The Golden Age of WTF


  • BINNED

    Continuing the discussion from We searched Medline, Embase and Cochrane for the phrase bots are not funny:

    @Buddy said:

    Yeah, but I remain optimistic that we can return to something like that (well, I guess for me it's more of an idealized fictional representation of what it was like, cosidering I never posted on cs).

    In the Olden Days before TheDailyWTF bit the Golden Apple of Discourse, it was a different place. People could paginate to their heart's content, reply multiple times at the end of the thread, hijack threads at random, all without chiding from toaster-shaped dialog boxes. Bugs were known and stable. The forum authors had a policy of benign negligence.

    Post your reminiscing about the Good Old Days here. Rants about how you had to walk barefoot in the snow to school, uphill, both ways, also welcome.




  • BINNED

    In the words us who's grasp of German does not allow us to understand the joke: "Huh?"



  • Back in the days, @morbiuswilters would appear on every thread to call everyone a retard, post some political troll crap that would make the average 4chan post look like an intelligent essay on modern society, and then the next 15 pages would be people arguing about economics or feminism or whatnot.

    Now instead we get thousands of inane posts per week about bots, likes, and casual conversation.



  • So the more things change, the more they stay the same?


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @Zecc said:

    I'm sorry, but I just can't resist this cheapshot:

    If your mother was a bitch, then what does that make you?

    Meh, you are not saying anything that I have not said myself a few times before. Not a cheap shot, I am one of the few in the world that will wear that badge. 😄


  • 🚽 Regular

    Did Discourse choose to drop your post in another thread or were you avoiding derailing blakeyrat's thread? :)


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I am avoiding bullies. I said I would not engage him and I am standing by that.



  • Give it time.

    Where's this "coder" guy? I don't remember his exact nick, but probably someone knows who I'm referring to.



  • hijack threads at random

    At least we have @Zoidberg!



  • @delfinom, You seem malnourished. Are you suffering from internal parasites?



  • I wouldn't mind seeing more trolls here.
    I think you guys are running low.



  • Ok since you asked.

    I always liked my debate with cfgauss, that quantum physics blowhard:



  • Me?
    That just appears to be a long tedious argument between a sensible and a venomous person. That's not really trolling.
    I was thinking more of great trolls like SpectacleSwamp. (Yes, he might have actually not been trolling - that's exactly what makes him a great troll)



  • I was replying to the thread-in-general, but maybe Discourse fucked up.



  • No - just me.
    I tried to read up the thread to find if somebody asked something that that would be a reply to, but I didn't have the patience to reach the top.

    [size=11]EDIT: ... And I managed to accidentally reply to the thread in general instead of to blakey...[/size]
    [size=8]Honestly, the whole general/specific replies are kind of entirely confusing.
    If the post you're replying to is not the last post (and you don't quote), it's absolutely unclear what you're replying to. (E.g. see below post)
    If you're replying to the thread in general, it can be unclear if your reply might make sense for the last post as well.
    The only time when it's clear is either if your post isn't a reply (and cannot be confused with one), or if your post is a reply to the last post.
    So basically absolutely no gain over standard forums. [/size]
    [size=6](Crap - does this count as a segue about discourse? Please don't reply to this.)[/size]



  • Earlier [something] more [something]. Since that last one has a capital letter, I assume its a noun, so I guess it's “we used to have more x”. The video is just him saying that, so I guess it's some kind of meme about how everything was better in the old days. Since it's a mem, there's a good chance that the ‘x’ is something non-sequitur, or not widely accepted as desirable.



  • @created_just_to_disl said:

    That just appears to be a long tedious argument between a sensible and a venomous person.

    Every flamewar looks like that. The only difference between the sensible side and the venomous side is which side you personally agree with.

    I haven't read the whole thing yet, but just in the first couple of posts I've seeng gauss saying “I'm smart, I don't want to deal with the social bullshit” and blakey pointing out that if you've chosen not to work on your social skills, and then you start complaining about not doing well socially, well go figure.



  • @Onyx said:

    In the words us who's grasp of German does not allow us to understand the joke: "Huh?"
    Google says, "Previously was more tinsel." That doesn't help as much as I hoped it would.

    @Buddy said:

    I guess it's some kind of meme about how everything was better in the old days. Since it's a mem, there's a good chance that the ‘x’ is something non-sequitur,

    This, I think.



  • This thread was probably the turning point for when I began to really follow the old forums.



  • @Eldelshell said:

    Where's this "coder" guy?

    Do you mean TopCoder? He used to comment on the front page articles and I found his trolling really entertaining. He was just wrong enough to get lots of responses.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I always liked my debate with cfgauss, that quantum physics blowhard:

    10/10 would read again.

    The guy strikes me as this Wertherian-hipsterish "normal people would never understand me, I shall suffer alone on my mountain of intelligence" kind of person. Which is the most annoying kind of person.

    Yep, smart people sometimes have weak social skills, and sometimes just don't bother with talking. But so do idiots.

