Go Kinja, Go Kinja, Go!

Okay, so that did not go well.

Let's not kid ourselves, the Kinja rollout lived up to all the hype, which is to say that it was awkward, clumsy, and not terribly conducive to what we do, or perhaps I should say, what we did.  So, it's over, right?  We're all going to be writing stuff for Bleacher Report next week.

Pardon me, but I've seen this movie before, and it was directed by Michael Bay that time, too.  When the last redesign rolled out, we all freaked out.  It was buggy as shit (remember when "IMG Fail" wasn't just a dig at me?).  Hearts were gone.  So were our messages.  The "expand all replies" option was gone.  For a while, we didn't even have a blog view option, so shit was all muddled up and confused.  There was a featured comment thing that, frankly, I guess never got fully worked out.  

But that all got fixed.  And it seems pretty silly now when I look back at how much hand-wringing went into an aesthetically pleasing and ultimately pretty successful refresh.  

Kinja is different, of course.  The previous redesigns were largely site redesigns that only incidentally affected the world of comments.  Kinja is a wholesale revision of the comment section.  A casual reader might not have noticed the difference today.  We all did.  And, one would think, that when one sets out to specifically revise a comment section, they would hopefully take into account the opinions and needs of the commentariat.  Yeah, that didn't happen here.  Clearly, this redesign was not done with Deadspin commenting mores in mind.  

But, we are here at another crossroads.  Things will either get better, or they won't.  We can make the best of it, tell some funny jokes, adapt what works to fit the new design, or we can act like a bunch of shitty Gawker commenters and throw shit all over the place.  You are free to do what you choose.  I'm going to give this every chance to work.  And, if it doesn't, I'm going to totally change my tune and rip on everyone involved.  

MKMOT (June 25, 2012)

Well, we got that out of the way. Let's get down to business.

Less is more up here today. There should be plenty to talk about down there. 

Without further ado, the floor is yours. It's open.

Change is Scary

Full Disclosure: I have no idea what I'm going to write.

I am under the weather, on weapons grade doses of Nyquil, and still a little jet lagged, so you can safely assume that I am about as coherent as I usually am, and this is probably as good a time as any for me to share my entirely subjective response to the news that we're getting some sort of new commenting system that we all have known would be coming for like 8 months now.

On the one hand, it sounds like it has exciting potential.  More focused discussions, more interactions with the editors, a chance to do something other than just make tired predictable Holocaust jokes (yes, Bobby Big Wheel, I'm a huge fan, but that joke was about as fresh as Kirstie Alley's sports bra).  This can be a real chance for us to break out of the always-innacurate frat boy mold we've been cast in and show that we can be funny, insightful and intelligent, just like we've always done anyway.  Plus, the chance to interact directly with Dr. Timothy Burke, Ph. D., M.F.A., L.S.D., P.D.Q is going to do wonders for my screencappin' ability around this place.

On the other hand, fuck.

Still, there are a lot of pros here.

On the other hand, fuck.

Yeah, but we always complain whenever there is any change, and it always ends up being okay.  Remember how we were never going to comment after the redesign, and then MBA came along, and then things were better than ever.

Sure, but in fairness, fuck.

I guess where I'm coming out here is fuck.  I got a star on my first approved comment and it made me into a better commenter.  I immediately felt like I had a stake in the place, and I had something to lose if I slipped up even once.  I think that was good.  I don't think that would have happened if I hadn't gotten that star.  Maybe I wouldn't have even stuck around.

Is that it?  Is that what you want, Tommy?  Why could't you just tell me?  Why did you have to bring down Raysism, too?  Beautiful, beautiful Raysism!

Anyway... fuck, amirite?

Questions about the Petrino Post...

(1)  Is there something here, or is it just a random collection of names and words?

(2) Are you sure about that, HarryBalzack3?

Contagion: MKM Edition

I don't know if any of you people work with other people who have children, but I do, and fuck those miserable breeders.  Everyone has spent the last two weeks bitching about how their ugly, bratty children are wrestling with some loathsome disease that is undoubtedly the product of the same sort of lax parenting that they display when they bring their hideous children to the office and pretend not to notice when said ugly, bratty children are running amok, ripping up important irreplaceable documents and eating out of my garbage can.  Anyway, their worthless little disease vectors finally got me this morning, and I feel like hell.

All of which brings me to my point: perfectly done, BBAM.  That's how you take a traditional format and manage to do something entirely original and hysterical with it.  I've mentioned that we're going to have a tournament of commenters on this site soon, and this comment will definitely be a part of it.

An MKM Blog Tutorial: How To Ruin Someone Else's Clever Joke In One Easy Step

(1) Do this.

