What does "hijack" mean?

Beruang wrote in his thread about Zeppelin symbols, “And, at the risk of hijacking my own thread…”.

What does it mean to “hijack” a thread? Does it mean the same thing when a post opens with the one-line word “hijack!”?

I think the important thing here is that Bin Laden was acting in concert with the Zoroastrians. The CIA was also involved.

Gotcha. Thanks.

:smiley:

Generally, it’s not nearly as abrupt as that; that’s really more of a non-sequitor.

Hijacking generally occurs when someone responds to a post that wasn’t the OP, and responds to a more tangential issue. For example, we could be discussing the fine quality of Cuban cigars, and slowly people begin asking questions of the comparative quality of post and pre Revolution cigars, and someone comments that they don’t know, because since there’s an emargo, they’ve never had the chance, and then someone states that the embargo is a pretty stupid concept, and then someone else points out that the embargo isn’t very effective, and then someone points out how no embargo has ever really been effective, and then suddenly we’re in a debate regarding whether embargoes should be used as an instrument of foreign policy, and every once in a while someone will attempt to make a post regarding the quality of Dominican cigars, only to be told by others that if he wants to talk about cigars, he should start a new thread.

Thus, the thread has been hijacked, meaning the the main current discussion of the thread bears no real resemblance to what the thread was started about.

Sometimes, this will be actually denoted by stating “Hijack!”, though one expects such immediate usage will be a little less common in the weeks following the WTC disaster; this may be considered by some a polite reminder that the issue they’re bringing up isn’t really the main issue of the thread, hoping that therefore the main point of the OP doesn’t eventually get submerged.

For example:
[hijack]
Shib- as long as you’re in this thread- why is the middle “O” capitalized?
[/hijack]
Oy. After midnight, I get real talkative.

JC,

Thanks for the addition of nuance, but I think he got it, my first effort was a bit hyperbolic, intentionally, I do confess. It could have been more fun if he hadn't got it so fast, somebody probably would have jumped in to help with my hijack.

[hijack]
And the capital O is the way that Merriam Webster shows the word:

[/hijack]

While we’re off the subject, I think I play you in Fantasy football the weekend after this one, what’s the protocol when the vast unwashed play against the Mods themselves? [sub]There, that was more subtle, n’est pas?[/sub]

[screeching halt]

Then there are the thread interruptions done for either no reasons or very good reasons. This is an example of a “no good reason” interruption, other than to show it’s not a hijack, but merely a slight deviation from the main gist of the thread, but I fully intend to let it go and return to the main flow of the thread. Kind of a “catch and release” program.

But would that then make my interruption a “good reason” instead of a “no good reason”?

I think I need an aspirin.

[/screeching halt]

See, I let it go. Goodbye, little thread!! G’bye!!!

I’d like to say the protocol is to remove all first-stringers from your team and graciously accept defeat.

Unfortunately, there’s this little thing in the back of my mind that keeps me from saying such. It’s not conscience; it’s the overwhelming fear that your second-stringers will still beat my team, and I shall be mocked forever more.

So I’d say protocol is to trash talk towards me as much as you would any regular poster.

And thanks for the information on the spelling, though I still wonder why it was spelled traditionally with the middle letter capitalized. Maybe some ancient form of leetspeak, akin to Caesar’s “/en1, /1d1, /1c1”, meaning “I came, I saw, I owned jooz”.

You, sir, are a king among men. I think you meant /3n1, though.

[HIJACK]
Advanced l33t would become /3||1 /1|)1 V1(1 :eek::smiley:
[/HIJACK]

coutersy of l33t 5p34|< 93N3r4+0R

:smiley:

[hijacks back to the OP]

So you see, Sea Sorbust, you are now in the midst of a world class hijack. Do not attempt to control the vertical or the horizontal.

[/hijack of hijack]

Sorry, John, you should have got me this week: I don’t have my QB, K and one WR. And one of my RBs is going up against the Baltimore D, so I fully expect to be slashed to pieces by the fair Lady Ice Cube.

As for the spelling with a big O, methinks it indicates pronunciation. Perhaps a true member of the tribes could help us out on that one?

I once hijacked a thread…it was a thread that was described as a ‘trainwreck of hijacks’ by someone who consequently performed a hijack of her own. Odd.

Oh BTW, has any doper ever looked at boots, sat down in a chair or used a paper clip? :wink:

(umm…you should probably ignore me…I’m drunk with excitement over the novelty of using the luxurious big screened library computer…^_^’)

I have indeed done all three, although perhaps never at the same time. But before we go farther, could you indicate the source of your, um, infection? Hopefully not anything a good course of antibiotics couldn’t clear right up?

