wtfwitter?

December 28, 2011 11:12 AM

Pretty sure an admin is not responsible for this. But: can anybody explain the existence of the MetaWTFilter twitter account? I'm guessing at this moment that it is not spam as it would be following more than 5 people if it were.
posted by JoeXIII007 to MetaFilter-Related at 11:12 AM (87 comments total)

Yeah, no idea what the deal is with that. Noticed it the other day popping up in my metafilter dragnet on tweetdeck. Definitely not official.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:20 AM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

No clue.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:21 AM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'd rather them threadshit on twitter than over here. Get on with your bad self, MetaWTFilter!
posted by phunniemee at 11:23 AM on December 28, 2011

so it uses some url obscuring link, what do the link trackers do/gain from it ?
posted by k5.user at 11:23 AM on December 28, 2011

so it uses some url obscuring link, what do the link trackers do/gain from it ?

It fits into Twitter's character limit.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 11:26 AM on December 28, 2011

metafilter dragnet

I'm Joe Flash Friday. Just the facts and no editorializing.
posted by DU at 11:29 AM on December 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

I'd rather them threadshit on twitter

tweetsheet?
posted by mannequito at 11:32 AM on December 28, 2011

what the heck?
posted by sweetkid at 11:44 AM on December 28, 2011

But: can anybody explain the existence of the MetaWTFilter twitter account?

Smartass answer: somebody filled out the signup form.

Honest answer: I guess someone thought it would be funny to make fun of AskMe questions. I don't get the joke, though.
posted by daniel_charms at 11:44 AM on December 28, 2011

tweetsheet?

twit.
posted by daniel_charms at 11:44 AM on December 28, 2011

Twitturd
posted by Burhanistan at 11:53 AM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Guys, if you really need to hear snarky comments about AskMe questions behind the user's back, I'm happy to start CCing you on the e-mails I send my wife all day long.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:55 AM on December 28, 2011 [45 favorites]

The sad part is that some (not all) of the questions they're linking aren't really bad questions when you drill past the initial bit they're quoting.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:03 PM on December 28, 2011

You know, not a comment on the Twitter feed above (and certainly not to any of the linked questions, which I have not truly read at all), but I will admit that many times I've been reading a question that struck me when I was in a particularly snarky mood and thought that AskMetafilter would be ripe for a blog/Twitter feed/tumblr where I riffed on the perceived absurdity of a particular problem/questioner looking for a answer.

But then, long before I got to the account/page sign-up screen, I realized that would be a pretty assholey thing to do.

Oops, I guess this ended up being a comment on the feed after all.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:08 PM on December 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

I think this is great, just because it condenses it into bite size snark doesn't mean its meanspirited. Plus, it'll be another tool for me to find funny questions I might have missed.
posted by stormygrey at 12:11 PM on December 28, 2011

There was at least one lolaskme site posted to projects. There was a meta about it too. It was just straight up mean as well.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:14 PM on December 28, 2011

I really don't like the idea of using some other venue to snark about people's personal pain, which is what AskMe questions are so often about. Ick. Not cool at all.
posted by sweetkid at 12:15 PM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

If the links to the actual Asks weren't there, it would be pretty funny. As is, double ick.
posted by thinkpiece at 12:17 PM on December 28, 2011

this has made me ponder a seemingly at odds position in my own head - why do i feel this is in poor taste, but love regretsy? is it just that we're the brunt of the joke?
posted by nadawi at 12:24 PM on December 28, 2011

nadawi: "is it just that we're the brunt of the joke?"

Quite possibly. AskMe is open for all the public to see, like Yahoo! Answers and Etsy, full of exploitable material. Does it make it nice? No, but it is kind of inevitable.
posted by charred husk at 12:28 PM on December 28, 2011

This is why:

Regretsy: Making fun of people trying to make a buck (often by reselling store-bought things and claiming they're "handmade")
WTFilter: Making fun of people who are sincerely trying to solve their personal problems.
posted by ocherdraco at 12:28 PM on December 28, 2011 [12 favorites]

I am actually shocked it has taken this long for a side snark channel to emerge - so surprised, in fact, that I've occasionally wondered if there was one for Ask I simply was not privvy to. As outlets for snark go, this one is very mild compared to the alternatives. Here's the thing, IMHO: every Ask question can be read by the reader wearing a hat of piss or a hat of compassion. Ask is completely and totally ripe for this, and I think we're collectively pretty lucky the person behind it isn't more malicious. And, were it not our own community being snarked, I'm pretty sure most of us would find the encapsulations pretty funny.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:50 PM on December 28, 2011 [10 favorites]