Guh.

Wha...?

So, I was flipping through today's comments I may have missed and came across the shitty Gawker approval I posted above.  But looking at that thread now, Jesus, that's the least offensive thing that came out of the late comments.  I know the people who read this blog are not the problem but I have to hold someone responsible for this shit, and I'm blaming Raysism unless someone has a better idea.

Huh?

Good God, No.  (pink)

:(

Come on, man!

Arrrgh.  (pink)

Ashley from Hardcore Pawn.

I'm Not Doing Duds ... But Jesus Christ Look At This One

Ohmigod, you totally need to see this (except you probably can't unless you have a star, so I've reproduced it below).  This is like the crapo di tutti crapo.  It's like the Six Million Dollar man of shitty comments.  Like someone strung together elements of all the other shittiest comments into one comment so completely shitty - lame, obvious targets; premise makes no sense; awful writing; no punch line - that no other comment could ever out shit it.  I actually almost admire it.

Almost.

Another DUAN Rant

So, as long as I'm at it, I guess I'll air all my grievances about DUAN this week.  I understand that there is a general pressure to fit it, especially for the new folks, and that naturally leads people - even well-intentioned, clever, and funny people - to try to borrow material or re-tread over well-traveled and safe ground.  Maybe you think that doing so will enhance your profile by showing how well you fit in, but it will do the opposite, and even if it worked, that's not a way to establish your own identity on this site (and, ultimately, that's what you want, right?  You don't just want to be the guy who is always first to +1 Gamboa Constrictor.)  Look, I'm just going to come out and say it: enough already about the fucking Smoot-Hawley Tariff.

We get it: everyone loved David_Hume's legendary run of jokes about how small the tariffs were before Smoot-Hawley came along, we all got a major kick out of dont-forget-where-you-came-from-cheese-mac's legendary darko-fee.com bit, it was great when Bev talked about how he spent "4 hours in the gym excising," and, of course, who can forget MKM's delightfully inside jokes about "The buddy Hawley Story." They were all great.  But they've all been done.   When you come into DUAN and just bitch about how high the stupid tariffs are now, or how much the comments about tariffs suck on Gawker, all you're doing is cheapening something that was once a really special joke among those of us who enjoy the comments on Deadspin.

Look, I've said it before: these aren't rules, if you can find a way to make a good, fresh, original Smoot-Hawley joke, be my guest.  But how are you going to do that?  (I guess no one has really played up the Fred Smoot angle, but that's only going to be bear so much fruit.)  All I can ask is that you be really careful about turning a great and special joke into something that's just another internet meme.  It deserves better.  Those of us who love it deserve better.  If you have any self-respect, you deserve better than that, too.

Pictured: IMG after another tired Smoot-Hawley joke

Why Deadspin Commenting Only Has One Rule

So, if you had asked me 24 hours ago if there was any way to get a laugh by spoofing Landycakeboss's miserable bro stories in DUAN, I would have said "ehhh....I don't think so."  (I would have said it exactly like that, hence the quotation marks.)  If such a thing is possible, the spoofs always were even worse than the original: meaning that instead of simply ignoring them and rolling my eyes, I would ignore them, roll my eyes, spend several seconds wondering to myself what is wrong with a human being to make them commit that much time to spoofing something that (a) they could just ignore and (b) which no one in his/her right mind would ever read, quickly unheart anyone involved and/or offering praise for said spoof, kick a stray cat, and then return to sipping a 1998 Salon with tray passed canapés, which is my standard DUAN snack (I am a busboy at a really fancy champagne bar).

Anyway, it's a good thing I never said that, and a good thing that the Deadspin commentariat eschews all rules other than "be funny," because look at what biden_dirty did last night.  It's totally original (well...maybe not so much) and hysterical, especially the subliminal assault on that pansy ass Cicero.  Yeah, take that, you praeteritio-employing bi-atch!

+1, biden_dirty.

Replies, Replies, Replies: That later discussion we were going to have..., Part I of III

[Ed. Note/Introduction to the introduction.  So this went up earlier today, and as I noted, Same Sad Echo of all people chimed in saying that it was too long and should be broken up into subparts, which I have now done.  Enjoy you short attention span having, motherfuckers!  Besides humoring the notoriously prolix Echo's advice on my overly prolix schlock, this also gives me a chance to add a few points I neglected to make this morning.  First, the last thing I want you to take from this is that you should reply less frequently.  I love replies on Deadspin.  Some of my favorite all-time comments are replies.  I just hope you'll reply with the same thought and care you would put into a new comment (unless you are giving a +1 to one of my jokes in which case you should fire away with abandon).  Also, our very own editor Sean Newell chimed in with a very good clarification in the comments earlier today, and I want to make clear that I'm not suggesting that anyone should reply to a comment for anything other than its individual merit.  To do otherwise is idiotic and counter-productive.  But I do think that it is tougher to enjoy the work of someone who has rubbed you the wrong way, either because they've stepped on your jokes in the past, or you think they're a hack, or because they're a fucking MMA fan.  I'm not saying this is conscious or vindictive, I just think it's a part of human nature that we should all be conscious of, for the same reasons movie studios are cautious about casting Paris Hilton - people find it hard to enjoy the work of people they hate, right?  Anyway, enough said, back to the thing below...]

