January 26, 2007

9:15 AM

Isn't this post of mine not really an "XYZ sucks, amirite" question? Looking at the answers I think it's more asking about the lack of cultural awareness of him while he has such success in Britain. Could understand it being deleted for being open-ended, but not the 'amirite' part.
posted by conch soup to etiquette/policy at 9:15 AM (48 comments total)

"Robbie Wiliams sucks, and I know it, but I'm Amercan." isn't a good way to start a question discussing the subject, ever.

We started the rule when someone posted something along the lines of "U2 sucks, why are they popular?" and you've basically asked "U2 sucks and I know it, but not equally worldwide, why is that?"
posted by mathowie at 9:19 AM on January 26, 2007

You also say this:

"I might understand why he isn't popular stateside if I knew something about him, but I don't want to."

It's a weird approach. You come off as saying "I wish to understand why people disagree with my correct understanding of the situation, but preferably without having to learn anything about the thing I know I'm right about."
posted by cortex at 9:22 AM on January 26, 2007

Putting something like this:

"I might understand why he isn't popular stateside if I knew something about him, but I don't want to."

in your question doesn't make a ton of sense either. "Please answer my question. However, note that I don't want to know the answer."
posted by bugbread at 9:24 AM on January 26, 2007

Whoops, shoulda previewed.
posted by bugbread at 9:24 AM on January 26, 2007

Who the fuck is Robbie Williams?
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 9:24 AM on January 26, 2007

Which is a pity because I do think there is mileage in looking at why different groups/artists etc., are more popular in one place rather than another and I was quite interested in some of the answers, especially occhiblue, which I completely agree with.
posted by Wilder at 9:25 AM on January 26, 2007

"I wish to understand why people disagree with my correct understanding of the situation, but preferably without having to learn anything about the thing I know I'm right about."


Cortex- A good amount of people who responded to the question got that I was being sarcastic, and not presuming that I was right. Just that I couldn't see why the difference in geographical opinion on the artist was so starkly different.
posted by conch soup at 9:32 AM on January 26, 2007

LESS ENGLISH MORE SENSEMAKING PLEASE
posted by loquacious at 9:37 AM on January 26, 2007

But I see how the "tell me I'm right that xyz sucks" threads would be an awful addition to mefi, and this one seemed on the surface, to be close.
posted by conch soup at 9:37 AM on January 26, 2007

A good amount of people who responded to the question got that I was being sarcastic, and not presuming that I was right.

It's a fact: clear, straightfoward questions get parsed more consistently than wordy sarcastic ones. Not a big deal, just, well, yeah. The surface details that lent it that "xyz sucks" feel bit you in the ass here.
posted by cortex at 9:40 AM on January 26, 2007

TV: apparently he sucks, but your guess is as good as mine.
posted by yhbc at 9:40 AM on January 26, 2007

A good amount of people who responded to the question got that I was being sarcastic,

Sarcasm often doesn't come across very well on a computer screen. Your question asked differently would have been fine imho.

You could have said you were doing research for a tv show, that seems to work.
posted by justgary at 9:40 AM on January 26, 2007

If you genuinely wanted to understand the reason why A particular pop singer is differently popular in different markets, you sure as hell went the wrong way about it. May I suggest that, instead of trying to be clever and "sarcastic", you just ask the question you actually intend?

You wrote "Robbie Wiliams sucks, and I know it" and "I might understand why he isn't popular stateside if I knew something about him, but I don't want to," apparently under the impression that people as clever as you would realise that you did not mean what you wrote, but something else. You may wish to consider that this self-conscious ironic whateveritis does not come across well on the internet. It especially does not come over well to people from different cultural backgrounds than your own, and particularly when you're trying to get opinions from people whose cultural perceptions are different from yours seems a very bad idea.

Then, in this whine about your deletion, you say "Looking at the answers I think it's more asking about...". You had to look at the answers to understand what your own question was about? WTF?

Perhaps you could spend the next two weeks formulating a coherent question and phrasing it unambiguously. Or you could research a post for the blue about pop singers whose appeal does and doesn't cross the Atlantic and hope for illuminating discussion, which might be a much better idea.
posted by nowonmai at 9:46 AM on January 26, 2007

Wheaties shortage in chez nowonmai this morning? Ease up, man.
posted by cortex at 9:51 AM on January 26, 2007

I think it's a bad deletion; the answers were pretty much all on target for the question that conch soup said he was asking, so there can't have been that much misunderstanding, could there have been?

