Apology for Actions (Jonmc, JakeExtreme): DreamFilter

January 16, 2002 11:31 AM

Two-Part Post. One, I'd like to pre-emptively apologize for me and JakeExtreme's excessive silliness is yesterday's Al Qaeada thread. Nobody's said anything and I suppose no harm was done, but reading the posts this morning, I feel kinda stupid. Jake is gonna be in SLC on Guard duty for the olympics for a month, so it was kind of a farewell party. But we hijacked a good thread. So, sorry.
Two, last night I was staring at a blurry blue and white computer screen, dying to type, but my hands wouldn't move, I struggled then...I woke up. I actually dreamed I was reading Metafilter! Has this happened to anyone else? And what does it all mean?
posted by jonmc to MetaFilter-Related at 11:31 AM (78 comments total)

it means you're spending too much time here. go outside for a while.
posted by rebeccablood at 11:44 AM on January 16, 2002

Metafilter Dreams
posted by ColdChef at 11:46 AM on January 16, 2002

What rebeccablood said. jon, you need to turn it off for a bit, dude. Watch some TV; go out for a Slurpee; play some Chutes and Ladders.
posted by UncleFes at 11:59 AM on January 16, 2002

also, jon. you have a deep and disturbing problem, for in your profile you mention that you hate the cure. this cannot be.
posted by moz at 12:01 PM on January 16, 2002

my metafilter dreams, like my tetris dreams of yore, are usually a sign that I need to log off.

I used to dream of Tetris every night, towards the end of college.
posted by epersonae at 12:01 PM on January 16, 2002

it means you're spending too much time here. go outside for a while.

Yeah, that's what laptops are for.
posted by Skot at 12:04 PM on January 16, 2002

I never remember any of my dreams, even when I get awoken in the middle of them. So it could be that I'm having metafilter dreams and not remembering them. But I go out for Slurpees all the time, so I'm probably OK.

Is that weird? My wife says it is. She's not to keen about the shrine to Alex Kingston in the basement, either.
posted by UncleFes at 12:05 PM on January 16, 2002

epersonae, when I used to binge on tetris, and I was trying to fall asleep after playing for hours, I would see the tetris shapes when I close my eyes. I called it "counting tetris sheep". Just picture sheep falling from the sky and rotating them to make them fit together well to complete rows.
posted by msacheson at 12:05 PM on January 16, 2002

I've had the MeFi Dream Syndrome myself lately. Actually I've had the Tetris Dream Syndrome as well. The worst one, by far, is really the Tony Hawk Pro Skater Waking/Sleeping syndrome. At night I dream of Tony Hawk levels and during the day I look at whatever enviroment I'm in and try and figure out what grind to ramp combination would be worth the major points.

I fear I've revealed too much. I will now blush and slip back into the distant reaches of the internet.
posted by eyeballkid at 12:20 PM on January 16, 2002

A highchool friend of mine swore he dreamed the music to Tetris, the first Nintendo version.
posted by NortonDC at 12:20 PM on January 16, 2002

The dreams that bother me are the ones where I'm hanging out with a bunch of web people at a party and we're all chatting and talking and drinking, but most of the people in the dream I haven't actually met before for real and don't even know.

Some of you need to loose some weight, by the way.
posted by rich at 12:27 PM on January 16, 2002

Oh, no! The Tetris Dream!!! I was plagued with dreaming about Tetris for the longest time. There was also a sort of Tetris Trance you could fall into while playing the game.

I never dream about MetaFilter.
posted by briank at 12:28 PM on January 16, 2002

anyone have the dream where you get to your high school locker, and you can't remember your metafilter password, and you look down, and you are naked and late for an exam?
posted by machaus at 12:34 PM on January 16, 2002

Chalk me up as another poor soul who was once plagued by the Tetris Dream.