This is going to feel a lot more like the fine print on a dry cleaning ticket than I would like.  There are several reasons for that, but most importantly, this is because it is fundamental a highly-subjective column on what can probably best be described as etiquette.  And etiquette is always optional, and debatable.  Remember that.  This is not a column about rules; it is not a column about how to be funny (which is something about which I do not claim to have any special insights); it is not a column about what you need to do to get/keep a star (ditto). 

Here's what it is: a while back, when there were no substitute or ultimate bastards, UweBollocks, EddieMurraySparkles, and I were working on a guest piece for MBA about how we choose when/where to reply to comments on Deadspin.  Like one of Same Sad Echo's jokes, it went on forever and ended up going nowhere, so we never even submitted the final draft to Shitehawk, but some of those ideas have continued to rattle around the hollow space above my neck, and I'm going to share some of them now.   But to underscore this point as clearly as I can: these are not rules about how to comment or how to make good comments.  As long as you stick to making good comments, you will do fine no matter what.

I'm going to steal the same intro we had for the unpublished MBA article, because I'm lazy, and because Uwe wrote it, so you can blame him if you hate it.

Here's a little scenario I want you to imagine yourself in.  It's summer of 2011 [ed. note: remember, I'm lazy, and this is lifted from an older piece...] and you're sitting in a movie theater.  The lights dim, and you ready yourself to find out whether you just wasted $10, or if it was money well spent.  But like any theater-going experience, you have 15 minutes of previews to sit through.  You see your usual crap, maybe a film or two you wouldn't mind seeing, and then it comes:  Memento 2: The Revenge of Leonard Shelby.  “What. The. Fuck?” you think to yourself.  Why in the world would they bother to make a sequel to something that was just fine the way it was?  Can't they just leave well enough alone?

And what in the hell does all of this have to do with commenting?

Here's the thing: some comments are like that, in that they're just fine the way they are. There's absolutely nothing you can add, except to let the commenter know they've done a good job.  However, sometimes you have your comments that are more like The Godfather.  [ed. note: comments about The Godfather are awesome.] Though they're excellent, there's somewhere they can go, they have room to breathe.  And there can be your Friday The 13th comments, in that they're fun and enjoyable, but they're crafted in a manner that leaves them made to be added to.  The biggest thing here is knowing the difference between these types of comments.

The point of this piece is to hopefully help you distinguish a Memento 2, from a Godfather, from a Friday the 13th. 

Replies, Replies, Replies: That later discussion we were going to have..., Part II of III

When replying to a comment, start with the same common sense and basic etiquette that you would apply in your daily life if you were not a terrible person.  If you wrote the original comment, what would you like from people replying to your comment?  

First, if you had spent some time and energy crafting a clever joke, you probably wouldn't want someone to come along and explain the punchline.  It implies that the original poster himself missed the joke and that the it took the super genius who is rolling around later to unscramble it for him.  Your role as a commenter isn't to be a humor_ninja and explain to people how they could have made their joke funnier: it's to make a funny joke of your own.  If you're in the slow reading group, this clip from what-I'm-sure-is-your-favorite-show will help.

Second, if done sloppily, a reply can ruin a joke that is deliberately subtle.  True Story: When I was a newly minted commenter, and didn’t know my way around very well, one of the most respected senior commenters posted a joke.  I read it, and chuckled, but then I realized something: there was a much funnier joke that tied perfectly to his joke, just sitting there waiting to get made.  I spent about 3 seconds writing it out and pressed submit.  Almost immediately, I cringed.  There was no way that this vastly superior commenter had overlooked a joke that took me only moments to stumble on.  No, he’d intentionally left that secondary joke unsaid so that clever readers could each make the connection themselves, thereby making his original joke all the funnier.  All I had done was to effectively explain his latent joke, thereby robbing it of its masterful subtlety.  Then, something happened that made it even worse:  I looked back up at the screen and saw that I had received a +1 for my reply.  It was a +1 that rightfully belonged to the original commenter, not to mention that he probably lost several others when I’d stepped all over his joke. I still feel sick when I think about that decision, and I resolved that I would never do anything like that again (history will record that I didn’t keep that promise, but it’s not from a lack of trying).

