Was this FPP really THAT Farkish? April 3, 2009 8:12 PM   Subscribe

Was this FPP really THAT Farkish?

We were having fun and lively discussion about sexism, consumerism, standards of beauty and grooming. Cortex: Perhaps you were a little heavy-handed on this one?
posted by ZenMasterThis to Etiquette/Policy at 8:12 PM (65 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Even my wife and son were enjoying the dialog.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:13 PM on April 3, 2009


Well, it cut a little close.
posted by Science! at 8:15 PM on April 3, 2009 [3 favorites]


What a lame link. Want a fun and lively discussion about sexism, consumerism, standards of beauty, and grooming? Author yourself a good post about sexism, consumerism, standards of beauty, and grooming. Maybe you'll find a spot for The New Schick Quattro For Women's Managed Pubic Hair's ad.
posted by carsonb at 8:30 PM on April 3, 2009 [6 favorites]


Best of ZenMasterThis's Wife and Son
posted by mullacc at 8:35 PM on April 3, 2009 [4 favorites]


Yes, it was * stretches arms * this Farkish.
posted by boo_radley at 8:39 PM on April 3, 2009 [2 favorites]


Yes, it was that Farkish.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:40 PM on April 3, 2009


Was this FPP really THAT Farkish?

Yes.

Cortex: Perhaps you were a little heavy-handed on this one?

No.
posted by dead cousin ted at 8:43 PM on April 3, 2009


When my hand sits around the house, it sits around the house. It has its own zipcode. It doesn't have a barber, it has a groundskeeper.

My hand went into a restaurant and it ate all the food in the restaurant and they had to close the restaurant.

Seriously, though, yes. It was a "ha ha, it's about pubic shaving" 30-second spot on some company's website. I'm not saying there wasn't some sort of humor value there, this isn't a "your sense of humor is bad and you should feel bad for having it" situation, but that was thin-ass gruel as far as posts go, and thin-ass gruel posts are the kind of thing that stand a very good chance of getting deleted, especially when they get all flagged to shit and back. We're cool, but it was kind of a butt post.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:52 PM on April 3, 2009 [4 favorites]


For what it's worth, it's not very often you get to mention pubic shaving and thin ass-gruel in the same para.
posted by carsonb at 8:55 PM on April 3, 2009


You'd think that, but a quick review of my LinkedIn profile and it's mention of a 2005-2007 spokesmanship for Discount Crotchhair Soup Co. will disabuse you of the notion.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:57 PM on April 3, 2009 [5 favorites]


It was good, but it wasn't fur on Arakawa.
posted by NoMich at 9:15 PM on April 3, 2009


I think it was a bad call too. If that was too "Farkish", why was this one not deleted then?
posted by cmgonzalez at 9:23 PM on April 3, 2009


Zonezone.
posted by not_on_display at 9:26 PM on April 3, 2009 [2 favorites]


why was this one not deleted then?

Because it was almost three years ago? That's my best guess.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:30 PM on April 3, 2009 [2 favorites]


Schick Quattro for Women Trimstyle: What does your field of wheat look like after the harvest?
posted by sanko at 9:38 PM on April 3, 2009 [1 favorite]


Note only was it farkish, it was downright misleading.
I do appreciate the efforts of the advertisers to encourage young women back into the garden, but performing topiary with a pissly little razor like that would be neigh on impossible.
posted by mattoxic at 9:54 PM on April 3, 2009


thin-ass gruel, or thin ass-gruel?
posted by Rumple at 9:56 PM on April 3, 2009 [3 favorites]


Yes, please?
posted by carsonb at 10:04 PM on April 3, 2009


A YouPube video from Schick. Yeah, I'd have to go with the moditry on this one.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:21 PM on April 3, 2009


This seems like the right place to mention that today I saw what seemed to be pubes in the bathroom sink at work.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 10:25 PM on April 3, 2009


This seems like the right place to mention that today I saw what seemed to be pubes in the bathroom sink at work.

Those were mine. I hope you read what I spelled before you walked away.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 10:35 PM on April 3, 2009 [2 favorites]


Seriously ... the why didn't this get deleted if this didn't, is eye rollingly pedantic when you are dealing with kinda stupid posts and human type moderation.

