X-Google-Thread: f996b,2cca0228f12cdfb3 X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!62.111.101.3.MISMATCH!news.germany.com!feeder2.news.saunalahti.fi!reader1.news.saunalahti.fi!53ab2750!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art From: Ilmari Karonen Subject: Re: [Pic] Tickle pink References: <474b3d47$0$15889$edfadb0f@dtext01.news.tele.dk> <1mgmk3hqg1nel2dqjal5p8q0q765ig5q3o@4ax.com> <474b6dbf$0$15880$edfadb0f@dtext01.news.tele.dk> <474c369c$0$15873$edfadb0f@dtext01.news.tele.dk> <474f2fc1$0$15877$edfadb0f@dtext01.news.tele.dk> Organization: vyznev.net Message-ID: User-Agent: slrn/0.9.8.1pl1 (Debian) Lines: 71 Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:29:56 +0200 NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.112.42.132 X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@saunalahti.com X-Trace: reader1.news.saunalahti.fi 1197230888 88.112.42.132 (Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:08:08 EET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 09 Dec 2007 22:08:08 EET Xref: g2news1.google.com alt.ascii-art:5060 Christian 'CeeJay' Jensen kirjoitti 29.11.2007: >>>> Because he is a John Waters fan? >>> Who ? >> >> The best thing about the internet is being able to look up the answer >> when you don't understand a referance: >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Waters_(filmmaker) >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Flamingos > > Did you consider that "who ?" might be more than just a question but also a > statement ? > > Never heard of John Water or any of his work .. even after reading the wiki > articles on him. He is just another unknown nobody among all the others to me. > > Also one of the worst things about the internet is that you can't start a > discussion by asking a question before some guy tells you to just google it. > It's a bit like Godwins law in that regard. :| > > Maybe I didn't want to know what the internet had to say about it .. maybe I > wanted YOUR opinion ? :) Whoever John Waters is (and I still don't know, since I didn't bother to read the links, except that I now know he's "a thin gay man who makes funny movies"), he's clearly not on topic. That doesn't mean we _can't_ discuss him here (we obviously are doing so right now, at least in a metadiscussion sense), but it does mean that discussing him is not intrinsically desirable, if there are alternatives such as, say, Googling for him. Also, the original reference sounded like it was intended to be humorous. Thus, asking for an explanation comes off kind of like asking for someone to explain a joke. Now, the great thing about the Internet, as alluded to above, is that anyone _can_ be in on a joke if they want to, they just need to spend a few minutes searching for it. Or you could decide, as I did, that it isn't really relevant and just let it be -- not everyone _has_ to get every in-joke. If you in fact _had_ heard of John Waters before, and just wanted to put him down as "just another unknown nobody" with your rhetorical question, then, well, you've succeeded, WHBT, WHL. If your question in fact _was_ genuine rather than rhetorical, then you might've wanted to consider the possibility that, if the person who originally posted the reference had wanted to talk about John Waters in further detail, they could just as well have done it already in their very first post. Or, at least, having received a pair of links to Wikipedia in response to your first, one-word post, you might have taken the hint and just let the thread end rather than griping about it. (And yes, I realize that this message is even further off the popic, and will most likely come off to you as just as bitter and hostile as your message came off to me. Sorry about that. For what it's worth, this post was intended less as a put-down and more as a simple attempt to genuinely answer the points you raised, as well as to show how your tone came across to me; whether I've succeeded in this or not is a different matter.) At the very least, given that the original poster had just taken the trouble of explaining their in-joke to you, you could've refrained in your reply from gratuitously putting down both them and their favorite filmmaker. The proper response would IMHO have been either, "okay, thanks for the explanation" or, if you couldn't be bothered to say anything nice, nothing at all. (Oh, and yes, you can also Google for any in-jokes, acronyms and unfamiliar terms I may have used in this post. Or just ignore them.) -- Ilmari Karonen To reply by e-mail, please replace ".invalid" with ".net" in address.