(N+1LomgroflpimpnYT)

September 21, 2009 11:23 AM

Why are (SLYT) (SLnYT) (MLYT) MLnYT) etc. around?

If I recall, originally these were to prevent snark in threads due to people saying "single link Youtube isn't the best of the web" and also so people didn't have to mouse over the link to figure out if it was you tube or not.

So, now we have those wonderful* play buttons next to every Youtube link, and people tagging multi-link posts to avoid what kind of snark I do not know, as they are the antithesis of the original problem.

I am not asking for any kind of policy or directive on this issue, I just wanted to open a discussion to weigh the merits of this possibly vestigial practice.

My last MeTa was a bit too pushy, so I tried to make this one happy-happy. Hopefully I succeeded.

* Little bit of snark there, they basically made linking multiple videos with a single word look very shabby.

posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist to etiquette/policy at 11:23 AM (113 comments total)

It started off useful (SLYT), but now it's just become cutesy, injokey, and wrong.

I fucking hate memes.
posted by Afroblanco at 11:25 AM on September 21 [6 favorites]

If I recall, originally these were to prevent snark in threads due to people saying "single link Youtube isn't the best of the web" and also so people didn't have to mouse over the link to figure out if it was you tube or not.

That.

Next!
posted by Sys Rq at 11:25 AM on September 21 [2 favorites]

* Little bit of snark there, they basically made linking multiple videos with a single word look very shabby.

It's a preference setting. You can turn it off.
posted by cortex at 11:26 AM on September 21

When people link several videos within one word it's a huge pain in the ass for those of us with mouse accuracy problems
posted by kathrineg at 11:29 AM on September 21 [2 favorites]

Actually your last MeTa turned into a great thread. This one in kinda dull.
posted by JeffK at 11:30 AM on September 21

It's a preference setting. You can turn it off.

!!

I didn't realize! Thank you for mentioning that!
posted by zarq at 11:30 AM on September 21

is kinda dull.

Stupid typos!
posted by JeffK at 11:31 AM on September 21

Is this something I'd have to read that weird blue part of this site to understand?
posted by Grither at 11:32 AM on September 21 [3 favorites]

MetaFilter: I fucking hate memes.
posted by ColdChef at 11:32 AM on September 21 [13 favorites]

Side note: out of 11,128 MeFi members who visited in the last 30 days, 6,484 have the YouTube inline player turned on in their preferences.
posted by pb at 11:35 AM on September 21

The meme evolved, acquired questionable sentience and took on a life of its own.

It happens.

Eventually it will take over the Blue entirely and I, for one will welcome....
posted by zarq at 11:37 AM on September 21

pb, out of curiosity, is it on or off by default?
posted by zarq at 11:38 AM on September 21

zarq, it's off by default.
posted by pb at 11:39 AM on September 21

MetaFilter: It's a preference setting. You can turn it off.
posted by never used baby shoes at 11:41 AM on September 21 [2 favorites]

Antidisestablishmentarianist: "and people tagging multi-link posts to avoid what kind of snark I do not know, as they are the antithesis of the original problem. "

well, these things get lost to the mists of time. some of us remember how the original SLYT came around, much as you do. and some of us probably just figure it was a convenient identifier, so they've taken it and run with it in whatever direction they thought was natural.

speaking of metafilter memes whose meaning gets lost: does anybody know what it means when people just leave a period (.) in obit threads?
posted by shmegegge at 11:44 AM on September 21

it means they're lazy.
posted by gman at 11:48 AM on September 21

speaking of metafilter memes whose meaning gets lost: does anybody know what it means when people just leave a period (.) in obit threads?

Yes.
posted by Tomorrowful at 11:50 AM on September 21

While we're tightening up the FAQ, does anybody know what it means when people leave two periods (.)(.) in Metatalk threads?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:55 AM on September 21 [2 favorites]

Boobs
posted by Burhanistan at 11:56 AM on September 21

I think it's a good thing that people use the SLYT tag, and my reasons are explained here. Of course now I will need to include the other three in my sessions =)

I'm not easily annoyed by extra tags, I am easily annoyed by missing tags.
posted by soelo at 12:03 PM on September 21

Afroblanco: "It started off useful (SLYT)"

"SLYT" was never useful. It's one link! To YouTube! We could tell! We don't need an acronym to help us figure that part out.
posted by Plutor at 12:03 PM on September 21

I have the preference turned off, and the abbreviation tells me at a glance whether or not I should click on the link at work.
posted by desjardins at 12:05 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

Is this discussion about the use of SLYT as a tag, or is it about people prefacing a post with it, a la "SYLT: Cute animals falling asleep!" ?
posted by soelo at 12:06 PM on September 21

"I fucking hate memes."

