display page.

Which is why they always reflected whatever the poster’s sig was at the moment you displayed the thread.

I think they fell out of favor when risque anything / everything fell out of favor and many oldtimers were obligated to make thier sigs child-safe and opted for “no sig at all” as a safer choice.

• Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly.

It served me well.

Well, aren’t we lucky? Now we have avatars and little titles.

And the Great Avatar War is thankfully behind us. What a brouhaha there was about destroying the integrity of the Dope if they were allowed!

My original one was

which I later changed to a Shakespeare quote,

And my favorite of @CalMeacham 's was always

My sig was "Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmex-like snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactyl tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. "

I think I changed it later to "Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? "

Woo! Kinda ferocious, there, innit?

I loved sigs, they were often so wildly creative.

Aww! I’m flattered you remember them! And after all this time!

The Time Machine one Chronos quotes is my favorite, too.

Here are some others (I archived them):

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice The Gift” - Steve Prefontaine

I had too many to court.

AOL days: “Use Signature (Set in Preferences)”

Early uBB/vBulletin days: “Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post”

Later vBulletin era: “Disable Similes in this Post”

I think the last one I used was Indecision is the key to flexibility.

Deep, no?

That was one of my faves of all time.

That, and

“If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava , let 'em go, because man, they’re gone.”

Can’t remember who used it?

Plus, of course:

“I’m nice, dammit!”