Pretty much what DarlingBri said. I think AskMe could be improved by the addition of something like Wikipedia's Talk pages, but make them inaccessible to the user who asked the question. Then I could contribute more, e.g., "Well this guy is a complete asshole."
posted by yerfatma at 12:53 PM on December 28, 2011

I think you just need to find a few other site users who are kindred spirits then you can snark away in private to blow off that steam. Any public facing mocking is probably not the best idea.
posted by Burhanistan at 12:55 PM on December 28, 2011 [4 favorites]

AskMetafilter: a hat of piss or a hat of compassion
posted by desjardins at 12:58 PM on December 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

I think we're collectively pretty lucky the person behind it isn't more malicious.

Yeah I've spoken to a lot of people about how this sort of thing goes at other forums and it's amazing to me sometimes that many forums seem to have entire backchannels where people who are normal and reasonable on the site then go to this backchannel site to say and do the things they're not allowed to do on the site. Often using the same usernames and whatever.

For a long time I think we've flown under the radar as a site with really good Google juice and yet without a dedicated team of assholes and snarkers who run sort of metametafilter sites that are just wholesale devoted to hating on stuff here. I think the big thing is that in some ways reputation matters in this community so to do that sort of thing on the backchannel you either have to be an aggrieved/banned user (we see that sort of stuff sometimes on Twitter) or someone who can't really play off of their MeFi reputation on a snark site because it will come back to you on this site.

I know there are a few private forums that are more "Oh man look at this shit happening on MeFi now..." but as long as they're private I don't have much of a beef with them.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:08 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think you just need to find a few other site users who are kindred spirits then you can snark away in private to blow off that steam. Any public facing mocking is probably not the best idea.

That's what metatalk is for, right?
posted by empath at 1:09 PM on December 28, 2011

See also: ShitRedditSays
posted by empath at 1:10 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Reminds me a bit of the MBMBAM segments making fun of Yahoo! Answers questions. Except that seriously, Yahoo! Answers is a cesspit.
posted by kmz at 1:24 PM on December 28, 2011

just because it condenses it into bite size snark doesn't mean its meanspirited.

Yes, it does. It it wasn't mean it's not snark. Snark can be mixed with affection when among friends and rendered fairly harmless, but an anonymous horde of twitter followers is not a friendly context.
posted by Diablevert at 1:33 PM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

stormygrey: "I think this is great, just because it condenses it into bite size snark doesn't mean its meanspirited. Plus, it'll be another tool for me to find funny questions I might have missed."

That's a lovely, compassionate sentiment.

I think we can agree that "My dad was horrible and selfish. How do I act just like him and not feel guilty about it?" is at least a little mean-spirited, don't you?

I also think it's pretty douchey to make a Twitter account solely to poke fun at people with problems they are trying to solve, but maybe that's just me.

And it kinda seems like the user is hinting he's Cortex, with that "E of matthowie, W of jessamyn" description. Or else making a horrible pun out of Jessamyn's last name.
posted by misha at 1:55 PM on December 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

And it kinda seems like the user is hinting he's Cortex, with that "E of matthowie, W of jessamyn" description.

I think it's meant to indicate geographic location.
posted by enn at 1:59 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised that:

a) it took so long

and

b) that because it did take so long, it isn't a tumblr.

Yes, it does. It it wasn't mean it's not snark. Snark can be mixed with affection when among friends and rendered fairly harmless, but an anonymous horde of twitter followers is not a friendly context.

I would think that 80% of the followers to that twitter account are MeFites. The other 20% are spambots that follow any site that contains a particular word. The mocking of people who ask questions probably isn't as funny to non-Mefites because it is too inside-baseball for the general public. Since it isn't as funny to most Mefites, it probably won't result in a book and sitcom development deal.
posted by birdherder at 2:05 PM on December 28, 2011

Pretty damned thin considering how rich are the possibilities for piss-taking. "SEEK THERAPY" isn't a bad shot at completely replacing AskMe, though.
posted by Decani at 2:34 PM on December 28, 2011

So why does that account follow you, Joe? And only four other people?
posted by peep at 2:36 PM on December 28, 2011

That's frankly a mystery to me
posted by JoeXIII007 at 2:38 PM on December 28, 2011

It might be because I sometimes link to good MeFi threads with the hashtag #MeFi and the owner somehow detected that and netted me. I really don't know.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 2:40 PM on December 28, 2011

someone needing marriage counseling is weak snark.
posted by the young rope-rider at 2:47 PM on December 28, 2011

I think AskMe answers are riper for meanspirited snark than the questions. Sometimes I really wish I could lay into someone who gets the musical genre wrong, or writes "DTMFA" when the asker has been married for 10 years, or otherwise doesn't get it and can't read. But then I breathe deeply and eat more spanakopita.