I know! They're all in their greasepaint pretending like they can't talk in that invisible box, and I'm like, Fuck you, man! That box doesn't exist! Bet if I give you a purple nurple you'll remember how to talk again won't you?
posted by klangklangston at 12:07 PM on September 21 [4 favorites]

"While we're tightening up the FAQ, does anybody know what it means when people leave two periods (.)(.) in Metatalk threads?"

That's what porn looked like on teletype.
posted by klangklangston at 12:09 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

Preview buttons and mouse-overs don't work on iPhones.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:10 PM on September 21

I love the 'SLYT' label. It means "skip this post".

Well, ok, if the FPP has a lot of comments, or the post text is compelling, I might check it out.
posted by Maximian at 12:11 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

That's what porn looked like on teletype.

Close: It's two moments of silence for the img tag.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:13 PM on September 21 [3 favorites]

If anyone else was wondering how long inline YT on MeFi has been around, the answer would appear to be March 2007.

The earliest permutation of SLYT I can find is June 2007.
Non-abbreviated goes back a little earlier - 2006.
(Cites earlier than 2005 are improbable for obvious reasons.)

I don't have inlining turned on (and only recently found out it was there), so I may have this wrong, but it looks like those little play buttons may have been with us longer than SLYT.
posted by zamboni at 12:21 PM on September 21

I love the 'SLYT' label. It means "skip this post".

This is why I use it. So people can skip it and don't have to comment just to mention how they are going to skip the post because it's a Single Link Youtube Post and how I am destroying metafilter. It's also like NSFW: for some it's a guarantee that they will click, for others a guarantee that they won't.
posted by slimepuppy at 12:23 PM on September 21 [3 favorites]

* Little bit of snark there, they basically made linking multiple videos with a single word look very shabby.

There is a preference setting that makes a shabby posting practice look more obviously shabby? I need to look at my preference pages more often.

"SLYT" was never useful. It's one link! To YouTube! We could tell! We don't need an acronym to help us figure that part out.

Browser dependence is generally a bad thing, as is depending on the rollover to communicate your content.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:30 PM on September 21

Of course, I've only googled cursorily, and the phrasing of the 2006 post sounds like it was already a known phenomenon, so there's probably earlier usage out there. Any pointers?
posted by zamboni at 12:32 PM on September 21

* Little bit of snark there, they basically made linking multiple videos with a single word look very shabby.

Well good! Because that's a stupid thing to do!
posted by delmoi at 12:33 PM on September 21

SLYT: Smells like yummy turpentine! gluglugluglugluglugluglug
posted by not_on_display at 12:33 PM on September 21

Cute animals falling asleep? Where?
posted by marxchivist at 12:35 PM on September 21

KirkJobSluder: "Browser dependence is generally a bad thing, as is depending on the rollover to communicate your content."

So, only links that go to YouTube are somehow bad? Depending on a feature of one website or social norms is better than browser-dependence? My method can be used on almost every website. Can your "it's labeled with an acronym" or "it's got an arrow next to it"?
posted by Plutor at 12:39 PM on September 21

Cute animals falling asleep? Where?

Here.
posted by jedicus at 12:39 PM on September 21

Am I really arguing about this?
posted by Plutor at 12:39 PM on September 21

I would like to see the whole SLYT/MLTY/etc. set of abbreviations go away and die in a hole. They serve no purpose for me and are distracting. Failing that, I would be happy if people would just stop using SLYT to describe posts that have more than one link and/or links to non-youtube pages.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:39 PM on September 21

They serve no purpose for me

They serve a purpose for me.
posted by soelo at 12:43 PM on September 21

zarq, it's off by default.

I wish I had known this five "WTF are they on about, mouseover YouTube embedding whosis, huh?" MeTa threads ago.
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:44 PM on September 21

zarq, it's off by default.

Thank you, pb. :)
posted by zarq at 12:47 PM on September 21

Last time I checked the preview also breaks for any links to the regional youtube variants - uk.youtube.com and the like.
posted by Artw at 12:49 PM on September 21

Plutor: So, only links that go to YouTube are somehow bad? Depending on a feature of one website or social norms is better than browser-dependence? My method can be used on almost every website. Can your "it's labeled with an acronym" or "it's got an arrow next to it"?

