Sort of a poll, but more of a survey of the really great threads of the past. May be “past” only in the sense of no longer visible on the front pages of the various fora.
I’m most fascinated by the ones that suddenly spring to life with off-the-wall loopiness. The one-liners flow at a rapid pace. Pages of nonsense build up for one prolonged orgy of community craziness.
I don’t have much more than paraphrased titles and basic themes in mind as I post this OP so I apologize for not being able to do what I’m asking you to do, which is to identify, with a link if possible, those threads you know of where the zaniness of the Straight Dope hit its peak.
Some I can think of offhand:
Rock in a box – I burning your dog
This thread is just about this thread
Thread
Hijack this thread
a
This isn’t the first thread to get into the nostalgia of great threads of the past, so if you want to link to some of the earlier threads on this same topic, that’s great, too.
I just want to be in on one that takes off and flies. Those things are hard to create out of whole cloth. The mood needs to be right for a large group of folks. But, damn! One would be fun right now.
If you have feelings on what it takes to make those things work, and why so many efforts to get them started fizzle out after one or two posts, maybe some analysis of their key ingredients would be instructive or enlightening.
I feel 98% sure that I contributed at least once before to one of these “funniest threads” threads where links to them were collected and there were links to links sorts of things. But I have been back through 30 pages of threads I have posted in and have yet to locate any of them.
There was a thread many years ago that I still remember with fondness, though I suspect I’m the only one. It started off as a simple poll about how people wipe after pooping, and quickly degenerated into an incredibly graphic, inventively obscene series of descriptions that had me crying with laughter. You just don’t get threads like that any more. If anyone wants to take a stab at finding it, the only part I remember verbatim (or nearly) is the hairy guy who described wiping as being akin to “trying to remove peanut butter from shag carpet”.
I found it so quickly because I remembered the name of the OP: Bronzelion. By complete coincidence, I welcomed him to the boards in some random post of mine. Then, the next day, I wake up to see that pit thread.
