Moderation ate my homework!

April 3, 2008 7:24 PM

I'm not sure what happened to that gaming/game reviewing link that was just posted a few minutes ago, but after having just spent a decent amount of time transcribing some portion of a Zero Punctuation review, I'm hesitant to let the effort go to waste.

And, here it is:

I'll be the first to admit that in my reviews I tend to go straight for the gay jokes too much. Somehow a burn becomes doubly funny when you imply that the subject also likes it rough from men with hairy bums.

I've honestly been trying to cut down on them lately but jesus, look what I've got to work with.

Two inseparable muscular men -- one big and grizzled, the other young and spunky -- running around in gimp masks, knocking down big missile erections, plainly sexually uninterested in the only woman of their acquaintance; and despite ostensibly making a lot of income as contractors they can only afford one parachute between them, which they're a little to eager to share.

Okay I promise not to make a big thing of this. Besides, the game plays more like a recruitment video for private military contracting than an endorsement of the bumming lifestyle. We're quickly and frequently reminded that the military is shit and so is everyone in it, while merceneraries are unstoppable immortal badasses who make tons more money and like it rough from men with hairy bums.

NO! Bad Yahtzee!

I meant to say, and you get to wear funky skull masks like it's Halloween every day except it's you giving out the candy and the candy is bullets.

posted by Slothrup to MetaFilter-related at 7:24 PM (39 comments total)

Sorry... I'm apparently more drunk than I had thought :(.
posted by Slothrup at 7:30 PM on April 3

Agreed!
posted by mrnutty at 7:33 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]

Thank you for this.
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:34 PM on April 3

I love Zero Punctuation as well. It was removed because the poster ran the canadian gaming site mentioned in the first link.
posted by mathowie at 7:35 PM on April 3

I'm not sure what happened to that gaming/game reviewing link

Looks like...

This post was deleted for the following reason: self-link, banned

Also Zero Punctuation is great.
posted by Artw at 7:38 PM on April 3

I like how flatluigi got called a dick for saying it was a self-link.
posted by puke & cry at 7:39 PM on April 3

I'll take this opportunity to apologize for sounding like a jerk for jumping on the post as a self-link with no proof. I got some vibes from the poster having no history other than the ubiquitous 3 comments needed to FPP something, more vibes from the fact that the blog was fairly new and unknown, and even more vibes from his posting of five or six additional comments immediately after I pointed that out. When it was deleted I was in the process of typing up a message to a mod to ask to clean up the post one way or another.

Also, I told you so.
posted by flatluigi at 7:42 PM on April 3 [5 favorites]

Ah, it was the first link that was a bit off. I was dreading that Yahtzee was a selflinking douche.
posted by CKmtl at 7:46 PM on April 3

Yeah. Suck it, weener.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:50 PM on April 3

Yay for zeropunctuation, boo to selflinkers. And yay for Slothrup's drunkiness, too!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:51 PM on April 3

The irony of someone named "Richard Daly" calling someone a dick is almost overwhelming.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:52 PM on April 3

I also feel this bears repeating:

fatluigi, if you've got evidence beyond mere suspicion, now would be the time to mention it, because in its absence, you look like a dick.
posted by Richard Daly at 7:14 PM on April 3 [+] [!]

Especially funny how Richard Day misspelled flatluigi's nick (and I just did the same thing to Richard).

Since MetaFilter has become a frequent target of self-linking spamster assholes, maybe we need to take a step toward "guilty until proven innocent" (and as much as I HATE typing those words, I really mean it). All new first-time posters should have their posts kept "on hold" until they have been thoroughly 'sniff tested'. Maybe recruit some of our citizen detectives to check them out to avoid giving the mods more work, but DON'T give a potential self-linker ONE SECOND on the front page until we're sure they're clean.

Feel free to call me a dick and drop an "l" from my name (preferably the second).
posted by wendell at 7:53 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]

Allow me to take this drunken opportunity, then, to give a second shoutout -- this time to Ţuică -- and not just because my wife is Romanian...
posted by Slothrup at 8:00 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]

When the Escapist picked up Zero Punctuation, their traffic jumped 400%.
posted by danb at 8:01 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]

The MeFi Project was our last, best hope for for internet sanity. A member-driven website thousands of posts long, located in digital territory. A place of insight and snark for over sixty thousand humans and others. A shining beacon on the Web, all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the Third Age of the Internet...the year the SEO War came upon us all.
posted by never used baby shoes at 8:18 PM on April 3 [10 favorites]

Found!
posted by Burhanistan at 8:26 PM on April 3

All new first-time posters should have their posts kept "on hold" until they have been thoroughly 'sniff tested'.

All first posts get emailed to the entire mod team along with the user's pertinenet info including participation on other parts of the site. Usually we'll notice something within the first ten minutes but cortex had band practice and I was driving to Boston so it was in mathowie's ballpark exclusively. We don't mind AT ALL if people smell around for self-linkiness but we'd just appreciate it if you don't post "J'accuse!" in threads when all you have is suspicion or if you just email us directly and we'll do the legwork.
posted by jessamyn at 8:44 PM on April 3

All first posts get emailed to the entire mod team along with the user's pertinenet info including participation on other parts of the site.