The hardest thing about quitting Tetris is that you can never play it again. Exposure to it even a single time can cause a relapse.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 12:35 PM on January 16, 2002

I've had a Tetris Dream, heck I could even see the shapes in shower tile designs. I've also had a HTML/CSS/PHP dream... it was one of the weirdest dreams I've had.
posted by riffola at 12:40 PM on January 16, 2002

This is a great place to play Tetris. Go ahead......it's actually quite challenging around level 4/5.
BWAHAHAAHAAHAA!
posted by ashbury at 12:41 PM on January 16, 2002

I've dreamt in html. and tetris.

not just about doing them; the emotional content of the dream was contained in the code/shapes.
posted by rebeccablood at 12:42 PM on January 16, 2002

I dream about Dr. Mario. Dare to be different.
posted by remlapm at 12:49 PM on January 16, 2002

I've dreamt in html.

Wow. and you say I need to go outside :)
Actually, the other day my girlfreind called herself a "Metafilter widow." But, she spends hours at her PC writing poetry. I consider my MeFi posting to spending hours at my PC writing bite-sized op-ed columns. Kinda makes us a half-assed renaissance couple, don'tcha think?

posted by jonmc at 12:52 PM on January 16, 2002

my last web-oriented dream involved zeldman. specifically, it involved zeldman and a bespectacled young lady making out on my couch while i played a video game called "Star control 2." it was quite depressing. my starship exploded just as i woke up.
posted by moz at 12:55 PM on January 16, 2002

Or maybe, jonmc, you're reaching the 36th chamber of MeFi. (There is no spoon.)
posted by jacknose at 1:02 PM on January 16, 2002

moz - Loser! Baby! Worm!
posted by NortonDC at 1:07 PM on January 16, 2002

summer of 1994, college, 6am, 4-hour long math class followed by 4 hours of 3Dstudio. i dreamt in lines and grids. When awake i saw lines and grids. It was a bad time.

lately, i do dream about metafilter, and Director. Though this morning, i dreamt that my younger brother was giving a lecture on water skiing, showing a video of an irish guy from LA waterskiing naked, on his hands, with no boat pulling him. It was like ice-skating. I wish i was making that up.
posted by th3ph17 at 1:11 PM on January 16, 2002

I am so tempted to link a MIDI of the Tetris music. The Swift Sword of Justice would come for me immediately after, tho.
posted by darukaru at 1:11 PM on January 16, 2002

Once, back in '97 or so, I had a fever - during which I had a disturbing dream. My body had become a browser, and was trying to render my self - with poor results. I knew the message was getting garbled, so I tried repeatedly to make myself well by reloading. The reload button was my forehead. I kept hitting the button over and over again - as the page (me) was rendering, I could see it start to break down again, so I'd reload once more, hoping for the best. That was my weirdest webdev dream (IE 3.0 had just come out, so I was some weird amalgam of Netscape and IE)
posted by kokogiak at 1:15 PM on January 16, 2002

One more for moz, the finest abuse of the.gif format I can imagine.
posted by NortonDC at 1:27 PM on January 16, 2002

I dreamt about metafilter last night, and I fell out of bed twice....
posted by skwm at 1:29 PM on January 16, 2002

OK, you wanna impress me, tell me you dream about MetaTalk. :-)
posted by NortonDC at 1:33 PM on January 16, 2002

eyeballkid, I've done that Tony Hawk Pro-Skater 2 thing also. And I've only played it a few times.

Driving shortly after playing Tetris is kind of scary. I always imagined the car was the falling piece and I had to guide it correctly through the streets.
posted by jennyb at 1:42 PM on January 16, 2002

Driving shortly after playing Tetris is kind of scary.

I did this all through high school. I loved sliding into the space between two cars that was just exactly big enough for my vehicle (a Ford G20 van). I'm so lucky to be alive.
posted by gleuschk at 2:15 PM on January 16, 2002

...making out on my couch while i played a video game called "Star control 2." it was quite depressing.

