As often as not, just reading a thread’s title will make me think of something not quite included in the title’s intent.
Case in point: Who invented the spring? I immediately thought of the season and not the dololly that’s a spiral that you find in your bed, under your car, on the screen door, or even that group of water bubbling out of the ground.
So I went and started a thread dealing with calendar oddities, and that led to someone else starting another thread on when seasons start in various locales.
What I’m curious about is how often you find that either a thread title or the words in the OP will make you start another thread as opposed to hijacking the thread in question.
I’m also curious about the phenomenon of threads sprouting other threads and how there’s some sort of weird continuity to the thought processes here.
I remember a pit thread titled “The people next door are fucking ANIMALS!” including several replies like “They’re fucking animals? Isn’t that illegal?”
Didn’t prompt a new thread, but it was fun.
This happens in Cafe Society a lot. Favorite endings to movies spawns least favorite endings to movies. Stars who get too much credit spawns stars who don’t get enough credit, etc.
I guess if I have a complaint about the rules here (and it’s not a big enough deal to go to the Pit with it or even ATMB) it’s the one about zombie threads. There may be an unwritten one about hijacking threads, too. But it seems a real waste to have to start a new thread when something triggers your mind on an idea that you may have had and never verbalized, or, still better, if the post helps you finally find words for a line of thought you had never quite managed to finish in your own thinking.
Resurrecting “old threads” (and I have yet to find definitive statements on what the horizon for “old threads” is) seems like a natural thing to do unless the thread’s contents or participants are obviously well in the past. (I have seen some of those revivals get closed immediately.)
But if zombies are frowned on and hijacks are impolite, your options are to keep quiet on what might become the next tidal wave of comment or to run the risk of posting a thread that nobody else cares about. The latter choice is one I have made what feels like too often.
The old threads are covered with dust and mold. Bringing them into the rooms currently in use might cause an allergic reaction in some people. People can die from a severe allergic reaction. So, not ressurecting threads saves lives.
What often hapens to me, the relatively few times I start threads (as opposed to simply taking them over with posting frequency), is that something is mentioned in Cafe which gets me thinking in a GQ, IMHO, or Pit way about real life things. New thread follows. Weird, I know…
That’s exactly what I was trying to say in the OP. I’m forever misreading the title or having some off-kilter response (pun usually) come to mind, and rather than drop in some snotty retort for the cheap laugh, I’ll either let it pass or start a new thread. It’s been almost an obsession of mine to try to come up with something entirely new to discuss, or else to find a new angle of something already being discussed.
There are many Dopers whose wit and viewpoint continue to amaze and amuse me, and I really appreciate the little zingers they drop into an otherwise serious discussion. And the biggest thrill here is when a thread wanders off into la-la land of ridiculousness. (That seems to happen very unexpectedly and with little prompting over the least little thing.)
I do suspect that if we had an easy way to browse a listing of thread titles (without regard to forum specifics) we’d find some that have been posted in almost the same words dozens or maybe hundreds of times. There’s even a current thread (or was last I checked) delving into this notion.
Another search task that would be fun would be a way of looking at all posts (regardless of forum or even thread) chronologically. I bet it would be easy to spot the trains of thought Dopers go through.