Now, one of those disclaimers I was talking about, this is not to say that replies that *look* like explanations never work.  They can be very funny if they're done as actual jokes, and not solely as an explanation for a pre-existing joke.  

Another thing to be careful of is making a recontextualization out of another person's comment.  It can easily turn into a form of thread jacking.  There are some obvious exceptions, usually when the original comment is sort of a bust due to an image save fail, redaction, or something like that, but it’s dangerous territory.  If you don’t do it just right, you’re basically saying, “hey, ignore the original joke someone put some hard work into, and just focus on how the words they chose to use might be funny in a different context.”  Except they rarely are as funny as the original joke, and you’ve now pissed all over someone else’s work.  Remember, once you inject something like that into a thread, the odds are additional readers might pay more attention to your reply than to the original comment.  How would that make you feel as the original commenter? 

Replies, Replies, Replies: That later discussion we were going to have..., Part III of III

Finally, when replying it's always good to focus on staying on topic.  Sometimes, you see people respond with something that seems totally unrelated to the original comment -- something that we might casually describe as a thread-jack.  Thread-jacks aren't necessarily unfunny comments - although in my experience, they almost always are - but they're out of place.  If there's a great thread going where everyone is coming up with hilarious Val Kilmer-themed movie comments that somehow also relate to bee-keeping or something (Real Bee-nius) and you chime in with a comment about how much you loved his performance about Doc Holiday, even if it's a really interesting and insightful comment about why you loved his performance (and it isn't, what do you know about movies anyway?), it's just out of place, and it breaks up the flow of the thread.  It feels like you just vomited it there to take advantage of the obvious attention the lively thread is generating.  There's this handy button labeled "start a new thread" if you have something worthwhile to add that would better stand on its own, and if it doesn't meet the criteria for being its own thread, there's always DUAN where you can vomit out just about anything and get 40 replies (no, not you, Landycakeboss - you just need to knock that shit off, like forever).   You'll sometimes hear the phrase,  “pyramid of comedy,” which I love.  All replies should build off the original, but everything should head towards a common point.  Don’t try to be Gaudi.  (By the way, at least in my opinion, if there is a pyramid going in DUAN, I still think this etiquette applies: it still screws up the joke to have something totally unrelated tossed in, but you should feel no trepidation about posting it in an adjacent location.)

As I said at the beginning, this stuff is optional and debatable.  It's not stuff that's likely to violate the only Deadspin rule of commenting -- make good comments (though as I said before, at least in my opinion, thread jacks and joke explanations are rarely good comments).  Some commenters have done very well consciously (or unconsciously) being anti-social and ignoring anything that feels like a rule of etiquette.  But the commentariat is a community, and commenters who consistently step on others' jokes might find that they end up getting less positive feedback on their own.  Also, if you step on one of his jokes, Uwe will hunt  you down and kill you, IN HIS BASEMENT!!1!!*

tl;dr

* It's actually more of a cellar.

Replies, Replies, Replies: That later discussion we were going to have...

[see above. I'm leaving this here just for the comments that were already contributed.]

BREAKING NEWS REPORT!

No matter how many times or how violently I click the "toggle star" button on Landycakeboss, nothing happens.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

For the people still trying for boxing-pun DUAN topics, I think that ship has sailed.  I mean, have at it, but I am going to be on the sidelines going forward.  It was fun while it lasted, and it lasted for exactly last night.

UPDATE:  For SV8, and everyone else who missed last night, consider this one to be just for you.

A Collection of Yesterday's Best Comments That Does Not Use Any Term Related to B_xing

So, that DUAN was something, huh?  I felt like I was trapped in some sort of giant whack-a-mole game, and not the cool kind where I get to shoot at Drew Brees, either.  But, if you look past that, there was actually some pretty decent albeit sub-MKM quality work done yesterday.  Let's take a looksie, shall we?

Today's Yesterday's Top Five Comments

I am going to omit all the fine work that was done in Drew's Gawker thread, but +1 to all of you who went over their to raise havoc, except for Cyrus_The_Virus, because he is just awful.  I mean, unfunny-obnoxious-unlikeable-so-terrible-that-just-seeing-his-avatar-can-make-a-baby-bird-die awful.  Anyway, we're here to talk about good comments, so let's move on. 

5.  Gamboa Constrictor dropped a nice comment in one of the 14 articles on Brian Downing yesterday (I am working on the theory that Tim Burke has self-destructed until proven otherwise).  He actually had an even better version ready to go, but he couldn't quite find a way to make "dangling participle" sound dirty enough. 