Ahh, SC2, there's a damn fine game for you. Best collection of eccentric aliens ever...
"Juffo-Wup fills my fibers and I grow turgid. Violent action ensues."
posted by malphigian at 2:18 PM on January 16, 2002

You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life. my score 57.

ironic to take an internet addiction quiz online. that in itself says something...

just my contribution to fellow MeFi dwellers who dream about websites.

posted by th3ph17 at 2:21 PM on January 16, 2002

it's when "i dream of mefi" turns into "i dream of weenie" that it becomes a problem for your girlfriend, jon ...>;]
posted by blackholebrain at 2:32 PM on January 16, 2002

I once dreamt I was a harvester in Dune 2. A little red harkonen harvester rumbling around picking up spice, narrowly missing being eaten by a sandworm. *sigh*
posted by Apoch at 2:42 PM on January 16, 2002

I never had dreams about MetaFilter, but did have a few dreams about dreamless.
posted by mrbula at 3:24 PM on January 16, 2002

Sorry to talk about something that's actually relevant to MetaTalk, but...that thread Jon's apologizing for actually physically made my stomach hurt to read. I was appalled at the sentiments (but I'm a big boy, I understand people differ on these things). The thing is, I wanted to say something but just couldn't bring myself to because I knew I couldn't deal with the abuse I was sure to get. There have been a couple threads like that in the last day or two, where I've felt like, one, a small number of posters were monopolizing the conversation, and two, they were ganging up on anyone who disagreed. It makes it hard to dissent unless one wants to go to war in the thread--which I don't--and, frankly, I just thought it sucked.
posted by rodii at 3:27 PM on January 16, 2002

I had what was a borderline nightmare about MeFi, in which I did some world-altering investigative journalism, wrote it up in an online newspaper and then thought that it was such a good read that I'd make an FPP to MeFi. An hour later (in the dream) I realised my self-linking error and went to email Matt a request to delete the post, only to find an email from him informing me that my MeFi membership was terminated. I awoke confused and distressed.
posted by MUD at 3:59 PM on January 16, 2002

I've been thinking about going DougEXTREME for a while now, but quite frankly, I don't have it in me. I might try DougWITHALITTLESOMETHINGEXTRA. We'll see. That thread was ruined, though. It could have been pretty good, too.

I'm telling the absolute truth, I had a dream in which Owillis was doing something that I HAD to stop. Can't remember what. I think it's from reading his Enron page and seeing him peek out at me creepily from the top corner.
posted by Doug at 4:00 PM on January 16, 2002

There have been a couple threads like that in the last day or two, where I've felt like, one, a small number of posters were monopolizing the conversation, and two, they were ganging up on anyone who disagreed. It makes it hard to dissent unless one wants to go to war in the thread--which I don't--and, frankly, I just thought it sucked.

Most threads aren't really about anything at all important to The Big Picture, but it seems that recently there have been a lot of TBP topics, and those make for a more spirited discussion. Furthermore...rather than differences of opinion being trivial [music, scandals, politics] there has been a lot about War, Killing, Human Rights etc...

There is a huge gult between "your favorite band sucks" and "kill em all", and i know i haven't had the brain power, heart, wording--whatever--to jump into those discussions either. What can you say to a statement about letting the prisoners go and then shooting them as they run away? I can't respond to that. So...thanks for the apology john, and thanks for unhijacking this thread rodii. Not to get all warm and fuzzy or anything, but i wish the world had a metatalk--attempting to work things out with the alphabet rather than bullets is nifty.
posted by th3ph17 at 4:20 PM on January 16, 2002

I think it says a lot about metafilter when someone can write up some inflammatory crap and only have a couple different people reply while the rest of us choose not to feed the troll or perpetuate trollish/inflammatory posts.

When it was politely pointed out to JakeEXTREME that he was over the line , he did tone it down a bit. That would be the difference between somebody who's just "rockin" and a troll. I'm not convinced that the thread was a disaster. It raised the right question (Geneva code vs humane treatment of terrorists and the long term effects). If any chose not to read or participate then I offer the idea that MetaFilter is getting gun-shy for the wrong reasons. This is a sophisticated USENET, so police what you can, ignore the asses, and exchange your view.

jonmc - I (a minority here I guess) would like to think that when JakeEXTREME returns, he will really feel like he did fuck up, yes?
posted by Wulfgar! at 4:21 PM on January 16, 2002

gulf, dammit. gulf. a huge gulf. i'm done for the day.