On the other hand, conch soup, you can probably take the question's deletion as your answer -- cheeky sarcasm doesn't always play well in the U.S., as you've now experienced firsthand. ;)
posted by occhiblu at 9:59 AM on January 26, 2007

Also, I actually thought the question's tone was a more or less perfect encapsulation of the "WTF????" feeling I had when I moved back to the States and there was a total absence of Robbie Williams. It was like moving into an alternate universe, where you had to be careful what you said to the natives, because they'd give you extremely odd looks when they heard you prattling on about Mork's international pop career.
posted by occhiblu at 10:03 AM on January 26, 2007

I actually love Robbie Williams. It's strange because I don't listen to a single other artist that's anything like him. And I'm American. I suspect I would hate him were I British. But that's all just speculation.
posted by OmieWise at 10:04 AM on January 26, 2007

Why was this question only deleted in Amerca?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:06 AM on January 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

The couple of times he appeared on Happy Days I laughed my head off, but the spinoff kind of sucked. Pam Dawber was cute though.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 10:10 AM on January 26, 2007

Interesting question; I've wondered idly about this. The answers made good points. The tone was wrong though.
I'm glad I found it despite deletion through this metatalk thread.

Yeah; Robbie Williams is a bit of a twat but he's got a boyish swagger that maybe's a bit gay but works really well on stage.
posted by jouke at 10:16 AM on January 26, 2007

I just looked at the AskMe thread. Good Christ, five paragraphs of hard-to-parse blather? Next time, just ask the damn question and don't try to be cute about it. Here, let me rework that one for you: "Why is Robbie Wiliams popular in England but not in America?" No need even for More Inside.
posted by languagehat at 10:24 AM on January 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Some youtube:
glam rock meets Freddie Mercury meets Kiss
I can't find the video where he dissects himself in front of th audience....
posted by jouke at 10:27 AM on January 26, 2007

I have to ask! What's with the "doing research for a TV show" thing? (I searched and found nothing, and I'm compulsively curious.)
posted by thehmsbeagle at 10:28 AM on January 26, 2007

See here, thehmsbeagle.
posted by cortex at 10:32 AM on January 26, 2007

Aha! Thank you!
posted by thehmsbeagle at 10:37 AM on January 26, 2007

I think it was a good question clearly put. Languagehat’s summary is exactly wrong—it’s not a question of England. I said “it’s not the US vs. Europe; it’s English-speaking North America vs. the rest of the industralised world,” and that is mysterious. Disproportionate amounts of high fructose corn syrup don’t have any influence on musical popularity, to my knowledge, and there’s enough variety in the rest of the world in everything else with him remaining popular, that, well, yeah, it’s mysterious.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 10:41 AM on January 26, 2007

Fine, fine: "Why is Robbie Wiliams popular in the rest of the world but not in America?" Big deal. Explain to me why the five paragraphs are necessary. I'd ask you to explain how you can consider them "clearly put," but I guess that's not the sort of thing that can be explained.
posted by languagehat at 10:48 AM on January 26, 2007

It's an everybody else but us thing. You wouldn't understand.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:53 AM on January 26, 2007

The five paragraphs just seemed to indicate confusion, not a desire to start a flame war.

Also, really, we bitch at questioners who include too much information. We bitch at questioners who don't include enough information. Not everyone is going to write a question as eloquent, concise, and perfectly structured as everyone else would like. At a certain level, I think we just have to deal with that and stop making it an issue.
posted by occhiblu at 10:53 AM on January 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

Except for my first two questions, all of mine have been perfectly elegant.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:55 AM on January 26, 2007

Robbie Williams: Twat, or not?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:56 AM on January 26, 2007

dissection starts at +/- 3'05. Self-conscious exhibitionism.
Irritating song though.
posted by jouke at 10:56 AM on January 26, 2007

Except for my first two questions, all of mine have been perfectly elegant.