Flagging which links are going to start playing video or flash multimedia, or download a PDF or MSWord document rather than a web page, is a universal best practice. Now, "SLYT" is certainly not the best workaround for something that could be handled by the text of the post. But the FPP should provide some indication as to what the reader is going to see when he or she clicks on the link.

Because, not everyone reads MeFi (and other web sites) with a desktop browser and using mouse-based navigation.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:51 PM on September 21

I would be happy if people would just stop using SLYT to describe posts that have more than one link and/or links to non-youtube pages.

I would be fucking ecstatic.
posted by owtytrof at 12:56 PM on September 21

(SLYT and bonus wikipedia links)
posted by Artw at 1:00 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

i hear what you're saying and im going to let you finish but the question about what comments are for is one of the stupidest metatalk trends of all time!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:03 PM on September 21

For most of 2006 it looks like warnings like "(youtube)" were de rigeur.

Rumblings about single link Youtube posts were well on their way by Aug 4, 2006, as evidenced by this deleted effort of Ubu's: "one-link YouTube post", q.v. the associated MeTa: "it's causing a proliferation of meaningless one-line posts".

September 22, 2006: "one link Youtuber"
November 4, 2006: "(single link, youtube …)"

Abbreviations like "(YT)" are increasingly common through 2007.

-----
And that's enough googling for the day. I might take a poke at the InfoDump later if I'm feeling ambitious.
posted by zamboni at 1:04 PM on September 21

also: hardcore youtubers
posted by zamboni at 1:05 PM on September 21

Side note: out of 11,128 MeFi members who visited in the last 30 days

That's an interesting stat in itself.
posted by smackfu at 1:10 PM on September 21

The jokey blank-link-website-abbreviation gag has worn incredibly thin. Wow, a completely unnecessary label for a self-evident piece of meaningless information! SLSTFU! I really wish the mods would start vanishing these along with those hilarious "more inside" gags in AskMe. Because posting in MeTa with the hope that it will have any impact on behavior is, let's face it, pretty much a fool's errand.
posted by nanojath at 1:18 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

Last time I checked the preview also breaks for any links to the regional youtube variants...

The inline player works fine with links from uk.youtube.com. I just spent a few minutes poking around those results and they were fine. I don't know if the inline player works for every regional YouTube site though.
posted by pb at 1:18 PM on September 21

...pretty much a fool's errand.

One could extend that argument to most of what we do. I mean, a site that anyone can post to for a one-time $5 fee that only features the best of the web?

But I agree with you.
posted by jeffamaphone at 1:43 PM on September 21

those hilarious "more inside" gags in AskMe.

I've been told if you flag those as HTML error, they'll be cleaned up.
posted by owtytrof at 1:55 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

My life would be so much easier if I had pb as my own personal life coach. All my preferences would become default and he could hide all the icky, bad reality I don't want to see completely out of sight.

He'd be like the black sunglasses from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
posted by misha at 2:07 PM on September 21

"I fucking hate memes." is not a meme.

"'I fucking hate memes.' is not a meme." is a meme.
posted by Eideteker at 2:44 PM on September 21

I've been told if you flag those as HTML error, they'll be cleaned up.

I do this all the time and they go away amazingly quick. And this is in the FAQ as well.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:54 PM on September 21

When people link several videos within one word it's a huge pain in the ass for those of us with mouse accuracy problems
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:05 PM on September 21

Some of us prefer abbreviations that give a clue to the content of a post, but ymmv :-)
posted by Cranberry at 3:09 PM on September 21

I turned off the inline player, for now. It was kind of handy to identify youtube links, I may turn it back on. Yes, I am unpredictable, like the wind, or electricity.

This thread is kinda boring, tilting at windmills is much more entertaining when done in a haphazard and reckless fashion. Perhaps next time I'll try the fun way again.

oh well, nothing will change, ha ha he he ho ho. They are coming to take me away. I will be blathering on about MLYT SLYT YTSL MTSLM and they will know they found the right person.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 3:10 PM on September 21

well, now that we've handled that topic, can we talk about how much I hate mystery meat posts instead? if I see one more cutesy and inscrutable 3 word post to god-knows-what, I will stab its poster in the face.
posted by shmegegge at 3:29 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

Can every letter be a link?
posted by Artw at 3:30 PM on September 21

NO THEY CAN NOT!
posted by shmegegge at 3:32 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

SLYT and MLYT serve the same purpose as 'warning: auto-playing audio' since YouTube, in their infinite wisdom, have their videos start playing automatically when you open the page. Frankly, they could be replaced with just 'warning: YouTube', but eh.
posted by Brother Dysk at 3:35 PM on September 21

I know! They're all in their greasepaint pretending like they can't talk in that invisible box, and I'm like, Fuck you, man! That box doesn't exist! Bet if I give you a purple nurple you'll remember how to talk again won't you?