Ahh, ShibbOleth, I woke up worrying that you would mistake my “Gotcha” response for the DooM II level of the same name (the one where you start out on a tiny island, surrounded by red lava, :eek: with nowhere to go except in the huge door [–which is nearly empty until you trip a switch and the middle pillars reveal a giant spider thing with gattling-gun and a missle-throwing CyberDemon–] :frowning: ), thus giving the impression of having hijacked my own thread. :o

Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to have happened. :wink: You took my “Gotcha” as meaning “I’ve gotten your point.” :slight_smile: Many thanks to John Corrado for the nuances. It was almost ironic that you asked about the bibical word “shibbOleth” since I sit here now wearing a t-shirt printed with a biblical quote:

(Most of my T-shirts better represent characters from DooM, :cool:, although they’re not.) Could it be that the capitalization of the middle “O” was because of some sort of soothsaying, far-future-seeing to the days of “C”, “C++”, and “JAVA”, all of which languages use such spelling conventions as “ShibbOleth” or “SeaSorbust”. ;j .It could be. It is my personal preference as a modeler to use “FORTRAN” which never uses such a spelling convention as, say, “BabeRuth”. It’s not likely, I suppose that if “BabeRuth” were alive today that he would be found playing FantasyFootball; although I seem to remember that he had an special fondness for Cuban cigars. :smiley: Ah, yes. If only one could be drunk, sitting down in a chair looking over one’s boots, picking one’s nose with a PaperClip and smoking a fine CubanCigar. What excitment. What luxureousness. (And what a crappy speller I am! :mad: Why can’t we go back to the days of TeddyRoosevelt and revive his efforts to reform spelling? :rolleyes: )

Anyway, I seem to be geting the nak of the fine art of the hyjak. :eek:

Not to hyjak my own post ( :wally ) but does anyone here no what “putz” means. :confused:

“putz” is a Yiddish term for the male appendage, or ‘shlong’.
It was also a favorite derogatory statement of WallyM7, who was a wonderfully witty poster here, and who passed away a little over a year ago. In tribute to him, the ‘wally’ smiley was established. You may see other people around here who have sigs of Wally’s quotes, or who include the number- 3127, I think- which was Wally’s final post count.
Infectious lass- I have, in fact, done all three at once. Consider me a triple threat.
Shibb- I’d much rather be facing you any week than Meek’s Marauders, who got 90 points last game. Yeep. Here’s hoping Peyton Manning is so overcome by events that he’s too despondent to throw the football very well.

lno- y’know, just after posting, I said to myself, “self, that ‘e’ should be a ‘3’. Eh, it’s too much work to go back and edit. It’ll be okay.” Should’ve known. But thank you for the praise; from you, that is a high honor indeed.

Yeah, my 81 points last week blew chunks. Good thing I picked up a TE and a WR, and my other WR seems ready to contribute. Should just be ready in about a week. Trust me, this is THE week to play me. I’m gonna get moiderized.
Also, is schlong also yiddish?

Ah, “dork”. I can actually call someone a “dork” by using a smiley? Superbo!! (I used it once, when I first got here, but was embarrassed to do it again without being sure what it meant.) Thanks, John C.

Saw a picture (I think) of WallyM7 over at a site linked in another thread about a banned programmer (–there seems to be a lot of people being banned today. ???).

I feel I should warn you not to pursue the thought of “I came, I saw, I owned jooz” any further. Over dinner last night, I started thinking aloud of how Caesar would stand outside his camp, overlooking all of conquered Gaul, and say “ph34r my l33t m1l1t4ry sk1llz - I came, I saw, I 0wn3d j00z!”

I’m now debating revising his Gallic Wars into l33t-Latin.

Pray for my soul.

pIE iE5u d0miNE, dOn@ 315 reKWiem ::bonk::

I assume you meant Superb-o! But in my head, it was pronounced Super-Bo!

I had a cat named Bo. He wasn’t a Super-Bo though. Although, as I’ve previously explained, he looked like Richard Petty, who once drove a Super <i>Bird</i>.

Quoth Sea Sorbust:

Naw, there’s also a secret passage in the wall at the bottom of the lava, just to your right, that you can reach without taking too much damage, and if you aim yourself just right, you can also jump into the tower behind you. The Spider Mastermind and Cyberdemon are easy; you just trick them into fighting each other, and pump a few extra rockets into the Demon, 'cause he’s got more hit points. The Arch-Viles are more of a problem (there’s actually two of them on that level! The only level with more than two of those things is level 28, “The Spirit World” I think it’s called, and that one also has two big spiders).

I just tried it, Lass. Was something supposed to happen?