# Yahoo! News message boards are the anti-Straight Dope **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 6, 2002, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178 "2002-04-06T15:16:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2002, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/21 "2002-04-08T22:25:20Z")
This thread rather impressively illustrates the non-redneck part of the OP. OP rants about idiots on some other newsgroup, and makes a reference which could be interpreted as derogatory to southerners. **Straight Dope response:** Discuss whether or not the slur was offensive, compare different southern experiences and discuss the merits of a particular restaurant’s biscuits. **Any other newsgroup:** “hey im from alabama so fuck you your proably gay fucking lsoer!!!” “lol yeah well lol you fcuk your sister lol and your mom to lol lol” “fuck you!!!” “lol” [sub]Disclaimer: the above was a fictitious re-enactment based on the author’s past experiences on the Internet, and was not intended as a slur on southerners, Alabamans, individuals of the homosexual persuasion, or any of the staff at Eunice’s chain of restaurants. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is highly probable.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/22 "2002-04-09T00:01:29Z")
I’ve got to admit, every so often I’ll yield to temptation and have a look at the message boards on Yahoo and see what they have to say about a particular news story. My usual response is to be appalled by the ignorance and cruelty (not to mention lack of creativity) in the posts and run screaming for the sanity of SDMB. [continuation of hijack] BTW, my (local not native) ex-boyfriend used to proudly refer to himself as a redneck and was one of the least ignorant, most open-minded people I’ve known. Of course, I used to be amazed at how I left southwestern Pennsylvania, and travelled all the way to Hawaii only to take up with one. Better quality? 😉 [/continuation of hijack] CJ ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/23 "2002-04-09T03:42:47Z")
> [@](#): > > Note that I never said that Eunice’s food was good, just that it was Southern, at least in presentation and spirit. I personally can’t believe that ol’ Eunice has the cojones to charge that much for what is essentially Waffle House food anyway. Agreed: Eunice’s is the Emporer’s New Clothes up here. > [@](#): > > Nope. She got her masters in Tuscaloosa a couple of years ago and moved to Huntsville to take a job with Sirsi. We have at least one other Doper who works for them as well. Ahhh, Sirsi. My husband works at the UAH library, which is Sirsi’s very own beta-testing bitch: his former boss works at Sirsi now, as do any number of former Salmon LIbrary emplyees. > [@](#): > > I’m currently applying for a job at Russell Cave National Monument in Jackson County. What do you do, and why haven’t you or coosa ever been to a BamaDope? Russell cave is a lot of fun: would you be the guy who makes the arrowheads? The guy who makes the arrow heads is cool. If they are full up and you just have a thing for hte park system, you might look at Cathedral caverns, also in Jackson county. They are brand new, you know, and perhaps the personnell are still shaking down. I just finnished my student teaching and I am substituting for the city schools: that’s why we never get to Aladopefests: we are way, way too poor. ---
**Author:** ![Redboss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@Redboss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redboss)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/24 "2002-04-09T07:57:06Z")
Oh, I see. Red **neck** bashing. Oh. Oh well, I suppose I can’t complain about that. But I’m watching you guys… Redboss ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/25 "2002-04-09T14:44:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*\*Ahhh, Sirsi. My husband works at the UAH library, which is Sirsi’s very own beta-testing bitch: his former boss works at Sirsi now, as do any number of former Salmon LIbrary emplyees. \*\* Hey, don’t hold it against her. She’s a librarian. 🙂 > [@](#): > > \*\*Russell cave is a lot of fun: would you be the guy who makes the arrowheads? The guy who makes the arrow heads is cool. If they are full up and you just have a thing for hte park system, you might look at Cathedral caverns, also in Jackson county. They are brand new, you know, and perhaps the personnell are still shaking down. \*\* No, see, I’d be the guy next to the guy who makes arrowheads. I’d be the guy who manages all the other guys’ GIS data. Doesn’t that sound _much_ cooler than some dude making dumb ol’ arrowheads? OK, OK. I promise I’ll learn to make arrowheads. How’s that? I’ve done the tour of Cathedral Caverns. Very impressive. A wonderful “live cave.” The stalagmite/stalactite garden is spectacular. Not sure how much use they’d have for a geographer, though. I don’t even know if the state park system keeps GIS data. Screw it. I need to go back to academia. This real world business is scary. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/26 "2002-04-09T21:13:43Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by cjhoworth \* > I’ve got to admit, every so often I’ll yield to temptation and have a look at the message boards on Yahoo and see what they have to say about a particular news story. My usual response is to be appalled by the ignorance and cruelty (not to mention lack of creativity) in the posts and run screaming for the sanity of SDMB. You too? And here I thought it was a repressed childhood memory o’ mine… ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2002, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/27 "2002-04-09T22:31:27Z")