Want 100% homogeny in site moderation? Wait 10 tears till skynet or it's equivalent stupid little brother (i.e. google) is auto moderating posts.


sorry, the gin and lemonade* is catching up to me



*bets way to drink gin, bar none.
posted by edgeways at 11:47 PM on April 3, 2009 [1 favorite]


Only one way to find out.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 11:51 PM on April 3, 2009


goddamn, that iStockPhoto guy is staring into my soul.
posted by boo_radley at 11:58 PM on April 3, 2009


Everybody always picks on cortex. 'cortex, did you have to delete this post?' 'cortex, did you have to delete that post?'

I picture cortex as Philip Marlowe...

The rain came down like saliva flung from a drunken monkey's slobbering lower lip. The city's tears were really falling tonight - but not for me. I had a job to do, and I knew it - seemed like everyone knew it these days. But it didn't matter what the cheap pimps and conmen, the yeggs and the hired guns had to say about it, I would play the hand I was dealt. Too bad for me that my hand was all deuces.

I put on my hat and my coat and went out into the weather. When I got to Morty's Bar, he was waiting for me in a dark booth in the corner: Peter. He was tall, and his Filipino heritage showed in his face. He'd come to San Francisco some years before and made a real name for himself here, although it was hard to tell how to spell it; he did his best to keep out of sight, and I couldn't seem to find out what his real business was. All the same, his suit was impeccable, if not quite the right color.

"Mr. Marlowe, I presume. I'm very pleased that you could make an appearance tonight."

"Get to the point, Pete. I've got a date with a stiff drink, and she doesn't like to wait."

"Well, Mr Marlowe, I'm quite sure you've already got an idea of why I called you here, but I won't make you guess. I'm certain you're aware of just how much pull I have in this town. It's because I take some responsibility for what happens in this city that I choose to tell you quite bluntly that I'm not very pleased with your recent deletion of this 'ouch' question. Don't you understand, detective, that some of us in this town quite like the discussions that happen in these kinds of questions?"

"Cram it, Pete. I've got a job to do. If you've got a problem with that, you can take it up with the District Attorney's office."

Peter smiled a long, cold smile that probably would've chilled the gimlet1 in front of me if it didn't already have ice in it. "Mr. Marlowe, I had thought I was making the right decision in coming to you. Heaven knows I thought of calling on Mr. Wales over at Wiki's Pub down on Keating Street, but I'd thought you were of a certain cast of character that would induce you to be a bit more sympathetic to my plight. Was I mistaken?"

I laughed. "Pete, you couldn't be more mistaken if you tried looking for a dark cloud in a marshmallow factory. That question was chatfilter, and you know it. You're welcome to get your own goddamned blog, but I'm not letting you muddy this city's streets with that kind of filth - not on my watch."

The smile faded from Peter's face. I drained my drink and set it coolly back down on the table, keeping my eyes on him as I stood up to leave. This conversation was over and out like a limp-wristed man from New York who loves Judy Garland and happens to fly a zeppelin for a living.

Half an hour later, I was leaning over my drink and listening to Dvorak land an airplane. He called it a concerto; I called it a racket.2 I'd dealt with Pete, but I knew my job was never really done. What I didn't know was that it twelve hours later I'd be uptown trying to explain to a certain zen master why precisely I didn't have time for his ladies' razor advertisements; but that's another story...
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. I guess this would have to be after The Long Goodbye, since that's the book where Philip Marlowe started drinking gimlets.
2. Okay, so I ripped this bit off from Chandler. It was too good to leave out.

posted by koeselitz at 12:01 AM on April 4, 2009 [19 favorites]


Seriously ... the why didn't this get deleted if this didn't, is eye rollingly pedantic when you are dealing with kinda stupid posts and human type moderation.

Uh, get off your high horse. It was a perfectly fair comparison, considering they were essentially the exact same post.

Actually, this one was more substantial, considering the underlying tones of racism and sexism in the ad and a discussion was beginning to occur around those points.
posted by cmgonzalez at 12:06 AM on April 4, 2009


thin-ass gruel, or thin ass-gruel?

I don't mind a bowl of gruel that's come from a thin ass, but gruel of any consistency that comes from a fat ass has no business on my table despite the higher nutritional value.

This was a toothless whore of a post, that had to suck its thin ass-gruel through a straw.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:12 AM on April 4, 2009


It was a perfectly fair comparison, considering they were essentially the exact same post.