Purple nurples are the best.
posted by elder18 at 3:42 PM on September 21

SLYT and MLYT serve the same purpose as 'warning: auto-playing audio' since YouTube, in their infinite wisdom, have their videos start playing automatically when you open the page. Frankly, they could be replaced with just 'warning: YouTube', but eh.

Back before I managed to get a half-decent ad-block solution on Safari, that was a feature I liked about Firefox - that the video wouldn't start auto-playing in the background. Sure, I had to wait a few seconds when I finally visited the tab where the video resided, but hey - I've got broadband.

I have to admit to being a bit meh on SLYT posts in general, let alone the acronym. The only amazing SLYT I can remember off the top of my head was this (which as it turns out, isn't a SLYT, but I'ma let me finish, because it was a SLYT above the "More Inside").
posted by djgh at 4:04 PM on September 21

Shmegge: YES!
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 4:10 PM on September 21

djgh: that was a feature I liked about Firefox - that the video wouldn't start auto-playing in the background.

Opening a YouTube link in a background tab (i.e. Crtl-clicking it) does not prevent the video from autoplaying for this FireFox user. It's frustrating - I wish YouTube would just preload the video, and not play it until I hit a button. Waiting until the tab gets focus (which I think is what you're describing?) would be a big improvement on the current situation, but still not ideal.
posted by Brother Dysk at 4:12 PM on September 21

"SLYT" was never useful. It's one link! To YouTube! We could tell! We don't need an acronym to help us figure that part out.

Browse Metafilter on an iPhone and come back to me and say that.

Having your Safari quit and the YouTube app load up because some douchebag portrayed a single YouTube link as some sort of interesting article makes me want to track down the MeFite that did it and choke them with the cord of my white earbuds.
posted by Talez at 4:28 PM on September 21

Or we could just have a site preference that could put [YT] after every YouTube link.

Then everyone's happy.
posted by Talez at 4:28 PM on September 21

IANASLYT.

Brother Dysk: Install FlashBlock.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:30 PM on September 21

C'mon. There are countless greasemonkey scripts that will change the behavior of youtube so that the default behavior is to buffer the song but pause playing until you click. The one I use has versions for Firefox/Gecko, Opera, and Chrome. If you use Safari I'm positive there's one out there compatible with Greasekit.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:30 PM on September 21

Also, if you're going to have the site automatically add a note, it should be [video] not [YT] and it should apply to all the common video sites (e.g. vimeo, metacafe, etc) not just youtube.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:32 PM on September 21

Pronoiac, no.

That'd be a really imperfect solution, and prevent those sites that do operate properly from preloading any content. I'd rather just be happy that people indicated which links go to YouTube, and not follow them (unless there's a very compelling reason to, which is something that happens very rarely in practice).
posted by Brother Dysk at 4:35 PM on September 21

Talez, on the iPhone you can hold for a couple seconds over a link without letting go and you'll see the full URL and three options: Open, Open in new Page, and Copy. I use that all the time to see where I'm going. Also, if you enable the inline YT links, you'll get the play icon after every YouTube link which won't work, but could act as a visual indicator of what not to click.
posted by pb at 4:42 PM on September 21

Opening a YouTube link in a background tab (i.e. Crtl-clicking it) does not prevent the video from autoplaying for this FireFox user. It's frustrating - I wish YouTube would just preload the video, and not play it until I hit a button. Waiting until the tab gets focus (which I think is what you're describing?) would be a big improvement on the current situation, but still not ideal.

Hmm, well I just checked with Firefox on my current setup, and got the same behaviour as you described. So either this YouTube loading utopia happened on a previous setup of mine (e.g. old version of Firefox, different OS, different extensions), or I'm misremembering and it didn't happen.