That or a recurring nightmare . . . ---
**Author:** ![coosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@coosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coosa)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2002, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/28 "2002-04-17T12:42:47Z")
I’m gonna try this little quickie-post reply window and see if it works - my recent posts must have been quite tasty, as they’ve all been eaten by the SDMB gremlin (or maybe it’s that poor little overworked hamster). **grimpixie** , that’s fascinating. I wonder if that’s the origin of the term used in the US? I was taught that it refers to the ‘red neck’ the farmers got from plodding along behind the plow mule all day in the summer sun, so in both cases the word is referring to the same physical condition - a sunburned neck. **Sauron** , that’s cool! You grew up right down the road from me! Are you old enough to remember the caverns before they were commercialized? I can remember when they used to lose someone in there once or twice a year, usually teenaged boys doing a little exploring. Fascinating place! Oh, and the _races_ . . . been there, done that, haven’t been to a race in over 20 years. _sigh_ I’m old enough to remember when they built the racetrack, too. **Manda JO** , I have two brothers and a sister that live in Huntsville. I can’t even remember where they work, except that it’s defense contractors. One of my brothers works for SAR or something like that - some big company that seems to stretch for about half-a-mile along I565. **Ogre** , I could make up several plausible-sounding excuses for why I’ve never attended a BamaDope, but honestly it’s mostly because I have a very difficult time meeting strangers - heck, sometimes I have a difficult time meeting people I know! One of these days I’ll screw up my courage, take a double dose of Paxil, and come along to meet everybody. Anyway, to hijack the hijack and get back to addressing the OP: I’ve looked at the message boards at CNN, ABC, etc. and they are all mostly the same - a few intelligent comments among the insane droolings of neanderthals. Some of it is pure trolling, of course. Some of it is people getting a thrill out of saying things they would never dare say in real life. And some of it is people taking advantage of the anonymity of the Internet to vent some anger and frustration on an easy target. There’s a lot of buried anger, frustration, confusion, and disillusionment in the US, and I think in most Western cultures. Not everyone who is screaming ‘Kill the Arabs!’ really feels that way - they just need to scream about _something_, and it’s easier and safer to scream anonymously on the Internet about Arabs, or blacks, or Jews, than it is to scream at your wife, kids, boss, and/or coworkers. Of course, some of those people are just plain stupid. Can we blame it all on Bill Gates? After all, if he hadn’t invented Windows (which made computers so easy to operate that almost any moron can use one) it would require _some_ level of intelligence to access the Internet. ---
**Author:** ![Sauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sauron)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2002, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/29 "2002-04-17T13:14:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by coosa \* > **Sauron** , that’s cool! You grew up right down the road from me! Are you old enough to remember the caverns before they were commercialized? I can remember when they used to lose someone in there once or twice a year, usually teenaged boys doing a little exploring. Fascinating place! Oh, and the _races_ . . . been there, done that, haven’t been to a race in over 20 years. _sigh_ I’m old enough to remember when they built the racetrack, too. I’ll go one better for you – my summer job through high school and college was as a tour guide for the caverns. When I started, there was a rinky-dink little gift shop on the property; by the time I left, there was a sprawling tourist center and a maze. I figure the growth was due solely to my tremendous skill in walking people through the caverns and using my flashlight to point out formations. The guy that owns them is a millionaire several times over. I’m technically old enough to remember when the caverns weren’t commercialized, but I don’t. They didn’t even register on my radar screen until a friend of mine mentioned an open tour-guide position when I was 16. ---
**Author:** ![Arwen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7c8e57/32.png) [@Arwen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arwen)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2002, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178/30 "2002-04-17T20:24:36Z")
**[Cecil II](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=2008481)** streaks through and says: “I do not condone the use of any message boards that do not aid in the fight against ignorance, nor exploring in caverns without a trained guide.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-news-message-boards-are-the-anti-straight-dope/102178.md?page=1)