The earlier post should have been deleted as well. It was simply posted at a time when the mod team wasn't quite so robust, so may have been overlooked.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:16 AM on April 4, 2009


To be a little more constructive, maybe this would help this problem: I know we're trying to tell people a whole lot of things when they go to make a metatalk post, but perhaps we could add a bold reminder at the top of the metatalk posting form to the effect of

Are you upset that a comment or post got deleted? If so, please let us know directly by using this response form. That way, we'll find out a lot faster!

I don't know. Maybe it would work.
posted by koeselitz at 12:23 AM on April 4, 2009



Only one way to find out.


Update, the fark mods have redlit it. It is apparently not farkish at all.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 12:58 AM on April 4, 2009


Yes, it was that Farkish.

Almost as thin and Farkish as the owl-eating-rat post, yet that awful post stood. Sometimes the moon must align with Jupiter to figure these things out.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:11 AM on April 4, 2009


I'm with Blazecock on this one. The link was no worse than other posts that have been allowed to stand.
posted by Cyrano at 2:52 AM on April 4, 2009


ahaha - I love how they start talking about the New Schick Kuato. I pictured a woman going into the bathroom to shave, locking the door, and from under her shirt comes some little mutant midget with a razor, hanging out to shave all her lower parts.
posted by mannequito at 3:38 AM on April 4, 2009


i'd say it's pretty reminiscent of just about all slyt posts.
posted by msconduct at 4:57 AM on April 4, 2009


The solution is obvious,

<> no more SLYT posts, ever! <>
posted by nomisxid at 6:00 AM on April 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


d'oh, was supposed to be the joan crawford tag up there =p
posted by nomisxid at 6:00 AM on April 4, 2009


We were having fun and lively discussion about sexism, consumerism, standards of beauty and grooming.

Just to be clear, fun and lively discussions are awesome, but posts really have to live or die by their link and presentation. While the discussion is certainly important to the community and the site in general, it's really about finding and presenting the best of the web. and one of the things we've basically come to consider "not best of the web" are advertising posts on corporate web sites, funny or otherwise.
posted by shmegegge at 6:38 AM on April 4, 2009


I'm not quite sure about the logic of "if crappy post X is deleted crappy post Y should have been deleted too." It's like arguing about which shovelful of shit goes first when you're just trying to keep it from rising above your head.
posted by fleacircus at 6:55 AM on April 4, 2009 [4 favorites]


It was a perfectly fair comparison

Of two posts, three years apart. I wouldn't remember what was going on on May 3, 2006 even if I had been working here at the time. I very much doubt Matt or Jess remembers either. A/B testing lower-brow posts for deletability vs. deletion is a tricky enough proposition when the posts are contemporaries; a gap of years just magnifies the impossibility of doing so.

So, it's a fair comparison if you're trying to show that last night's post was not a unique event, and that there's not some bright line rule that says Every Stupidish Post Gets Deleted. But I wouldn't have argued against either of those statements in the first place, so what we're left with is "this thread from three years ago didn't get deleted but the one from last night did", and there's basically nothing meaningful to say about that.

I'm always thinking about this stuff in terms of probability. The probability of a post living through it's first hour or two or through the first-visit-of-the-morning admin sweep is altered by a lot of different things that we take into account about post quality and community reaction. Being on the dumb side hurts the probability; being thin on actual content, too; getting flagged a lot, too. It's not a guarantee, but it doesn't help the post's chances. A lot of thin, dumb, flagged posts get deleted.

But, like chatfilter questions or Palin/Dawkins/Kittendeclawing posts, sometimes they'll stand. Either because there's some specific merit or because, what the hell, we're feeling clement right then and just laugh and let the damn bit-off-more-than-he-can-chew owlet have his time in the sun. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

Personally, I'm a lot more down with the idea of letting the occasional outlier through the cracks on the understanding that it's an occasional outlier and through the cracks is how it managed to survive than I am trying to find a hardline rule and specify it down to the millimeter and enforce it.

I realize that not everybody feels that way, and that even those who more or less do are going to each have different subjective views of any given post re: it's dumbness or thinness or any other tricky quality. And that's okay, that's part of what Metatalk is for, and as much as I might be a little punchy after a long day I'm forever glad that this part of the site is here and functions as it does. But I don't think anything I'm saying in this thread is new information, so please understand if the feeling that I'm repeating myself pokes through at the seams every now and then.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:42 AM on April 4, 2009 [2 favorites]


The probability of a post living through it's first hour or two or through the first-visit-of-the-morning admin sweep is altered by a lot of different things that we take into account about post quality and community reaction.

