On replying with the same animated GIF many times

Wasn’t she?

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Do you see a question mark?

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I just want to say that I’m questioning every post I make now, whether or not I"m going to get shouted down… so if the goal was to make me curb posting, that has succeeded now. Just FYI.

Are you avoiding the question, the answer, or the presence of a Donald*?

 

* Pleasance

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Well? I loves me a good tragic tale. I suppose it became something like Imgur, where everyone is a comedian with no audience and no one really communicates?

From your aparent bafflement at the strange habits of the more image-dependent communicators, I gather your perspective is that a copy-pasted gif can take the place of a well-placed (written) contribution to a discussion, but it’s too much of a jokey-memey, impersonal and slippery-to-interpret thing to really constitute a well-placed contribution to a discussion. No?

I kind of disagree. Low in meaning, yes, but not devoid of it. Through context and repetition that slurping thing has changed, in my mind at least, from something nonsensical to kind of funny to kind of not funny anymore to something familiar and surprisingly clever in aggregate. Through the magic of the Kuleshov effect, it does acquire some measure of meaning depending on context even if it’s technically the very same message repeated over and over.

It is saying something, at least as much as “christ, what an asshole” or “just look at it” is saying something, even if it’s just “remember our shared inside joke? huh?”. Perhaps not enough for top quality discussions, but I still get a laugh out of it and that counts for something, I guess.

Maybe I’m just easily amused.

Discuss.

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It’s also saying “I think what you say is abominable and/or stupid, but I will not flag your post, as I wish it to stand as a warning for future generations.”

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I’m wondering if it’s just ME posting it that makes it so irksome… as I’m not the only one who has posted it.

But, the truth is I see no reason to waste breath on people who won’t be around too long. Why not have some fun with it, and save my smart, intellectual discussions with people who I might disagree with, but who I KNOW will answer me on a person to person level, and actually have a discussion, even if it gets heated and we can’t agree at the end of the there are plenty of folks around here who I feel I can have a heated discussion with on controversial topics, and still be friendly with in non-controversial threads. Why waste my time on assholes that will get gobbled up by falcor anyhow? Why not post a dismissive give and be done with it…

And once again… WHY SINGLE ME OUT WHEN OTHERS HAVE POSTED IT?

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Because you post as many gifs as the rest of the happy mutant community put together.

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But then we don’t have to. It is a service! @Mindysan33 We are not worthy!

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Oh yeah, it wasn’t a criticism. It was an observation to answer the question.

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I have now finally seen a legitimate issue that applies and could make us re-think how many gifs we use in our posts:

“I wish I had better internet service at home, that would show me all the
great animated gifs on this site without taking forevvvvvvvvvvver to
download them.”

It’s a good reminder that not everyone gets even AT&T-level internet service, which is the bare minimum to load gifs without delay.

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as i’ve said in another topic the more i’ve thought aboout this the more irritated it makes me. i really wish i had flagged the original post instead of trying to provide correction.

I apologize, the intent is not to single you out, but discuss the general reply-with-the-same-gif behavior as a community. I am sorry if I have failed to achieve that, and if this is in any way seen as a “let’s pile on {person x}” because I don’t condone that and I don’t want to do that, ever.

Because you are an awesome human being, I hope this has been possible. The last time I tried to discuss “do we want this behavior as a community?” it did not go well. And that was probably my fault. I sincerely apologize if this is seen as singling someone one, that is absolutely not my intent. It’s the behavior I am interested in discussing, as a community.

And if we decide “hey you know what, we love replying with the same GIF over and over, that is our jam, you cannot take that away from us”, then that’s fine too. A reasonable discussion of the behavior is all I am looking for.

So in summary, @Mindysan33 is an excellent human being, has always been an excellent human being, and an outstanding member of this community.

I have zero objections to posts that a) have words or b) use a variety of GIFs. All that is addressed here is what’s on the tin: replying with only the same animated GIF.

Well we have a whole thread full of source material now,

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it is unfortunate that instead of starting out with something like “we need to have a discussion about using the same gif over and over” you started out with an irritable post which made a sweeping assertion directed entirely at @Mindysan33. when you start off like that it’s hard to take the message as anything other than being singled out. if a post like that had come from someone who was not part of the boingboing staff i would probably have flagged it as abusive rather than responding to it. in retrospect i wish i had so that the discussion could have been brought to the attention of the higher authorities one the site. as many of us have pointed out, that gif is not the only thing she posts. i went back and looked at the 24 hour period before you made your original post here. by my count she made 35 posts. 4 of them were that particular gif. in the 31 other posts she made occasional use of other gifs, i think 4 other gifs. the majority of her posts, 27 out of 35, made no use of gifs.

i have been frequently irritated by comments and posts but this is the first time i have been really unhappy with boingboing the site. i’ve been a member for over a year, i have been at the regular trust level for 5 or 6 months. with this post and your responses to various criticisms and questions you are doing more to harm the community than that slurping gif ever could and i implore you to go back, read through the thread and ask yourself “is it possible i could have handled this better?”

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Probably the context you are missing is this topic (at the time, about 7 posts) was split from an existing topic. You are right though, I could have edited the first post to make it more clear. So that is on me, and I apologize.

Also, I am not part of Boing Boing staff, feel free to flag away with gusto. I wish the community would flag more in general.

(I would also say 4 instances in a 24 hour period is … a lot. Like a lot, a lot.)

Edit: at this point I have said my piece, perhaps not in the best way I could have, and I am sorry. I only brought it up because I believe it is an important signifier in a community, and kind of a dangerous path to be on as a community. But we’ve had a reasonable discussion and that is all I wanted. I will now shut up.

He singled me out for post a particular gif, which others have also posted… but you know, I’m an asshole, so I deserve is.

So we can split this off, cause this kind of analysis is close to me.

Is it quantifiable? Measurable? Or a gut feeling? All are fine, but is it a subjective measurement or a score/prior liklihood, necessary condition, gating condition, etc?

I mean you do know like half of the audience here are engineers, right? :smile:

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Having seen you use leave this one in conversations other than this one, I’ll just leave it here.

:wink:

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