Anyway, followed.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:54 PM on December 28, 2011

This post was just tweeted.
posted by ian1977 at 3:13 PM on December 28, 2011

Oh no! The tweets are coming from inside the filter!
posted by soelo at 3:16 PM on December 28, 2011 [14 favorites]

Obviously it's Optimus Chyme.
posted by Burhanistan at 3:18 PM on December 28, 2011

It's not.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 3:19 PM on December 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

his snark would be both meaner and better.
posted by the young rope-rider at 3:24 PM on December 28, 2011 [16 favorites]

Ain't that the truth.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 3:26 PM on December 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma stuffed into an onion!
posted by vidur at 3:27 PM on December 28, 2011

I think it's meant to indicate geographic location.

If I assume the keeper of the twitter is in a different U.S. state than the three mods mentioned, I can safely rule out Cortex.

This is honestly kind of fun. The link to this thread on the twitter owner's profile jumps to Bulgaroktonos heavily favorited comment.

Mayhaps we should start tweeting at him to see if he coughs up his real ID? I'm still not convinced the twitter is a fraud/scam/spam site/etc.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:57 PM on December 28, 2011

One thing about ShitRedditSays, it is fake.

Take a goood look at it.

ShitReditsays is a sort if double troll. What they do is post crazy comments elsewhere on reddit, upvote them, then post them to ShitReditSays. Then they make comments critiquing reddit comments from the point of view of the "gynarchist fempire".

They mainly exist to stir up shit trying to make just about everybody look bad.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:06 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

What they do is post crazy comments elsewhere on reddit, upvote them, then post them to ShitReditSays

As hard as it is to believe, real human beings actually had a big ol' laugh at anally raping a 15 year old girl and cried censorship when someone called them on it. This really happened. Today. They are still fighting about it.
posted by empath at 4:10 PM on December 28, 2011 [6 favorites]

I'm not going to debate the fact that there are all kinds of assholes on reddit, because there are. But shitredditsays is not simply documenting things people say on reddit. They are certainly playing a part in stirring then pot so they can make /r/atheism look bad and have their "circlejerk" as they call it in /r/srs

When /r/jailbait got closed it was actually because SA goons were commenting, up voting the comments and complaining about said comments.

This is the same play.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:20 PM on December 28, 2011

Mayhaps we should start tweeting at him to see if he coughs up his real ID?

You can do what you want. I would hope most of us have better things to do than play side-site troll games with an anonymous coward.
posted by Edogy at 4:31 PM on December 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

When /r/jailbait got closed it was actually because SA goons were commenting, up voting the comments and complaining about said comments.

I'm sure that multiple news stories about it had nothing to do with it. And the fact that, you know, it was a subreddit for the sole purpose of exchanging pictures of underage girls for pedophiles to jerk off to.
posted by empath at 4:32 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

The last final straw for that subreddit was a post where dozens of people were asking for nude pics of a 12 year old. Until then they could still pretend it was all fully clothed young people. It was documented later that all the accounts were troll accounts created by SA


I am not condoning offensive jokes, or saying reddit is a kind and caring place but I don't even believe the OP was legit in the recent /r/atheism kerfuffle. There are hundreds of fucked up comments in that thread, many more than I have ever seen. The OP's first comment was "bracin' mah anus". Now she has every right to make anal rape jokes about herself for whatever reason. But I think everything on the internet is fake untill proven true. It islikely that a bunch of people posted the pic, made the "bracin mah anus" comment, made a much of shitty comments and upvoted eveything. All the rest was just reddit assholes being assholes.That shit was a setup that pulled in trolls and the more idiotic members from all over reddit.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:43 PM on December 28, 2011

It was documented later that all the accounts were troll accounts created by SA

If it's documented, I'm sure you can produce said documentation.
posted by empath at 5:02 PM on December 28, 2011

Yeah here is the SA thread on the goon raid on /r/jailbait. As they call it a "goon run pedocaust"

Could be fake too, but they are claiming their trolling led to the Anderson Cooper piece.
posted by Ad hominem at 5:10 PM on December 28, 2011

You didn't read it carefully. They just pushed the story. They didn't make the posts. Do you really think they had to invent people looking for nudes of girls on the jailbait subreddit?