Time: 7am

SYSTEM STATUS: Sleeping

Beginning Boot Process...

Loading: Bullshit detector extension

Loading: Snark Module plugin...

Loading: Plungerman extension...

ERROR! Extension failed to load due to Jessamyn Module!

System Status: Bummed

Continuing Boot Process....

Loading: Doughnuts

System Status: Online!

Scanning: MetaFilter

Errors Found! Fixed.

Scanning: Askme

Errors Found! Fixed.

Scanning: MetaTalk

Goddamnit. Dealing with...
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:13 AM on April 4, 2009 [6 favorites]


My hand went into a restaurant and it ate all the food in the restaurant and they had to close the restaurant.

Oh man, I was racking my brain trying to figure out where that reference was from. Then I did a google search and ended up at this article in The Journal of Music and Meaning, which uses the quote as an example of Ralph Wiggum's speech patterns:

"The character, Ralph, is the most obvious example of the connection between awkward or unskilled use of meter and comic effect in the minds of listeners and viewers... The evils of the run-on sentence in constructing a beautiful piece of writing are well known, but what about in speech? Ralph’s emphasis on “close” and “saw” in their respective quotes does nothing to alleviate the sense of rambling, of forward motion with no resolution, and is too random to create patterns or motifs that are memorable. His sentences are constructed, not with subphrases or units, but are instead each is a never ending “melody,” the spoken equivalent of taking Beethoven’s B theme and playing it over and over again, slightly varying the pitches each time. They sound clumsy because there is no balance and are too long to be comfortably reproduced. However, they are not unpleasant in that, like Beethoven’s theme, the movement is endlessly sustained, as opposed to, for example, halting, and forever disjointed. We remember them this time, not because they impress us with their clarity and style but because they are funny."

I think this guy would fit in well here?
posted by bookish at 8:46 AM on April 4, 2009 [2 favorites]


I think this guy would fit in well here?

I'm fairly certain you're the only one who can answer that question, valleygirl.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:59 AM on April 4, 2009


I've heard of Fark, only on MetaFilter. Never visited it yet so I wouldn't know.
posted by juiceCake at 9:46 AM on April 4, 2009


what i love is that on one hand people hate on lawers yet when a post gets deleted they're all gettin' their case histories on and complaining about precedents. The post, like a bad meal, is gone and the only thing left to discuss is the loose movement that inevitably follows.

also, posting from a G1 stinks.
posted by GuyZero at 10:25 AM on April 4, 2009


Does that mean that Ralph is literally or figuratively Beethoven? Would Beethoven then be a Viking in his sleep or in Ralph's, or are both sleeps one and the same?
posted by CKmtl at 10:34 AM on April 4, 2009


what i love is that on one hand people hate on lawers yet when a post gets deleted they're all gettin' their case histories on and complaining about precedents. The post, like a bad meal, is gone and the only thing left to discuss is the loose movement that inevitably follows.

I'm pretty sure MeFi's chock full of the rules of equity.
posted by djgh at 10:54 AM on April 4, 2009


"Mow the Lawn" is freaking hilarious and may be my new favorite song. I don't really have an opinion on the deletion and I am certainly not the biggest fan of ladyscaping, but I am powerless before the silly.
posted by dame at 11:22 AM on April 4, 2009


You must be kidding. This was such a shitty post it's amazing it stayed around as long as it did. Posting dumb 30-second ads is what your own personal blog is for.
posted by languagehat at 12:16 PM on April 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


thin-ass gruel, or thin ass-gruel?

$20 SAIT
posted by mullacc at 12:47 PM on April 4, 2009


also, posting from a G1 stinks.

Have you considered an iPhone or iTouch? Posting from it is magical and makes you more desirable to the opposite sex.!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:13 PM on April 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


This was such a shitty post it's amazing it stayed around as long as it did.

So can we say that it is easily the worst post since the one about Cheap Trick's Surrender? If you want to see amazing, see that.
posted by juiceCake at 7:28 PM on April 4, 2009


Well, the comparison was because they were essentially the exact same post, not that stupid posts sometimes get deleted and sometimes they don't. I didn't even particularly care about the deleted post. I didn't even see it until after it went pink. But I did recall that other post when I saw this new one, and so it seemed like uneven handling.

The links in the comments of that post were leading to an actual discussion regarding racism and sexism in the ad. On that, I think it should've been left to stand, especially with the precedence of the old post, which didn't even have the possibility of any discussion of substance.