    (as for the socks coming in ziplock bags - easier to keep them paired without twisting them together? or makes your sock drawer stench less)



  • Exactly, he was fun.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    makes your sock drawer stench less

    Clean socks shouldn't smell. If yours do, seek help.

    This has been a Public Service Announcement, paid for by the council of "OMG ew" and viewers like you.


  • FoxDev

    where do I sign up to be a patreon of the council of "OMG ew"

    cause I totally will.



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    >Maciejasjmj:
    makes your sock drawer stench less

    Clean socks shouldn't smell.

    Perhaps that's the problem. Try washing them before putting in your drawer. Dry them, too, after you wash them; otherwise, they'll smell of mildew.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    mildew

    My brain misread this as Mountain Dew. I blame the new marketing of it as Mtn Dew and my crack-addict levels of caffeine intake.



  • @Buddy said:

    I haven't read the whole thing yet, but just in the first couple of posts I've seeng gauss saying “I'm smart, I don't want to deal with the social bullshit” and blakey pointing out that if you've chosen not to work on your social skills, and then you start complaining about not doing well socially, well go figure.

    Maybe he has some kind of genuine disability? Aspergers, autism? There's only so much you can learn intellectually about social skills and so fast you can learn it, and each learning experience means an awkward, embarrassing or offensive situation. Shit gets old fast.

    You fuckers who can socialise intuitively have no idea how hard it is. It's like me giving you a book written in Aramaic or Klingon and telling you if you're intelligent you should be able to read it. Or more like hiding a book and expecting you to know not only that it exists but also what it contains.



  • @another_sam said:

    You fuckers who can socialise intuitively have no idea how hard it is

    Ok, for starters I don't think it is fair to characterize me that way. But back on topic, Gauss started that discussion by saying that getting ‘diagnosed’ with intelligence is ridiculous because high intelligence is unquestionably a good thing, started complaining about all of the stuff that intelligent people had to put up with, said that politicians or other people renowned for their social skills are not intelligent, then that actually intelligence does correlate with good social skills, and every time blakey tried to call him on any of the contradictions, skirted around it with a bunch of rhetorical bullshit.

    Maybe the biggest problem with that type of intellectual personality is that they're so good at defending their world view constructed at age 10 that they can never actually learn from anything anyone tries to teach them.



  • For sure, that Gauss guy was a clown. @blakeyrat was right to call him out on it, and he couldn't back any of it up.

    I just wanted to shoot down the whole "If you're intelligent you can learn social skills and appear normal" bullshit. Because it's bullshit. It's possible to get better through painful trial and error, but if you're missing the intuitive thing, you can't learn that.

    And it's just as uncool to pick on people for social disabilities as for intellectual, physical or other disabilities.



  • @another_sam said:

    You fuckers who can socialise intuitively have no idea how hard it is. It's like me giving you a book written in Aramaic or Klingon and telling you if you're intelligent you should be able to read it. Or more like hiding a book and expecting you to know not only that it exists but also what it contains.

    I'm of the opinion that there should be classes for this in school (along with classes on how to call a bullshitting manager on his bullshit, and how to explain to a client that they aren't getting what the salesperson lied about promised anytime soon because of the laws of space and time). You know, useful stuff. Instead, they prefer to teach us things that can be found in books or on Wikipedia.

    I've always found the people-related problems (e.g. internal politics, unhelpful bug reports, etc.) to be the hardest parts of software engineering. The technical parts are almost always easy and straightforward.

    @Buddy said:

    Gauss started that discussion by saying that getting ‘diagnosed’ with intelligence is ridiculous because high intelligence is unquestionably a good thing, started complaining about all of the stuff that intelligent people had to put up with, said that politicians or other people renowned for their social skills are not intelligent, then that actually intelligence does correlate with good social skills, and every time blakey tried to call him on any of the contradictions, skirted around it with a bunch of rhetorical bullshit.

    I think the biggest issue there was that he had substantial emotional investment in the topic. I can sympathize with him there, but it's disappointing that pathos was the only leg he was standing on (if at all).

    @another_sam said:

    I just wanted to shoot down the whole "If you're intelligent you can learn social skills and appear normal" bullshit. Because it's bullshit. It's possible to get better through painful trial and error, but if you're missing the intuitive thing, you can't learn that.

    If only someone could write down said social skills into discrete, atomic, actionable instructions...



  • The really ridiculous thing is I was joking that you can't treat intelligence as a single number like a D&D stat, and it occurred to me (only long after the thread was done) even D&D has two stats to represent what we were debating about: intelligence and charisma. So even my ridiculous simplistic reduction was still more complex and realistic than cfgauss' position.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @another_sam said:

    Maybe he has some kind of genuine disability? Aspergers, autism?

    I'm going to assert "no," knowing people who actually have it. It presents differently. Aspergers people have trouble reading body language, for example, so have a tough time with other people because of that--it's a little like Sheldon in Big Bang Theory, but not much. (Remember the "sarcasm?" episode with the sign, or the occasional "I'm not good with other people's emotions, but I think that you're amused by what I just said" type of thing.)