1 entry found for gult.

gult \Gult\, n. Guilt. See Guilt. [Obs.] --Chaucer


posted by th3ph17 at 4:23 PM on January 16, 2002

Wulfgar's right, there was a lot of good stuff in that thread, and the later posts have been articulate and intelligent (even the ones I disagree with). Props to the posters who hung in there.
posted by rodii at 4:27 PM on January 16, 2002

*Hugs all 'round*

EXTREME!!!!!!! hugs, even.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:44 PM on January 16, 2002

"I never remember any of my dreams" that is because i am stealing them...dong resin pays 'two-fitty' a night. (small muh-ha-ha)
posted by clavdivs at 4:54 PM on January 16, 2002

I coulda swore I saw this exact post once before. Not dreaming, but MetaFilter deja vu? I did have a Blogger dream the other night though.
posted by yourpalbill at 5:10 PM on January 16, 2002

I have come up with HTML and JavaScript in my dreams and, quite legitimately, billed clients or employers for it.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:25 PM on January 16, 2002

Hi, everyone, I'm back. First of all, I took your advice and unplugged for a while. Went to the bookstore, talked with some old freinds, even had a great chat about Ernie Kovacs with the countergirl at the 7-11. So no MeFi nitemares tonight, hopefully.

Aside to rodii-As you are one of the contributors to mefi that I admire most, I am truly sorry if we offended you. We were more in a high school pranking type of mode, than anything else.

On to JakeEXTREME. Jake is actually a very nice kid(22 to my 31) and a very intelligent one, too. He enjoys the site and can contribute a lot to it, I think. However, like me at first(rodii and rcade can vouch for this) he's a little intimidated by the intellectual and educational level of the site, and that can sometimes bring out a little bellicoseness. As time passed though, I got the hang of things and learned to fit in with the site while still remaining myself. Jake will too, don't worry.
posted by jonmc at 5:26 PM on January 16, 2002

jonmc -

Funnily enough, after returning to the al-Qaida thread yesterday to read a string of comments about jell-o and such like, I was slightly insensed and entered the exact following words into the comment box:

"What the fuck is this? Fucking IRC?"

I then hit preview, looked at it for a moment previewed on the page, and shut the browser window. I think someone mentioned that anger management trick previously here on MetaTalk. Seeing that you came to MetaTalk yourself to explain it I'm oh so glad I didn't hit post, or I'd probably have been hauled up here as well. So thanks for apologizing, and here's to happy dreams :)
posted by dlewis at 5:30 PM on January 16, 2002

As time passed though, I got the hang of things and learned to fit in with the site while still remaining myself.

Jon... I hate to break it to you, but you're an asshole.












Just kidding! Hey, I've assumed you're an old-timer that just never had much to say until recently. How'd you get that usernumber, anyway?

By the way, I think it's cool that you hauled yourself into the principal's office like this.
posted by rodii at 5:48 PM on January 16, 2002

rodii- that's actually about right. I discovered this site when I did a "What's Related" on Memepool of all places.I loved what I saw and registered. I made one post than no one commented on, so I decided to hang back for a while but kept reading daily for the links. Then when the site grew, I figured what the hell and finally stuck my two cents in.
posted by jonmc at 6:00 PM on January 16, 2002

You sickos have dreamt in HTML as well? This has happened to at least three other sickos besides myself.
posted by adampsyche at 6:11 PM on January 16, 2002

I dream in pr0n.
posted by jpoulos at 6:40 PM on January 16, 2002

Grandma pr0n.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:44 PM on January 16, 2002

I dreamt of my TI-81 calculator last night. I just remembered that when reading someone's blog about their calculator. Damn. I rock.
posted by adampsyche at 7:25 PM on January 16, 2002

And here I am, missing my old TI-30.
posted by Wulfgar! at 7:41 PM on January 16, 2002

You sickos have dreamt in HTML as well? This has happened to at least three other sickos besides myself.