I agree that the situation you describe (waiting until tab is in focus, which is what I thought I had previously - it's been a while) would be ideal.
posted by djgh at 4:44 PM on September 21

In that case, the script Rhomboid linked allows you to choose to allow autodownload & prevent autoplay.
posted by Pronoiac at 4:45 PM on September 21

Pronoiac, for some Flash video players (and many flash applications that involve loading and clicking past an ad before getting to content) that will merely load the flash application itself, but not allow it to buffer or preload its content.
posted by Brother Dysk at 4:51 PM on September 21

Zamboni, I always thought it developed from SLOE.
posted by GeckoDundee at 4:52 PM on September 21

Wait, no. *facepalm* Yeah, that would be a workable solution for YouTube specifically. Cheers Pronoiac and Rhomboid.

...that said, please keep warning us of video links, MetaFilter!
posted by Brother Dysk at 4:53 PM on September 21

Rumblings about single link Youtube posts were well on their way by Aug 4, 2006, as evidenced by this deleted effort of Ubu's: "one-link YouTube post",

From Rhomboid on May 30, 2006:

For the record, my beef was the fact that it was a single youtube link, not that it was a single link. Some links stand on their own, some don't; in my opinion youtube links fall into the latter category. That is all, just my opinion.

From the very first thread that linked to Youtube:

Whilst that was the lamest video I've ever sat through, you did point us to a pretty decent website of time-wasting videos.

Also, as I was digging through old threads I found a keyboard cat in a thread from May 2006.
posted by smackfu at 5:11 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

I see that the potato salad video has fallen into the memory hole. I suppose you could say that's another reason that SLYT posts suck, because when you come back in three years there's a not insignificant chance that they've been taken down for one reason or another. However, I see that more as a problem of rights-holders being a little too quick to file DMCA notices than a problem with people making posts that consist of nothing more than a link to a video. I'm certainly not going to argue that somehow by adding useless wikipedia fluff to what would otherwise be a SLYT you somehow make the post immune from sucking.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:27 PM on September 21

Rhomboid: If it's reasonable to say that SLYT posts are likely to suck, then it's also reasonable to say that posts that use mystery meat navigation generally suck as well.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 5:54 PM on September 21

People are always seeking ways to belong, ways to be part of the in-group or groups, winks and nods and secret handshakes that show everyone else that they're on the ball, they have a decoder ring, they know the in-jokes and significators, they're a member of the cabal, that they are inside the circle of firelight and belong there. The urge for tribal identification is strong in most of us.

The problem being that by the time everybody's doing The Thing or variants thereof, the creators of The Thing have moved on to The New Thing, to differentiate themselves from the masses that have taken up use of The Thing, which has now become the Old Thing, and quite possible annoys many because they perceive it to be overused or unfashionable or just Not Such A Great Thing To Start With.

See also: society at large.

Will the cycle ever stop? Nah, probably not.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:01 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

Talez, on the iPhone you can hold for a couple seconds over a link without letting go and you'll see the full URL and three options: Open, Open in new Page, and Copy. I use that all the time to see where I'm going. Also, if you enable the inline YT links, you'll get the play icon after every YouTube link which won't work, but could act as a visual indicator of what not to click.

I don't really like having to check every link before I go to it (on the whole it seems like a counterproductive process that could be avoided simply by forewarning the user) and I don't like having inline YouTube wasting CPU time with Flash Player (the single biggest hog of CPU on my machine) on MeFi's normally fairly static pages.

I guess I'm just a weird and particular case. Ignore my ranting I suppose. :)
posted by Talez at 6:10 PM on September 21

No flash object exists in the page until you click on the arrow, at which point it's dynamically generated by js; therefore using the inline player icon only as a youtube link indicator has zero CPU overhead.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:59 PM on September 21

Oh nice. I might turn on the inline stuff then.
posted by Talez at 7:47 PM on September 21

...they're a member of the cabal...

Given the content of the rest of your comment, I'm not sure what I should be saying at this juncture.

There is a cabal...?
posted by djgh at 8:28 PM on September 21

I'll take the cabal with a side of fries and some mayo.

Perhaps instead of all this goofiness we could standardize on a simple (v) tag if there is video, or aliens living among us. One or the other, or both.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 9:13 PM on September 21

You seem to have your inline video player on my lawn... if you'll excuse me, I'll return to reading MeFi as was intended - furtively, at work, as text.
posted by pompomtom at 9:19 PM on September 21

Bring back the pissing elephants.
posted by a non e mouse at 10:37 PM on September 21

Something must be wrong with me. I keep hearing about people, like, caring about certain stuff, that just doesn't register on my scale of things to care about.
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:33 AM on September 22

I like slyt, but that is only because it reminds me to go listen to The Slits.
posted by koeselitz at 6:11 AM on September 22 [1 favorite]

Can every letter be a link?

