I really really really love this guy.
That's fucking funny. It really is trollery of the old school. You really need the cumulative effect, though. One really dumb comment is just dumb, but 10 comments perfectly designed to be as dumb as possible is genius.
Yes, it's regrettable that he gets so little engagement.
His only flaw -- and one that I'm more than willing to forgive him for this genius performance -- is that sometimes he's too willing to give up the joke.
By which I mean sometimes he shouldn't put in the last, absurdist comment that gives away the game.
I don't get it. It's just some guy using facebook to leave comments.
Happy to help. This made me happy in my hour of need.
A friend who is a fan has also recommended Bloodninja.org, "a cybersex version of this guy" but IMO he's not as dead-on funny.
See also: @oldmansearch
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Presidential margin just went over 4M. Outside chance it will get over 4.5 (running out of those sweet, sweet CA votes) but I've underestimated every time so far (going to be dependent on how much of NY shortfall is real vs. a late counting deficit).
If AK is done, it got to about the same # of Dem votes as in 2008 and ~30k less Repub votes. Giving 3.77% improvement for Obama, easily the largest increase for any state (as of this point 5 states are in the plus column).
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It looks like AK is pretty much done, although they won't have the official final counts for a couple more days.
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[Note to media--must credit JP Stormcrow] Florida was the 9th state to officially certify its vote. I am singularly unimpressed by all the clamors from the media and weak-minded individuals for immediate results in part because it was just such lamentations which helped support Katharine Harris in 2000 as she ran roughshod over Florida election law.
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BTW, in case anyone else was wondering why Alaska is the only state for which election results are not reported by political subdivision, it appears to be because the legislative district boundaries don't always line up with the borough boundaries. The precinct boundaries probably do, although I haven't checked this rigorously, and results are reported by precinct, so it would probably be possible to aggregate the precinct results into borough-level results. Maybe someone even does this at some point.
(And yes, I realize that probably no one else was wondering that. I was, though.)
I really can't tell if I like Horsey Surprise or not. I simultaneously find it funny and depressing.
I am with 9. This is grievously unfunny.
Like teo and the others, I'm not a fan of modern irony. The NYT recently had a great article about living without irony.
I thought the diamond to coal one was great.
24: really? It was very mildly witty, I suppose. But I am baffled why this is getting such rave reviews.
It's quite funny in a Kaufmanesque sort of way. Making a "healthy Twinkie" with lettuce wraps and icing? I'm still laughing at that one, on grounds of the visual alone. (The "undecided voter" one is awesome, too, if a little close to the bone; just the right mixture of stupid and crazy to have come from an actual "undecided voter").
Also amused by "opaque underpants leave more to the imagination".
I laughed and laughed at this last night.
Precinct boundaries have to line up with legislative districts: every ballot in a precinct is identical, so they have to be all the same races. So precincts also have to line up with borough and city boundaries, because borough races will appear on them as well.
I just learned that a distant cousin of mine was defeated for re-election as mayor of Sitka.
Actually, they may not line up perfectly with city boundaries: I have a friend who owns and lives on 5 acres of unincorporated land surrounded by the city. I'm sure she's in the same precinct, and therefore gets to vote in city elections, even though she doesn't live in the city.
10. The twitter feed in 11 has been going for a year and a half. To me, this seems not all that different from the argyle-wearing guys singing boyz in the hood. Indicating intention is everything; there are instances of where the ambiguity between mockery and reappropriation work well (Jimmy Fallon doing Neil Young doing Will Smith's tween daughter's pop song about long hair was recent and good).
I guess that in a medium this concise, I have a hard time telling the difference between obnoxiously juvenile and something more, and neither the guy in 11 or the OP seems much like Andy Kaufman.
23, see the google thread, to avoid their ironic ridicule
still nice that there are still a few sincere people in the monolith of the unfogged sea of irony
26: Yeah, I thought these were hit and miss myself, but the undecided voter one really was brilliant. I think the key to doing these well is getting the absurdity level precisely right: you want only a sliver more than you would normally find amongst actual idiots on the internet, and he nailed it on that one.
Andy Kaufman achieved fame by trolling creatively in real time while using his real name. Since everything he did was still awful, one can imagine how awful even the most skilled pseudonymous or anonymous internet trolling is.
everything he did was still awful
I thought Man on the Moon was pretty good.
34: 23 is being ironic. It's 32 I'm not sure about.
I'm on Team Funny, though I will fight to defend the god-given right of Team Stick-in-the-Butt to find it unfunny.
I think that the key to appreciating Andy Kaufman is audience participation. Frozen in the past it might look like trolling, but there's definitely more there.
I guess I don't get it. Those are just regular headlines from news articles.
You know what never gets old? Discussions of individual preferences in humor. There's so much valuable and insightful discussion to be had on the topic. And the internet is a great enabler.