Brava/o!
posted by grobstein at 9:03 PM on April 3

OK then, anyway, I only very recently discovered Zero Punctuation in spite of its being Front-Page-Posted last August because (to put it simply) I don't give a hamster's testicle about Wiis and Halo and that kind of shit but when I watched one of the video reviews, I laughed several body parts off and went on to waste more time watching Yahtzee's mad rants than I had spent with Gaming Reviews since PacMan was a bachelor because when you combine gaming credibilty, extreme attitude, fast talking, a funny accent and brilliantly simple animated visuals, the results are a lot More Than Zero, somewhere around a half-googol. Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (and extra points for his nickname which takes me back to a game I actually did play as a kid, and yes, I'd yell out "Yahtzee!" whenever I rolled five of a kind even when I was alone which was most of the time I was playing it because it was a dorky game even in the 1960's) he is like Simon Cowell being played back at double-speed while on speed and Starbucks quadruple-cchino with a much smaller stick up his ass, 37 times more cool by volume and an additional 30 IQ points which he obviously used to avoid the dying pop music business altogether and I am so NOT surprised that "when the Escapist picked up Zero Punctuation, their traffic jumped 400%" which is head-explodingly impressive, not in a "eww, you got brains all over me" way but in a "wow, you got smart all over me" way and I wish I could hear him reading this sentence.
posted by wendell at 9:08 PM on April 3

zero punctuation is one of the best things on the internet, hands down.
posted by empath at 9:16 PM on April 3

nickname which takes me back to a game I actually did play as a kid, and yes, I'd yell out "Yahtzee!" whenever I rolled five of a kind even when I was alone which was most of the time I was playing it

Yahtzee! was one of the things (along with JOY!) I liked to exclaim back in my university days in the (18)80's when in my cups and loving life (which was most of the time, for both), an ejaculation that caused some cognitive dissonance in people at, like, NoMeansNo gigs and stuff, 'cause I was also a big scary leatherclad boozeviking.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:21 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]

"Usually we'll notice something within the first ten minutes but cortex had band practice and I was driving to Boston so it was in mathowie's ballpark exclusively."

Was he at the zoo again?
posted by klangklangston at 9:28 PM on April 3

The Escapist (or their marketers) got busted self-linking here, right? Because I've always found that site annoying.
posted by delmoi at 9:50 PM on April 3

Yes they did, delmoi. Bunch of dickbags.
posted by puke & cry at 9:56 PM on April 3

Was he at the zoo again?

Someone told me it's all happening there.

I do believe it. I do believe it's true.

Oo-oo-ooo.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:14 PM on April 3

Lordy do I ♥ the wonderchicken. We've been playing massive rounds of Yahtzee lately so after the gang goes home tonight, it's gonna be "OhSiAmoreSiSiSiOhDioOhSiOhOhOHOHYAHTZEEEEEEE!" assuming I can actually think straight at that point. heh.
posted by romakimmy at 3:11 AM on April 4

puke & cry: Yes they did, delmoi. Bunch of dickbags.

You might want to reconsider that.
posted by flatluigi at 3:33 AM on April 4

wendell: "Especially funny how Richard Day misspelled flatluigi's nick (and I just did the same thing to Richard)."

Whenever I disagree with someone from now on, wender, I'm going to purposely misspell their name.
posted by Plutor at 5:30 AM on April 4

That Plutor fella has the right idea, but Pluto? Take a walk, man.
posted by Kwine at 5:44 AM on April 4

Who the heck calls themselves Twine, for goodness sakes?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:15 AM on April 4

I'll take this opportunity to apologize for sounding like a jerk for jumping on the post as a self-link with no proof.

Appreciate, flatluigi. You had the right smell on this one (I wrote an email to the admin list saying approximately "this smells but band practice now have fun lol"), and it's like Jessamyn said: detective work is fine, send us an email if you find something incriminating or if you just have a strong hunch about something that's hung around for more than ten minutes.

But it's generally better to keep speculation out of the threads; sometimes something smells because a user just doesn't know the place and pushed some buttons accidentally, and it sucks to have an innocent thread crushed by an angry mob. If you've got a super open-and-shut proof of self-link, that's one thing, but even at that you could still just let us know instead of making it a public thing.

*hugs never used baby shoes*

Confidential to wendell: "is like Simon Cowell" should not ever, ever be a constituent of an earnest compliment.
posted by cortex at 7:00 AM on April 4

Especially funny how Richard Day misspelled flatluigi's nick (and I just did the same thing to Richard).

More like language fat, amirite? LOL!
posted by scrump at 7:25 AM on April 4

My favorite Yahtzee review is for Heavenly Sword(s), a game I have no intention of playing, but couldn't stop laughing at his take on it.

...she then adds with a totally straight face, "we may need you to play twing twang". My first thought when I heard that was 'I am so going to quote that out of context' but on reflection it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in context either.

Ever since this, I've tried to find an appropriate place to tell someone that I require their twing-twang playing skills, but thus far, he is right. It just isn't something that comes up a lot.
posted by quin at 7:32 AM on April 4

*hugs never used baby shoes* - posted by cortex


I got a hug! It's not just a note at the bottom of the page! They actually give them out!

(It's a hug from cortex. Do I want a hug from cortex? I really want a hug from jessamyn. But still, a hug is a hug.)

*hugs cortex*
posted by never used baby shoes at 11:06 AM on April 4

Don't overanalyze it. Hugs are a three-edged sword.
posted by cortex at 11:13 AM on April 4

Edge 1: You get hugged
Edge 2: Cortex gets hugged
Edge 3: I have no arms, I can't hug anyone.
posted by Plutor at 12:08 PM on April 4

You might want to reconsider that.

I dunno, flatluigi, that Arch0n's just two comments away from throwing up a self-link.
posted by graventy at 12:35 PM on April 4

Don't overanalyze it. Hugs are a three-edged sword.

Dude, yeah, just like Talon's sword in The Sword and the Sorc-- wait, nevermind.
posted by cog_nate at 1:47 PM on April 4

You might want to reconsider that.

Not really. I saw that comment before I linked to the thread, it didn't exactly change my opinion of them.
posted by puke & cry at 5:17 PM on April 4