Cascading style sheets, nested Div's and how to make horizontal lines different sizes and colors.
posted by bjgeiger at 7:47 PM on January 16, 2002

When Doom first came out and I would spend endless hours making myself motion-sick, I'd have Doom-dreams. Them were scary.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:13 PM on January 16, 2002

I ENJOYED MY DOOM DREAMS DAMMIT! Don't take those away from me, please ... *whimper* ( I really did dream about Doom, and I kinda liked the tension.)
posted by Wulfgar! at 8:21 PM on January 16, 2002

Back in the day, it was horrible space invader dreams that drove me to Tetris; thanks to Tetris I ended up needing glasses. I'm better since rehab.
posted by Mack Twain at 8:24 PM on January 16, 2002

I've dreamt of Tetris, MULE, Super Mario Bros... and I don't even own a Nintendo.
posted by Marquis at 8:48 PM on January 16, 2002

I dreamt about civ3 the other night. Actually it was more of a nightmare. Everyone kept declaring war on me and I was getting trounced. Playing for 12 hours straight on Saturday probably didn't help alot.
posted by jbelshaw at 9:19 PM on January 16, 2002

What the hell's wrong with you people? Why can't you dream about normal things, like getting laid, flying, and killing people with hammers?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 9:53 PM on January 16, 2002

we have mentioned TI-8x calculators.
we have mentioned doom.

why haven't we mentioned TI-82 doom? surely someone has dreamed of that. with the negative health, and all.
posted by moz at 10:03 PM on January 16, 2002

I dreamt I was getting my wisdom teeth taken out. Oh wait, that's tomorrow :-(
posted by adampsyche at 5:29 AM on January 17, 2002

a pole: who here HASN'T dreamed of Tetris? As a person with an active dream life, I HATE it when things like tetris take over. In college though, all of my dreams involved homework problems that I would solve in the morning at the drop of a hat... If only I had had a night for each problem I would be in graduate school right now, instead of Curacao
posted by goneill at 5:42 AM on January 17, 2002

I've done the tetris thing, but the biggest for me was Sonic on the 'ol Megadrive.
posted by Frasermoo at 5:53 AM on January 17, 2002

I dream in infra-red
posted by spinifex at 6:02 AM on January 17, 2002

I have no idea if I've dreamed of Tetris, since that bastard Clavdivs has been hawking my dreams and selling them for two-fitty to dong_resin.

Hey, I came of age in the 80's! The "just say no" era! You should get at least two-sebnty-fibe.
posted by UncleFes at 7:21 AM on January 17, 2002

mmmmm..... Alex Kingston ...
posted by dong_resin at 8:35 AM on January 17, 2002

I've never dreamt of tetris however I went through a period of time dreaming constantly of Goldeneye on the N64. Waking up in a cold sweat, checking for flesh wounds...

posted by cashmein at 10:02 AM on January 17, 2002

posted by mlang at 11:21 AM on January 17, 2002

I was woken up this morning from a dream in which I was arguing with Kate Winslet about whether she should ever made 'Titanic' and how her career has never gotten over it ... I'm now looking forward to the dream were we make up ....
posted by feelinglistless at 11:42 AM on January 17, 2002

feelinglucky?
posted by Optamystic at 6:02 PM on January 17, 2002

Just last night I dreamed that I fell into the back of a pinball game and found myself in a shopping mall in Mexico, trying to rescue a woman from some spies.

Sensing the great danger to my physical body this entailed, I left the mall, only to find myself wandering down the street in San Francisco. I was unsure where to go until I passed a coffee shop and saw, yes, that's right, my friend Steve wearing a gorilla mask and Matt Haughy himself having coffee together. I sat down with them and asked Matt if I could stay at his place for a couple of days. Then I asked Steve if I could wear his gorilla mask. Both men were very obliging.
posted by jennyb at 4:51 AM on January 18, 2002

i have a daymare every time the server is down, that matt has personally decided to exclude me from metafilter, and has managed to do it.
posted by goneill at 10:50 AM on January 18, 2002

last night I actually dreamt that I had to take someone's crappy Word document and turn it into valid HTML. ::shudder::

and let me just say that I'm so very happy that so many people share(d) my tetris-dream affliction. (thanks for the comic link, mlang!)
posted by epersonae at 12:05 PM on January 18, 2002

feelingoptamystic?
posted by feelinglistless at 4:59 PM on January 18, 2002

Buy me dinner first, then we'll talk.
posted by Optamystic at 6:36 PM on January 19, 2002