If you like rhubarb pie, then this is funny.
38: You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it's me, I'm a little fucked up maybe, but Team Funny how? I mean funny like you're clowns, or the site amuses you? It makes you laugh, It's here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean Team Funny, Team Funny how?
This is my kind of humor. If I can pretend to be a little stupider than I am, I can't be all that dumb. Right?
40 was good, but 9 is even better, to the point where I initially thought it was unintentional.
Jms you read pfs mind? that must be easy for you like telling how pies taste, trashy or slimy
well, i am at least glad you dared to say your opinion on something, a whole autonomic from you person's mind! not just food or something equally trifle
maybe the people who don't find it funny should switch places with the people who do find it funny for a day, to broaden their horizons.
Wow! Two people in a row who should fuck off!
47 was funny, excellent use of minimal resources.
thanks, lw. let's celebrate black friday together by not doing anything at home in our pjs.
Maybe someone can come by tonight and delete what I'm going to quote since I'm not sure how I could adequately googleproof it, but my mother joined facebook a year or so ago I think solely so she can leave chipper little anti-abortion arguments everywhere. The latest is on my brother's (ex?)-gf's status update about how she's glad in the wake of the Savita tragedy that she decided to be trained as an OB-GYN and will be able to perform abortions someday.
After trying to correct the gf that the real probably was that abortion is legal but Savita just didn't get antibiotics quickly enough and THAT is the medical tragedy, my mom added And, being Ms. former-libber now-johnny-one-note, I have to point out that defining reproduction as de-production means twice as many people die, in the quest for "reproductive health service." We can all do better, certainly. Bottom line, abortion hurts women. Abe Lincoln: "created equal."
So much worse than horsey surprise, but at least she's stopped talking about rape post-election and I... never mind, I can't even think about this anymore.
53: I assume that means you've been charmed into agreeing with her, right? Because that's her goal!
That's impressively nonsensical, all right.
I shouldn't get stuck on minutia, but why 'twice' as many people die? I can't see how that math works at all.
Is Abraham Lincoln, Anti-Abortion Activist, the sequel to Abraham Lincoln, Vampire-Hunter?
Abe Lincoln: "created equal."
What neb said.
Maa, i can't be quarelling in any way today, so cn gatekeeper some other time be my guest
56: I do not know, though math is not her thing. I got into one facebook fight with her about "legitimate rape" and I am sure as hell not going anywhere near any of it again.
And I'll actually share the first comment, where she implies that pro-abortion activist doctors were behind this death to further their propaganda goals. Actually, Irish law does protect the mother. It appears that a tragic death from septicemia is being exploited for someone's agenda. Why were antibiotics not given earlier? http://www.lifenews.com/2012/11/16/savita-died-because-doctors-failed-to-follow-irish-pro-life-law/
ABRAHAM LINCOLN DID NOT DIE IN VAIN
FOR IN IRELAND THERE IS A PLACE WHERE FOREVER, A LIVE ADULT AND A DEAD FETUS ARE EQUAL UNDER LAW
I shouldn't get stuck on minutia, but why 'twice' as many people die? I can't see how that math works at all.
Yeah really overall fewer people die, because when a fetus is aborted no person who could potentially have its own children enters the world. And those children? They would all die, in time.
It's like the old saying: hang a man and save the lives of all his unborn fetuses.
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My stupid fire ant bites won't stop itching.
#updatestooboringforfacebook
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Unborn fetuses are like unwritten comments, except with more gross stuff.
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I had a great idea for a bumper sticker for procedural liberals to use for the next election:
LOVE, LUBE AND LIBERALS MADE AMERICA GREAT
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It's like the old saying: a man who's hung has more gross stuff in his unborn fetuses than in his unwritten comments.
51. I realized that I could potentially solve two problems simultaneously: I've been wanting to both make some glass pieces that require an assistant for a minute or so and also to teach my kid the rudiments, which hasn't been met with enthusiasm. My solution: pay him to assist, rather than cajole or nag to try something new for himself. Which I'll try on black friday, when the studio will be unoccupied and so safe for a preteen beginner.
52. Is she religious? Exodus 21:22, because authority and reason always work with highly charged topics that can be discussed in isolation.
You make glass? Art or science (sounds more like art, but who knows)?
70: neither - Satanism. As Iain Banks pointed out, the Dewey decimal code for glassmaking is 666.
LizardBreath, don't you have a mean and nasty book review to be writing?
Yes, below are the handiest images for links. Last photo's terrible, but I'm pretty happy with the piece.
http://8tracks.com/lw208xx/mostly-cumbia
http://8tracks.com/lw208xx/beats-brass-no-remixes
http://8tracks.com/lw208xx/no-irony-not-much-cheer-mostly-quiet
Finding good writing about the origins of glassblowing is a bitch. Either Jerusalem or Damascus around 100 BCE. Seneca mentions glass vessels, later authors mention falling prices for glass.
