Catch-Up Thread

Over in the Speed Bump thread, someone didn’t get it when they were asked if they were disappointed in BoingBoing. The blog’s only been around forever, so it might be a good idea to collect all this stuff in one place so that if someone new is missing some important bit of BBS culture it’s easy to find. From that thread:

Back when (luck) dragons ruled the BBS, we had a list of people who had expressed their disappointment in BoingBoing, usually regarding how the author of the post had “gone too far” as a “long-time reader of the site”. For your reading pleasure.

It ended up being something of an in-joke to express your disappointment. “I thought BoingBoing was supposed to be a directory of wonderful things” was another one that landed many on the list. That’s why it’s now “a directory of (mostly) wonderful things” Bonus points if you spell it BoiNGBoiNG.

Additionally: ‘gentleman’ is only to be used in headlines when someone’s done something really stupid, although to my great disappointment, authors have been slipping on this one :wink:

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As a long time reader, I am disappointed in BoingBoing for not having ever listed an explanation of the “Banana – Look At It!” gag.

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Ketchup thread.

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Definitely. I felt a tiny bit… marginalized (unintentional, of course) by one poster when I indicated ignorance of the banana reference.

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Don’t start that up again!

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Yeah… I’ve been here since 2008ish in some form (maybe earlier)? And I’ve yet to figure out what the heck it’s about.

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Phallic humor, I think.

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I relish the opportunity :wink:

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That’s it. Go no furter, Frank.

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I assumed it was derivative of Banana For Scale | Know Your Meme

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It has to do with an old Cory post about a banana storage container that was uber-phallic, unless I’m mistaken.

He used the phrase “just look at it,” and hence, the running gag was born.

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Ahh. I love origin stories.

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The origin of “just look at it”:

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Now I’m confused. Which came (sorry) first? The clear plastic, dildo-looking thing, or Cory’s post? This is important.

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That post is the first “Just look at it” post on BB related to bananas. Given that I haven’t seen the whole “banana: just look at it” thing on other sites, I assume that’s the proper origin: his post reacting to the dildo banana thing.

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Zomg this thread.

<3. Carry on.

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Oh good, I wasn’t 100% sure that this fell into meta since it wasn’t about the bbs so much as bbs+boingboing culture. Glad to see I got it right :+1:

image

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You reminded me that I wanted some merch with that for a long tie, then I looked at what the BB store is now. There doesn’t seem to be a single piece of boingboing merch left :frowning:

What? Tons

https://shop.boingboing.net/catg/boingboing

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