# Why am I purple?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [May 2, 2004, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094 "2004-05-02T03:27:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2004, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/1 "2004-05-02T03:27:00Z")

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When I go into a thread, the background is dark purple. I don’ like it one lil’ bit! Dark purple& black. I’m old! I can’t see… .  
I didn’t change anything, at least not while I was awake. Wait, but no, it was purple before that.  
I did sneek off to another message board today.  
Is this my punishment?

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### Author: ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2004, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/2 "2004-05-02T03:39:30Z")

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You’ve been graped by the Grapist.

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### Author: ![Shrinking\_Violet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Shrinking\_Violet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shrinking_Violet)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2004, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/3 "2004-05-02T08:03:41Z")

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Purple? Nope, it’s the same old orange it’s always been.

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### Author: ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2004, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/4 "2004-05-02T16:53:59Z")

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Not purple this morning. 😕 Oh well, it healed, so I’m not going to worry about why.

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### Author: ![Tabby\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tabby\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tabby_Cat)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2004, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/5 "2004-05-02T17:01:17Z")

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I have occasional problems with that, too… more bluish than purple, IMO, but yeah… what’s up with that? And the font is different, too.

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### Author: ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2004, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/6 "2004-05-02T17:38:23Z")

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I’m confused.  
Purple?

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### Author: ![Tenar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@Tenar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tenar)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2004, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/7 "2004-05-02T18:47:40Z")

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> [@picunurse](#):
>
> When I go into a thread, the background is dark purple. I don’ like it one lil’ bit! Dark purple& black. I’m old! I can’t see… .  
> I didn’t change anything, at least not while I was awake. Wait, but no, it was purple before that.  
> I did sneek off to another message board today.  
> Is this my punishment?

Just how old IS your monitor?

(I kept one so long that it was more or less monochromatic. Wages of cheapness, in my case…)

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### Author: ![Tabby\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tabby\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tabby_Cat)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2004, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/8 "2004-05-02T21:40:35Z")

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Well, not _everything_ purple, it’s a bit like… I dunno, like the page didn’t finish loading somehow, and the browser is just showing what it’s recieved, and “forgot” to put in the white ofver the “purple” (more like blue, actually).

Something like that. Quite infrequent for me, though.

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### Author: ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2004, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-am-i-purple/243094/9 "2004-05-03T15:01:31Z")

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It happens when your page hasn’t completely loaded. I guess it’s something to do with the cascading style sheets/templates that the board software uses.

i.e. first the data is downloaded, and then the style is applied. If the download of the page is interrupted before the style is applied, you end up seeing it as purple.

Usually, refreshing the page using Ctrl-Refresh should fix it, except in the circumstances where the server is overloaded and is only able to send you incomplete pages.