Perhaps if the OP had built those criticisms into the actual post we wouldn't be here discussing its deletion.
posted by cmgonzalez at 7:58 PM on April 4, 2009


Have you considered an iPhone or iTouch?

Oh, yes, that would make cut&paste so much easier!
posted by GuyZero at 8:56 PM on April 4, 2009 [1 favorite]


Well, the comparison was because they were essentially the exact same post, not that stupid posts sometimes get deleted and sometimes they don't.

But the point is that, if you want to model the deletion-or-not of e.g. a hypothetical given stupid post, the correct model is more of a probability function against independent trials than it is a deterministic model that maps from any specific post to an absolute yes/allow, no/delete output. There is no claim, there has never been any claim, that there's any kind of binary f(post) = [0,1] function at work here.

Put another way: deletion is a weighted coinflip. The coin isn't perfectly balanced, and how imbalanced it is depends on the context of the flip (where in this happy metaphor things like a post being thin or lowbrow or flagged or etc. all contribute to how heavily weighted the coin is). You flip that coin, and maybe it comes up heads = keep, maybe it comes up tails = delete. Do it again. Do it again.

These are independent events, and while we can assume further that the weighting between flips might change a little bit based on what's come before, it's still essentially a new probabilistic trial each time, and a coin weighted heavily to tails can still come up heads sometimes, because those are the breaks.

If the argument is that every flip should end the same way—always heads or always tails for any given sort of post—then we're just in fundamental disagreement about it. Which is fine, I don't think there's anything wrong with holding that opinion, but I don't agree with it and don't think trying to pursue that kind of hardline consistency would be a net gain for metafilter. A little inconsistency, and the willingness on folks' parts to accept and run with it in general, makes for a much smoother and flexible (and, ideally, enjoyably eclectic) ride, in my opinion, than any rulebook-driven code of enforcement would.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:01 AM on April 5, 2009 [1 favorite]


Oh, yes, that would make cut&paste so much easier!

Oh, you don't need that.

Yet.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:33 AM on April 5, 2009


I think this guy would fit in well here?

I think Ms. Runa Fanany might have a couple of valid concerns about MeFites' reading comprehension.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:57 AM on April 5, 2009


Oh, yes, that would make cut&paste so much easier!

Oh, you don't need that.

Yet.


And when it arrives, the mainstream press will no doubt tell us why it has revolutionized the mobile phone inudstry. again.
posted by shmegegge at 10:18 AM on April 5, 2009


inudstry, indeed.
posted by shmegegge at 10:18 AM on April 5, 2009


I remember the male version of this post, and I remember at the time thinking that it wasn't particularly appropriate, but noteworthy in that it was the first time I'd seen an ad encouraging men to shave anything other than their faces. While having a beard is an option for men, and having stubble is considered George-Clooney-sexy, unshaven female legs are pretty much anathema. I bet there has never been an actual unshaven female leg over the age of 11 in print of tv. So the first post at least heralded a tiny shift in the culture, whereas the current (deleted) one just highlighted a cultural trend that's been there for some time and isn't terribly surprising.
posted by Hildegarde at 10:33 AM on April 5, 2009


easy answer: just run it by isitfarkforeveryoneorjustme.com
posted by yonation at 12:06 PM on April 5, 2009


they were essentially the exact same post

well that makes the deletion even more appropriate then, n'est pas?
posted by edgeways at 12:55 PM on April 5, 2009


And when it arrives, the mainstream press will no doubt tell us why it has revolutionized the mobile phone inudstry. again.

Perhaps. But it is interesting to note that 17 million iPhones were sold without cut-n-paste, indicating that people were willing to live without it.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:00 PM on April 5, 2009


Oh, yes, that would make cut&paste so much easier!

I'm imagining the cut&paste functionality added to the Schick Quattro for Women...It's... terrifying.

I'm also a little hungover from Dramamine.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:48 PM on April 5, 2009


And when it arrives, the mainstream press will no doubt tell us why it has revolutionized the mobile phone inudstry. again.

If you had snarked with an iPhone, you wouldn't make as many spelling mistakes.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:50 PM on April 5, 2009


I'm imagining the cut&paste functionality added to the Schick Quattro for Women...It's... terrifying.

Longer eyelashes? Mustaches? Designer unibrows? The future of women's fashion is coming soon.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:51 PM on April 5, 2009


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