About that sheep business. People, his co-worker played a prank on him. It’s not something he did. It’s something that was done to him.
I don’t know if the co-worker was anticipating and hoping that it would come to this: that Hal would never be able to live it down. But if so, why should he get what he wanted? And if not, if he never thought it would live on forever, why shouldn’t Dopers be more mature than he was?
It’s also not as if Hal is constantly fanning the flames by saying “Stop picking on me, wah!” Perhaps he’s not bothered by it; that’s why I’m posting here instead of in the Pit. But it’s old now. It’s tired. Let. It. Fracking. Go.
People will stop razzing Hal about the sheep the same day they stop saying “Hi” to Opal, destroying things with 80+ year old death rays, doing stuff like a motherfuck. In other words, don’t hold your breath; some people just won’t ever learn when enough is e-fucking-nough already. Hell, there are still people who think “Take my wife…please” is the height of comedy.
It was done to death the very first day. I don’t think I posted to that thread, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t referred to it since. It’s boring. You could lull yourself to sleep by counting the sheep jumping the shark.
…if a Doper’s co-worker had posted on that Doper’s account to say “Hi Opal!” and follow it up with an obscene or even merely suggestive message, or to announce that they were masturbating like a motherfuck, then it would be the same category. (I can’t think of a way that death rays, 1960-for-20-minutes, or Rio by Duran Duran could be used to mortify. But I’m sure someone could.)
This is different from the other tired Doperisms in that it keeps alive an embarrassing incident that Hal is not responsible for. New people see it and have to ask what it means, and then the whole thing has to be dredged up anew, and many of them probably don’t get it that Hal did not say that. But now a lot of people probably think he did. It’s so middle-school, I’m starting to think that it’s more counter to fighting ignorance than anything else on the board.
Actually, there is some small value in keeping this item alive, apart from whatever meager humor can still be wrung from the incident.
There’s a lesson here: Control your account. Don’t leave your work computer unlocked when you’re logged on to the SDMB (or any secured system, really). Log yourself out if you use a machine that isn’t yours. Take responsibility for your own security, because nobody else will, and nefarious people may take advantage of you otherwise. Really, Hal should consider himself lucky that becoming the butt of a briefly hilarious joke was the only consequence of his woolgathering (heh), and he lives on as an object lesson to the rest of us.
For that reason, I think this little piece of board history should live in active memory, so to speak. Every time some newbie asks about it, a potential teaching moment arises. Reference to it could drop somewhat in frequency, sure, but it shouldn’t vanish entirely, I think.
See, I only find it acceptable (and yes, I admit I occasionally engage in it myself) because he didn’t do it himself. If someone posted something embarrassing and true while having a psychotic break or in labor or on Vicodin or something, or if someone hijacked your account to post something embarrassing that was true, then the kindest thing to do is to never, ever bring it up again. But since it’s not true, and especially since he occasionally has the good humor to bring it up in a self-deprecating manor, I don’t feel like it’s totally off-limits.
It’s like “yo Mama” jokes. “Yo mama so poor she went to McDonald’s and put a milkshake on layaway.” = funny. “Yo mama so poor she can’t afford to feed her children and DCFS is going to take them away and put them in foster care.” = not funny.
It can be done well or done poorly, and of course it can be overdone. But it’s still funny in moderation (and that thread linked by Annie-Xmas is a perfect example of how, when done with subtlety, it’s still funny as hell.)
But in all honesty, if **Hal **comes into this thread and says it really bothers him and he’d rather never hear it again, I’d honor that. I might secretly think he’s a humorless twit, but I wouldn’t mention sheep again.
I’m just as tired of this joke as anyone else, but FWIW, I’ve never perceived the humor to be “ragging” on Hal in any way. Just a (very tired) reference to something funny that happened to him.
If it still amuses Hal to refer to it, and there’s evidence that it does, who are we to demand an end to the “ragging” (which, as Miller observes above, is no such thing)?
The incident is funny. It always will be funny. Until Hal himself says, ‘Really, that’s enough, guys’, I see no harm in people cracking wise about it (especially if they’re good jokes).
