I thought it might be fun to list some of those threads that pop up every month as if on schedule, and then progress in exactly the same way they have every other time they’ve popped up. Feel free to add your own - here’s a couple of mine:
[ul]
[li]The accent thread. Generally US/UK, and often characterized by someone indignantly replying that the US or UK has LOTS of accents, and someone else indignantly replying that the UK or US has LOTS of accents too; repetition of the phrase “There is no single US/UK accent”; posters indicating they can’t tell the difference between the other country’s various accents.[/li][li]The tipping thread. Another of those international threads. Someone from outside the US will ask about the US tipping culture, a few well meaning people will explain, then it will devolve into the standard collection of people who claim tipping makes no sense, waiting staff who lecture everyone on how necessary it is, and a couple of people who describe how bad the service they got once in country #x was while those who live there defend the anecdote as atypical.[/li][li]**The science genius thread. ** There are many science threads, but occasionally you get this variation. It’s often disguised as a question, when it’s actually an excuse to display one’s superior insight and proclaim established science as wrong. Attempts to explain the actual science (which is rarely understood by the refuter) are dismissed. It is never explained why these people have not submitted a paper, or are not more famous, though.[/li][li]The “Christians - gotcha!” thread. Some asks Christians to explain and defend their faith with some logical or moral reasoning they’ve come up with (“aha! Why goes God allow X, then?”) Christians respond with faith-based answers. Atheists talk about the scientific method and how faith-based answers are meaningless.[/li][/ul]Any more?
There is always the converse of the latter thread, the one where someone asks atheists for some reasoning on their belief and try to make it sound illogical.
[ul]
[li]The moderators are descended from Hitler! Pretty self-explanatory.[/li][li]The SDMB search function sucks![/li][li]Cecil isn’t real![/li][/ul]
My favorite are the new members asking some relationship question about their spouse or significant other that they suspect may be cheating on them based upon some tidbit of information that they’ve gleaned and asking what people think. Three pages of sage advice to dump the cheating bitch/bastard will follow. Normally the original posters are never seen on here ever again.
And there are the type of threads that try to summarize the type of threads there are on the SDMB.
I was wondering how long that would take…
The Conspiracy thread. Questioning the death of JFK, the Moon landing, 9/11, who controls the money supply, etc. Each topic tends to show up about 3x per year.
And the UFO/Alien threads… :rolleyes:
Also
Body parts measurement comparison threads
Teeming Millions’ biology/bodily function threads
I have contributed a fair number of those types of threads and my excuse is that we keep reintroducing thr same topics with barely a gap (as little as a month sometimes) before the same issue with a slight variation comes back up.
An indexing system or table of contents or something along those lines might cut back on the number of duplicate ideas.
Then there’s the zombie issue if you do go back to an older version of the topic. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and damned if you care one way or the other.
The Song Lyrics You Hate thread.
I waited 6 hours, but it had to be done.
But you put real statistical type stuff in yours. That’s valuable in both utile and ironic ways. This one just serves as the launchpad for meta references.
Gosh, I’m sorry.
The Help me do this mundane task thread
Yes, for example I think there ought to just be a sticky on purchasing an HDTV.
My favorites are the “Am I an alcoholic?” threads, which can start either:
“I had a beer last night. Do you think I might be an alcoholic?” or
“The last ten mornings in a row, I’ve awakened at noon hung over and vomiting into my pillow. Do you think I might be an alcoholic?”
The response, either way, will be gee maybe, followed by discussion over the difficulty of diagnosing somebody over a message board, followed by debate over whether “alcoholic” is a meaningful designation at all.
Then about post#20 someone will suggest that if the OP is in any doubt he/she should try AA, and the real train wreck will commence with ten pages of furor over whether AA represents salvation or the embodiment of evil.
Commercials you hate.
Perennial favorites from ATMB:
I got malware from here!/Members don’t see ads/Adblock is your friend/Send Tuba a screenshot.
Why was so-and-so banned?/In before thread closure/You’ve been here long enough to know to ask about bannings via PM.
To generalize more, the always fun :rolleyes: “I wish to talk about some aspect of myself” threads which lead to a spate of responses with discussion, followed by the inevitable response of ‘that condition is evil and wrong’ or ‘that condition doesn’t exist’ etc that leads to the thread becoming a defense / attack on said condition, with the implication that the OP and their supporters have something seriously wrong with them and are not fit to be around normal society, and derailing any sort of useful discussion that could have theoretically happened.
And then there’s the drive-by OP. Usually some one new, but not always. They post something, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes utterly banal. It leads to discussion. They never return, leaving the participants wondering why they bothered.
Yes . . . those are good, too. The more ambiguous and provocative the OP, the better. As in:
“Last night my best friend suggested we try a three-way, but I needed to take my pet llama for exercise. While I was doing that, another friend called and said she needed me right away to get her equipment in order. I let my llama go and kayaked over right away to her yurt. Do you think I was being unreasonable?”
And the inevitable WTF’s and please clarifies are met by chirping crickets.
Which doesn’t stop hundreds of posts of debate about three-ways, and friends, and yurts.
It’s OK. And now we can start a new subcategory of summary threads where the OP apologizes for starting it.
Wow! That’s almost a can of worms there! We could have a meta-meta-thread directory of threads that violate various rules we could come up with.
Anybody remember those old number codes from back in the pre-internet days with things like:
809 – Go pound sand in your ass
810 – Your ass sucks wind
811 – DILLIGAS
812 – FAFFH
813 – whatever else was in vogue at the time
?
We could codify with numbers the various thread themes and then have links to all the ones with that main feature.
Then we could have sublists of which of those resulted in the quickest train wrecks, had the most Dopers to get BANNED, or had the most Mod Warnings.
Then we could point to counter-examples of the same issue causing massive suicides or religious experiences. etc.
This field is wide open, I tell you!
I had to find an example of these. There may be many more, but New Employee Communication Codes
If it matters, I did mine from memory. 