Truly. Works of art, really: too perfect for this world, and thus unjustly nuked utterly.
posted by cortex at 10:58 AM on January 26, 2007

I got the sarcasm part, but many people didn't and the question was confusing. It was flagged a bunch as "breaks the guidelines" and I even got an email saying "explain to me how this is NOT an 'XYZ sucks amirite?' question?" which is pretty much spelled out in the FAQ as being against the rules.

I would have dropped you a note to see if we could have found some happy medium but I didn't see an email address in your profile. Ask MetaFilter threads don't work so well when they start of with "Why does this suck?" because people who think it doesn't suck get defensive and often derail threads.

For the record, I have no idea who that guy is.
posted by jessamyn at 11:11 AM on January 26, 2007

"Feel" is a great song but sucks as a video.
posted by jouke at 11:14 AM on January 26, 2007

Isn't this post of mine not really an "XYZ sucks, amirite" question?

Robbie Wiliams sucks, and I know it, but I'm Amercan.

I don't understand why you don't understand that XYZ sucks, amirite? is an accurate description.


I might understand why he isn't popular stateside if I knew something about him, but I don't want to.

There is a question, it could be solved, but you don't really want us to do so. Thus, no problem to be solved. Thus, chatfilter.
posted by desuetude at 11:17 AM on January 26, 2007

Thanks jessamyn, that's very helpful info, especially regarding the flags and email.
I'll put an email in my profile.
posted by conch soup at 11:20 AM on January 26, 2007

This is as good an opportunity as any to recommend Stephen Fry's magnificent "Secret Life of the Manic Depressive" in which Robbie actually comes across as an actual person.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:23 AM on January 26, 2007

Tx gnfti, I have not seen that yet.
posted by jouke at 11:27 AM on January 26, 2007

It's stellar.

If you can't find it, drop me a line.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:29 AM on January 26, 2007

question deletion metatalk threads started by the original poster of the question should also be deleted. discuss.
posted by fishfucker at 11:54 AM on January 26, 2007

by the way gnfti: what's the status of the hypothetical imminent dutch meetup?
posted by jouke at 12:20 PM on January 26, 2007

It's as imminent as ever, but still hypothetical. Yeah, we should get going on that, shouldn't we?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:25 PM on January 26, 2007

I'm generally for the Heavy Hand of Deletion here, but I actually thought the question was interesting once you got past the bitchiness of it, and some of the responses were great.

I know there have been cases of the admins asking posters to re-work their wording in the past in lieu of straight-up deletion, but I understand it's time-consuming, so here's my pony request:

A new "under review/limbo" status for posts (as opposed to active/deleted) like this that Matt/Jess can activate while getting this info. Like deleted posts, they don't show up on the front page, and they can't take comments. It can be edited (through whatever process you currently do), and then re-activated, intact with comments, possibly jumping it back to the top of the page. If some period of time of inactivity passes on one of these posts, it automatically switches to full-on deleted.

I realize this opens up the need for some workflow that the site (probably) currently doesn't have, but if ya never ask...
posted by mkultra at 12:27 PM on January 26, 2007

I'd say if it's hypothetical it's more eternal than imminent.
I'll drop you a line.
posted by jouke at 12:30 PM on January 26, 2007

Robbie Williams plans to strip for Sir Elton John when the grand dame turns 60 at a Madison Square Garden bash next month.
posted by ericb at 12:35 PM on January 26, 2007

I just now realized that robbie williams is kind of a twat. hm
posted by bob sarabia at 4:43 PM on January 26, 2007

It falls into the rant-thinly-disguised-as-a-question category, which for the most part should be deleted.

Now, a rant-thinly-disguised-as-a-question does sometimes contain the kernel of a legitimate question, as may well be the case here. But in such a case, I don't think it's too much to ask that the poster take the time to consider that, and phrase the question to get rid of the "rant" part and emphasize the "question" part in a neutral way that doesn't presuppose certain answers.

Sometimes the responses to a rant-thinly-disguised-as-a-question identify the legitimate question inside and respond to it, and you get interesting answers in spite of the rant. Kudos to the responders who do so. Not to the original poster.

Sometimes M/J will allow these to stay up. Sometimes they won't. It's a judgment call, with no hard and fast rule that they all stay, or that they all go. I usually flag rants-thinly-disguised-as-questions (I didn't on this one, as I've been away for a few days), but I don't get apoplectic if they're not deleted.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:20 AM on January 29, 2007