The something awful people are the GOOD GUYS there. They weren't trolling. They found something they thought was wrong and shut it down. They might be self righteous about it, but they weren't trolling.
posted by empath at 5:23 PM on December 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

I am actually shocked it has taken this long for a side snark channel to emerge

There was an IRC channel that was pretty bad and drama filled on its own. Then there was a site that ate tapes that had a pretty good rap sheet on members. It is probably way out dated now, and at the time I remember thinking it was invaluable as a way to remember, "Hey that user did that one thing! I totally forgot!" but I now realize that's a terrible way to go about things and the short term memory here on Metafilter is what makes it awesome.
posted by geoff. at 5:44 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Then there was a site that ate tapes

I must know what this slang means. Or do you mean they "ate tapas?"
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:50 PM on December 28, 2011

I must know what this slang means.

The site featured a photo of a cassette tape deck that was labeled with something like "Warning: This machine eats tapes." It looked like a professional/broadcast quality tape deck as found in a radio station or something.
posted by loquacious at 5:56 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ah, thanks. Can we get a new site that eats tapas?
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:59 PM on December 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Ad Hominem: Is something awful trolling this minecraft thread, too?
posted by empath at 6:03 PM on December 28, 2011

You are right, there is no real evidence in that thread. I had read elsewhere that the thread pictured here in this interview with killhamster was SA trolls. I don't don't know what to think about that now. Does not disprove my original assertion that /r/srs is trolling /r/atheism

Are you going to start cherry picking random threads and asking me to justify them? I made an assertion about two threads. I still believe those two threads were being trolled.
posted by Ad hominem at 6:07 PM on December 28, 2011

I actually just happened to notice it while I was reading the minecraft subreddit. It's kind of inescapable. I usually just tune it out, but every other thread has something like that. Reddit is full of creeps and its getting worse all the time.
posted by empath at 6:09 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I agree with you on that. I just don't think people should be helping it along for laughs
posted by Ad hominem at 6:10 PM on December 28, 2011

Does not disprove my original assertion that /r/srs is trolling /r/atheism

With absolutely 0 evidence, and despite ample evidence that reddit commenters fall all over themselves to make crass, misogynistic comments about every single woman who posts a picture on reddit.
posted by empath at 6:12 PM on December 28, 2011 [11 favorites]

Since when do I need evidence to state my opinion. That is just a variation of the "cite" boondoggle people always whip out. I'd like to see your evidence that nobody is trolling that thread besides our shared perception that reddit is full of creeps.
posted by Ad hominem at 6:16 PM on December 28, 2011

Yes, asking people for evidence when they slander people is a boondoggle. Whatever, dude.
posted by empath at 6:23 PM on December 28, 2011

Ohhhh , you are mad I think ShitRedditSays up votes their own fucked up comments to then circlejerk about it in /r/srs. Fine, it is not a false flag operation to make feminists look bad.

I just hope whoever is doing whatever they are doing in the default subreddits to make every single person on reddit look like a total scumbag would stop.
posted by Ad hominem at 6:37 PM on December 28, 2011

"Then there was a site that ate tapes that had a pretty good rap sheet on members."

So, my mom was visiting me in 2007 and I was talking about MetaFilter and showing her things and I Googled my username. The entry on me on that website came up and I foolishly looked at it, with my mother sitting next to me.

She actually cried when she read it.

It was easily the most viciously hurtful thing anyone has ever written about me on the Internet, and I've been on the Internet for a long time. And this was pretty much par for the course for that site and that group of people. Ironically, I'd spent about eight months, or so, with some of those folks on the IRC channel you mentioned, before Matt temporarily opened sign-ups in April 2004, and had been sort of friends with them. Once I was active here, though, some of them took an intense disliking to me.

Anyway, that's the most prominent back-channel thing that's been snarky and mean-spirited, though there have been others. To the credit of the Metachat folks, it could have become that way but there was a pretty quick evolved community standard that disallowed that sort of thing there.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:13 PM on December 28, 2011

I EAT TAPES i am nice to tapes.

That was the splash page image. Not that I want to bring up/bring back the backchannel site in question but I do love that image. (Waiting for "what are tapes?" now.)
posted by mendel at 7:47 PM on December 28, 2011

I agree that people should not publicly make fun of us, the only reason to do this without linking to your Mefi userid is "cowardice," and this sort of stuff is only acceptable when they do it to a community that is not us. Then it may be FPP material!
posted by mreleganza at 8:03 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I didn't think "E of mathowie, W of jessamyn" was referring to cortex - I just thought it was meant to be a generic USAist location, since they're well-known to be more-or-less on either coast. Although there is a fair bit of land west of Portland and east of Vermont (including 5 entire states).
posted by maryr at 8:29 PM on December 28, 2011

SEEK THERAPY.
posted by jbenben at 9:07 PM on December 28, 2011

Decani writes "Pretty damned thin considering how rich are the possibilities for piss-taking. 'SEEK THERAPY' isn't a bad shot at completely replacing AskMe, though."