  • Wobbly-Headed Bob is a depressed, conceited outcast with rodent-like features and a huge "freakishly overdeveloped" head.

    Hey, you found Blakey.



  • @Groaner said:

    I've always found the people-related problems (e.g. internal politics, unhelpful bug reports, etc.) to be the hardest parts of software engineering. The technical parts are almost always easy and straightforward.

    +1

    Worth the necro.

    Sorry for any Disco-inconvenience.

    @Groaner said:

    If only someone could write down said social skills into discrete, atomic, actionable instructions...

    We can always give this a try.

    Concise version:

    1. Trial and error (try not to get killed or excommunicated in the process).

    Expanded:

    1. Try something "social." (AKA Communicate in some way by saying/doing something involving others.)
    2. If you get burned, don't do that again (& if possible, find out what you did wrong without getting your teeth kicked in again).
    3. If things go well, remember it as acceptable.
    4. Note the circumstances in which this took place. An action considered acceptable at a bachelor's party may not be in an office setting, or a bachelor's party in another culture, and vice-versa.
    5. Rinse, repeat.

    One example comes to mind: In Serbian, the word "tsura" is used to compliment a beautiful young woman. That same word in Slovenian means whore, as my dad found out the hard way via a slap to the face (and the laughter of his older brother) the first time he visited the country in his late teens. (Surprised to find Google doesn't pick this up, maybe I'm misspelling it... paging @cartman82 )

    Or another one I discovered when first dating my Irish/Greek wife: "Pusti" (pronounces POOS TEE). In Serbian, it's a verb that means to release or let go. In Greek, it's a vulgar reference to a male homosexual & very offensive. So just picture a Greek guy grabbing a Serbian guy's arm to stop him moving for a moment to say, ask a question, and the Serbian guy says "Pusti"...

    Most importantly: the rules can change. Without notice. Rate of change is directly proportional to the WTFery level of the people involved.



  • I miss trolls.
    Bring back the trolls.
    Ever since all those new people (including me!) signed up, there hasn't been a single half-decent trolling going on in the community.



  • Well it's not like this place is half as good as Slashdot.

    @blakeyrat



  • @redwizard said:

    One example comes to mind: In Serbian, the word "tsura" is used to compliment a beautiful young woman. That same word in Slovenian means whore, as my dad found out the hard way via a slap to the face (and the laughter of his older brother) the first time he visited the country in his late teens. (Surprised to find Google doesn't pick this up, maybe I'm misspelling it... paging @cartman82 )

    "Cura", you spelled it phonetically.

    @redwizard said:

    Or another one I discovered when first dating my Irish/Greek wife: "Pusti" (pronounces POOS TEE). In Serbian, it's a verb that means to release or let go. In Greek, it's a vulgar reference to a male homosexual & very offensive. So just picture a Greek guy grabbing a Serbian guy's arm to stop him moving for a moment to say, ask a question, and the Serbian guy says "Pusti"...

    Explains the whole "banned from Greece" thing...


  • BINNED

    @TwelveBaud said:

    I liked it more when the arguments were about how much a language sucks, and not about how retarded the people who use the language are. When the rule wasn't "if noone tells him he's stupid, how will he know?", this forum was a lot more pleasant. As it is, having to parse through and ignore all the crapfest to find the good content has raised the level of effort for this forum too much for me to care.

    Copied here for TDWTF posterity.



  • @antiquarian said:

    When the rule wasn't "if noone tells him he's stupid, how will he know?", this forum was a lot more pleasant

    For stupid people, obviously. For those less so inclined, OTOH...



  • Thing is, people used to be much better at nostalgia 10-15 years ago. Fond recollections were fonder. Rose-tinted spectacles were rosier. I just simply don't think all these young people these days really grok how to be nostalgic. I mean, properly nostalgic, like we used to be in the good old days.


  • Java Dev

    Aye, 't is a lost art.



  • I liked your post, then saw this:

    @tar said:

    grok

    and promptly withdrew my like. This word needs to fucking die already.


  • BINNED

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    I liked your post, then saw this:

    and promptly withdrew my like. This word needs to fucking die already.

    It will eventually, because the younger generations aren't as familiar with it. 🚎



  • Just because you don't grok it?



  • @Arantor said:

    Just because you don't grok it?

    I grasp it.

    There. A nice word that's also actually English and means exactly the same. And it only has one letter more. And it doesn't sound like someone just belched.



  • I'd argue they're not the same thing.

    I have a grasp on some things - a grip on them, a familiar and competent understanding.

    I grok other things, which is a much deeper level, one that I don't have to consciously think about in order to do so. For example, I have a grasp on my language - but I grok typing to the point where I don't have to consciously think about it.


  • FoxDev

    Since when did something being second-nature become such a difficult concept?


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