Who was that insane person that would occasionally make a post with dozens of links? I loathed them but I remember there were others who greeted the megaposts with delirious joy.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:06 AM on September 22

single link you tube posts bad, single link guardian posts good.
posted by sgt.serenity at 8:28 AM on September 22

I'm working on a FPP where every pixel is a link. I just have to perfect my subpixel font first.
posted by yeti at 8:31 AM on September 22

SLYT is a wonderful tag, and absolutely awful text for the body of a FPP, IMHO.

If you absolutely positively do-not-pass-go have to say it, just do what this guy did and, well, say it. Acronyms and parentheses are not needed. English can be very descriptive even when used in the traditional fashion, amazingly enough.

I'd say no such statement is needed at all. YMMV. Don't feed the gremlins after midnight.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 9:52 AM on September 22

Yes I used a bunch of acronyms, but that was a comment, not a front page post.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 9:53 AM on September 22

Not that I'm totally opposed to acronyms, SLYT and its derivatives do nothing for me. These goggles, they do nothing. My eyes, they burn.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 9:55 AM on September 22

umm... GYOFB?
posted by owtytrof at 10:18 AM on September 22

owtytrof: GFY?
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 10:21 AM on September 22

Did you really think I wouldn't know you were directing that at me if you didn't preface it with my username?

Really?
posted by owtytrof at 1:10 PM on September 22

Go fuck yourself.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 1:47 PM on September 22

YAY!
posted by shmegegge at 1:50 PM on September 22

Go Fuck A Rainbow And Move On
posted by cortex at 2:58 PM on September 22 [2 favorites]

Go F.A.R. young man, go F.A.R. Hmmm has a certain ring to it.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:35 PM on September 22 [1 favorite]

Keep on fucking that chicken!
posted by djgh at 9:20 PM on September 22

As said by an actual news anchor on a Fox affiliate, as revealed by Jon Stewart. Not a gratuitous personal insult.
posted by djgh at 9:21 PM on September 22

Lo these many years I have strayed and used the laconic parlance of a common guttersnipe, descending into the depths of moral turpitude; the final result being a perpetual state of linguistic misery with no end in sight. Hark, from the depths of my despair there is now visible a light of the most glorious quality that doth illuminate the path to my salvation. All hail SLOG and cortex for they have charted the course to a better world. Should fate find me worthy, someday I may arrive on its golden shores.

From this moment forward, unless I forget or just don't feel like it, I shall endeavor to use my consternation as a reminder to lift up my fellow mefites rather than smite them with my verbiage. I will encourage them to find the limits of their excellence, then push yet again so that they may find the higher plane that is available only to those who strive for the betterment of all without regard to personal cost. Stretch yourself! Fly higher than Icarus!* Reach for the stars and you will have the universe at your feet. This is the message I will attempt to convey as a lowly servant to this great community:

Go far young man, go far.~

As is customary to this locale, my push for virtue must be promulgated as an "in-joke." Therefore, only those that have read past the one hundredth comment in this somewhat humdrum thread, marred irredeemably by my misbehavior, will know what this parlance doth represent. I can only have faith that perhaps my meager efforts will be sufficient to appease the fates, and keep the gods at bay. We will never, I fear, see a day when all Mefites will encourage each other thusly. Upon approaching this state of bliss, I fear that the cabal will cease participating and ridicule the unenlightened. Woe is to the one who does not prognosticate this venture's demise in a timely fashion.

Together, my friend, we can make a difference.

* Using modern materials and thus not plummeting to earth.
~ I am not a sexist, I will indeed encourage the young ladies of our fine blog to challenge themselves as well.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 9:59 AM on September 23

GO FOR IT!

did i do that right?
posted by not_on_display at 4:24 AM on September 24

One final point. The "single link" in SLYT means a single link in your entire post. A post with two links or more claiming to be SLYT makes the poster look bad.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 10:10 AM on September 25

[writing this down].... makes... the... poster.... look..... BAD... exclamation... point.

got it... AHH SHIT!
posted by not_on_display at 10:30 AM on September 25

One can post a great link and still look silly doing it. You tagged a three link post as having a single link.
posted by Antidisestablishmentarianist at 1:36 PM on October 6