I hate this view of AskMe that sees the crappy relationship section as what AskMe is; Maybe 6 of the 60 questions on the current askme front page could have therapy as a possible solution (as judged by the above the fold section) and therapy as an answer for one of the questions would be down right cruel. Therapy isn't going to help the user with a busted dishwasher; though I guess it might make them feel better about the state of the D/W. I really wish AskMe was at least occasionally perceived as Mike Holmes helpful instead of Gerry Spring helpful all the time.

aside: cortex please don't crunch the numbers if it means relationships account for 95% of the revenue. Or at least don't publish ithem.
posted by Mitheral at 10:04 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I hate this view of AskMe that sees the crappy relationship section as what AskMe is; Maybe 6 of the 60 questions on the current askme front page could have therapy as a possible solution (as judged by the above the fold section) and therapy as an answer for one of the questions would be down right cruel. Therapy isn't going to help the user with a busted dishwasher; though I guess it might make them feel better about the state of the D/W. I really wish AskMe was at least occasionally perceived as Mike Holmes helpful instead of Gerry Spring helpful all the time.

Relationship filter clouds the view of Ask as a whole because to a lot of people (I suspect) it's most interesting part. For my part, I might scan the front page if I haven't been to ask me for awhile and then I head straight for the "human relations" tag.
posted by mreleganza at 10:44 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I would have been happier not knowing that Twitter account existed. Not sure why we're bringing attention to it when I don't think there's much anyone can do to shut it down.
posted by IndigoRain at 2:31 AM on December 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

when I don't think there's much anyone can do to shut it down.

Why would you want it shut down? (Even assuming that was possible, which it isn't.) If you finf it objectionable, don't read or follow it. But Ask is open to the public, threads and discussion are not private, and public commentary on discussion here isn't reserved for only the commentary BoingBoing MeFi loves.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:37 AM on December 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

When I first saw it last night, I was tired and cranky and found it to be in bad taste and unfunny, but reading it again this morning, I found the snark rather amusing, so go figure.
posted by daniel_charms at 4:22 AM on December 29, 2011

Remember when we all made fun of Ask Yahoo? Its like that, only the target is literate us instead of "wider" community Q&A sites.
posted by seanyboy at 10:17 AM on December 29, 2011

There was at least one lolaskme site posted to projects. There was a meta about it too. It was just straight up mean as well.

I think you're talking about the site set up by Foetry Guy. I was trying to find the discussion of it, but his account is disabled and everything in his account (comments, posts) seems to be gone. (How does that happen?)
posted by jayder at 11:37 AM on December 29, 2011

That happens from someone being an extraordinary pain and us basically washing our hands of the whole thing and not really feeling like getting into it. Long story.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:42 AM on December 29, 2011

But his vote for Befuddlr on Projects remains!!!
posted by SpiffyRob at 11:52 AM on December 29, 2011

It must be like a dagger in his heart seeing that 1 vote remaining.
posted by Burhanistan at 12:24 PM on December 29, 2011

"Does not disprove my original assertion that /r/srs is trolling /r/atheism
posted by Ad hominem"

r/atheism was talking about, and upvoting, raping a 15 year-old. Do you think only "trolls" care about that? Do you think that all people who think it's repugnant are just joking, doing it to get a rise out of a wormy, sweaty mass of red-faced, syrup-assed, banana-stuffed, micropenised*^{(very gross and funny and NSFW)} internet atheists?
posted by a_girl_irl at 12:29 PM on December 29, 2011 [4 favorites]

i wish reddit drama could be left on reddit.
posted by nadawi at 1:26 PM on December 29, 2011 [8 favorites]

This is pretty funny.

I have to say, though, when I read the comments fretting about whether its mean spirited, I really wonder if I might be evil.
posted by planet at 9:31 PM on December 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

Edogy: I would hope most of us have better things to do than play side-site troll games with an anonymous coward.

Most of us ARE anonymous cowards, or at least SEMI-anonymous cowards. On a related note, what a curious name your parents gave you: Edogy. Like Madonna, but less obviously meaningful. Yes, I suppose I could track down your real name (and it would be trivial to do the same to me) but perhaps there's a reason we don't sign our MeFi posts?

Also, I wish I'd thought of this.
posted by coolguymichael at 3:25 PM on December 30, 2011