I wrote a journal on glassblowing in the fifth grade. My friend and I were apprentices in colonial times. Glassblowing blackened our lungs and our master beat us.
72: I do, I do. Guaranteed by sometime over the weekend.
71: I wanted to marry a working-class girl, but unfortunately, after reading Iain Banks' books, such as Only A Faster-Than-Light Drive Girl, All for the Cosmos, and Mervyn Keene, Spaceman to my wealthy, gouty uncle, my uncle married his cook and wouldn't give me any money.
73: Those are cool.
75 makes me think of Johnny Tremain and [spoiler alert] his poor ruined hand, which for some reason makes me think of Ethan Frome.
Don't know anything about colonial glassblowing. Lewis Hine took lots of photos of US glassworks in the teens and twenties, before bottle-making had become fully automated.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004674301/
I can't recommend even arguing with your mother, but one major strand in letting this woman die is the fact that there is no legislation to flesh out a broadly worded constitutional position, thanks mainly to the resistsnce of so-called pro-lifers to their being any legislation and the general hypocrisy of our politicians. (Lots and lots of Irish women have abortions, thy just have them in Britain.) In the absence of a clear-cut legal position Savita's doctors would appear to have applied theology instead. Which is exactly what the fanatics wanted.
Johnny Tremain and [spoiler alert] his poor ruined hand
But it's not [spoiler alert] ruined! A historic personage fixes it with a knife and then we all gather 'round the liberty tree because childhood's over.
It's still too ruined to be a silversmith, isn't it? I thought there was hope for some function, but not the full flowering of his artistic soul.
And how come Rab had to die? Rab was the best.
I'm now 29 pages into the archives for the link. Some of them he clearly writes the first comment hoping for a specific reply, and the reply to the reply is real joke. This one is a good example.
I don't know what happened to my name there.
On July 4th, he pretended to be British and picked fights with Americans. My favorite quote: "Your arrogant gloating threatens to undermine the shaky peace we've maintained since that damnable war."
emir, one good thing that came out of this case is that I (and presumably a lot of other people here) now understand what a mess Ireland's law is. It's quite possible that my mother does understand and deliberately misrepresenting it. (And she thinks I'm the delusional and irresponsible one!)
Jesus, I can't believe I mixed up "their" and "there".
What do you mean Team Funny, Team Funny how?
You know, funny. Like putting a stick in someone's butt.
This one was my favorite so far (Page 58!).
"saying the definition of marriage has 'evolved' is based on the dubious theory that language evolution exists in the first place. read your bible before writing an article like this"
88: Rectum!? Damn near died laughing!
I just reached page 56, and now you're ruining page 58 for me. Great. Just great.
This guy is sort of making his interlocutors in these look like fools, which is too bad. I actually think there's a moral question there; how many people need to laugh (and how hard) to make it appropriate to shove somebody onto the tracks to do it? Really, it's a classic example of the Trollery Problem.
If you're going to make philosophical allusions you should know what you're talking about. You mean a Trolley problem.
Look the spercifics are not my problerm.
I believe you mean "philosophical illusions".
Are there any naive lurkers that are being fooled? If you are out there, you need to comment, so that we can be amused.
Yeah. I'm being fooled by everything, all the time.
99: Thanks for trying, but we can all tell you're just another one of us smart alecks. What's the point of trolling, when everyone's a troll?
Thanks for trying, but we can all tell you're just another one of us smart alecks.
That was the surface meaning, but underneath that was a cry for help.
Hmmm, this was a well told story I hadn't seen before. The way it arrives at the final two lines is good.
In another interview, recalling an altercation with law enforcement, Van Zandt recalled, "We got stopped by these two policeman and...they said 'What do you do for a living?', and I said, 'Well, I'm a songwriter', and they both kind of looked around like 'pitiful, pitiful', and so on to that I added, 'I wrote that song Pancho and Lefty. You ever heard that song Pancho and Lefty? I wrote that', and they looked back around and they looked at each other and started grinning, and it turns out that their squad car, you know their partnership, it was two guys, it was an Anglo and a Hispanic, and it turns out, they're called Pancho and Lefty..so I think maybe that's what it's about, those two guys..I hope I never see them again
Here he's defeated by the pure evil that is a JoePa supporter.
Damn it Walt you've leapfrogged me. You've got to slow down and savor these like a fine wine. It's not an all you can eat Chinese buffet.
Robert HalfOrr
Subtle Bruins joke?
108: I'm well into the "please God, let the bag be empty soon" phase of binge eating.
The ones I find funnier tend to be the ones that work as standalone jokes rather than instances of trolling.