4.  Sponsored By V8 had a huge day and there were any number of his comments that were worthy of recognition, but that seems like a lot of work, so hope about I just point out this one and you guys go find the rest, ummkay?  This is a service, dammit, not a job. 

3.  If there is any commenter who consistently approaches MKM levels of hilarity, it's David_Hume.  And this comment was quintessential Hume: perfectly put out there, hysterical, and understated.  Like Brett Favre's junk. 

2.  Like Sponsored By V8, it can always be daunting to find the best AzureTexan's best entry of the day, so I'll go with this one, which cracked me up but received even less attention than Newt Gingrich's Guide to Remaining Civil With Your Ex-Wives.

1. MKM MKM MKM.  I avoid the commentary on DHFs, but this one was worth wading through all the toxic sludge around it, not unlike a visit to Broadway. 

Honorable Mentions (you know, where I pimp myself)

Pearls before swine! 

DUAN, Roundup, Etc.

So, DUAN has been something tonight, hasn't it?  Except for a few stragglers who didn't quite get it (keep on truckin', ithacabaron) it was sort of like an extended reflex test for me - a long form version of the epic Phintastic meme thread from last year.   Good times, but it has totally worn me out.

You'll get a roundup or something tomorrow.   I don't know.  I owe you nothing.  I'm going to settle in and rock out to some Fiona Apple for a while to catch my breath.

Because I Can't, I Won't and I Don't Stop...

IMG come and drop a Roundup.

Pictured (L-R): What IMG thinks he looks like, what IMG thinks he sounds like, IMG

Today's Top Five Comments


Nibbles was out in force today, so the Roundup will be a bit more haphazard than usual.  For what it's worth, there were several cases when I tried to give out a +1 today only to get a "comment save fail."  You can assume that's what happened if you felt insufficiently loved.  Lord knows, it's what I'm doing [stares daggers at all of you].

5.  Reigning COTY TDK absolutely knocked this one out of the park in the Yu Darvish thread.   Sure, you have to take into account that it's hardly an achievement to knock one out of the bandbox in Arlington, and the lack of universal Olympic-style beer testing among the commentariat is a major issue whenever one tries to get a handle on TDK's true ability, but he's absolutely got one of the highest VORCs in the game right now.

4.  AzureTexan.  That's really all I should have to write for you to know that this is brilliantly clever and hilarious.  But since I'm working on the assumption that UweBollocks might read this, let me try to express it someway he might understand, too:

 =  

3.  RMJ=H made me laugh out loud with this one.  It's a good example of how a great joke can be executed without any bells and whistles; you could almost overlook it if you weren't paying close attention, which is of course how Steve Irwin got himself in that situation in the first place. 

2.  It's a shame Stev D isn't around as much these days, because he can seemingly drop comments like this one at will.  Also capable of dropping almost any thing or one at will?  Every person who has ever been in Anna Nicole Smith's life. 

1.  Oh come on, you knew this was making the list. [I saw your tweet, and you can suck it, Achiever].  Is it only funny because it's MKM?  Yes, absolutely.  But that changes neither the fact that it is funny, nor that it is MKM. 

Honorable Mentions (you know, where I pimp myself)

I scuffled a bit today, but I did think this one was pretty funny...

Have fun!  We'll talk more soon...

A Hastily Thrown-Down Placeholder for a Later Discussion...

Yes, I have other stuff I need to be doing right now, so I can't spend the time on this which it deserves, but we need to talk about how to reply to comments.  One thing you don't ever do, is what ttyymmnn did to EMS here.*  If you enjoy a comment, particularly one which is deliberately subtle, don't reply with something that is little more than an explanation of the joke, and for the love of Tebow, don't tell a guy like EMS how you would have done his joke.**  If you can do the joke better that EMS - and unless you're one of MKM's alternate accounts, you can't - do it.

Anyway, a serious piece on this to come.  But I haven't had my coffee yet this morning, and I'm grumpy.

See you tonight.  Bring it today, everyone.

* MKM favorite Lionel Osbourne promoted the comment, so it is possible there is something clever in there that went totally over my insufficiently-caffeinated head, in which case, dreadfully sorry to all those involved in this example, but the point above nevertheless remains something we should all bear in mind.

** To underscore what I wrote last night again, because I really believe it is important: nothing is off limits, so if you can reply in a clever way which expands the joke and builds the pyramid of comedy by doing something similar to the example here, have at it.  Seriously.  But if you're just explaining to the original commenter how you could have done his/her joke better, tread carefully.