Where does the [this is good] meme come from? March 15, 2004 8:35 PM   Subscribe

Where does the [this is good] meme come from?
posted by Tin Man to MetaFilter-Related at 8:35 PM (36 comments total)

I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you.

(filepile)
posted by justgary at 8:44 PM on March 15, 2004


Filepile? Could you elaborate?
posted by Tin Man at 8:49 PM on March 15, 2004


Not much to it really. Piles of files. You can vote [this is good], [this is bad], [this is offensive].

Signups have been closed forever.

And I've said too much ;)
posted by justgary at 8:51 PM on March 15, 2004


Did that explain it tin man?
posted by justgary at 9:01 PM on March 15, 2004


Tin Man - This is how I know it. At one point, people were asking for a way to "vote" for a post's quality. This would allow a person to sort, for instance, the current threads by said quality. Some people wanted to vote on a scale of 1 to 10, while others thought that a [this is good], [this is bad] (or not voting at all) approach would be better.

This voting system never happened of course, but the result was people posting [this is good] comments as an alternative (inside joke, if you will) way of saying, "I don't have anything to add necessarily, but I like this FPP and think it's good."

No?
posted by Witty at 1:09 AM on March 16, 2004


Yes.
posted by dg at 1:49 AM on March 16, 2004


we know nothing! NOTHING!
posted by adampsyche at 4:40 AM on March 16, 2004


[this is wrong]
posted by knutmo at 4:41 AM on March 16, 2004


[this is not a comment]
posted by DaShiv at 4:48 AM on March 16, 2004


Enforcement bots to thread 5872!
posted by monju_bosatsu at 4:58 AM on March 16, 2004


There used to be a site, which never existed and even if it did it doesn't exist any more, called something I forget, where they used this kind of rating system. But the first rule of that site was that no one was allowed to talk about it, because it the influx of users would crash the system. (The site's owner really, really tried to let everyone use it, but it just wasn't feasible.) So even if this site existed, which it doesn't, if you were to ask about it, you would learn that it doesn't exist. Which it doesn't. And never did. And if it did exist, it probably wouldn't be something you'd be interested in anyway.

See?
posted by jpoulos at 6:15 AM on March 16, 2004


These aren't the droids you're looking for.
posted by websavvy at 6:52 AM on March 16, 2004


Hey, is that a rabbit over there?
posted by RylandDotNet at 6:59 AM on March 16, 2004


Pony!
posted by stx23 at 8:12 AM on March 16, 2004


cut cut cut cut cut.
posted by wadner at 8:21 AM on March 16, 2004


LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!
posted by briank at 8:44 AM on March 16, 2004


This question belongs in AxeMe, no? I have half a mind to haul you in to MetaTalk over this, Tin Man.

Oh. Wait...
posted by squirrel at 9:02 AM on March 16, 2004


[Witty is wrong]
posted by bshort at 9:39 AM on March 16, 2004


I'm trying to decide whether or not I'm sorry I asked...

This question belongs in AxeMe, no?

Isn't AxeMe for non-MeFi-related questions?

[ceci n'est pas une pipe]
posted by Tin Man at 10:35 AM on March 16, 2004


Tin Man - This is how I know it. At one point, people were asking for a way to "vote" for a post's quality. This would allow a person to sort, for instance, the current threads by said quality. Some people wanted to vote on a scale of 1 to 10, while others thought that a [this is good], [this is bad] (or not voting at all) approach would be better.

This voting system never happened of course, but the result was people posting [this is good] comments as an alternative (inside joke, if you will) way of saying, "I don't have anything to add necessarily, but I like this FPP and think it's good."

No?


That's the way I remembered it, too. 'Course I never got a membership to that other site.
posted by timeistight at 10:44 AM on March 16, 2004


Tin Man ......here is your answer.
posted by JohnR at 10:53 AM on March 16, 2004


Isn't AxeMe for non-MeFi-related questions?

I guess the point is that the "[this is good]" business isn't actually MetaFilter-related, except insofar as the set of MeFi members happens to overlap with members of FilePile.

(I'm not one of the latter, so not bound by their Fight-Club-esque mores. Also, consider: we've noted several times that abbreviations like FPP and MI are distinctly suboptimal, in that they create a barrier between the cognoscenti, or hipster in-crowd, and the casual, or new, user. While "[this is foo]" is certainly self-explanatory in one sense, in another it's at least twice as exclusive -- not only do you have to be an initiate here, you have to be familiar with the culture of another closed community. That seems like a Bad Thing.)
posted by gleuschk at 10:59 AM on March 16, 2004


Wasn't there some kind of "Best of Mefi" site at some point that was supposed to count [this is good] comments and rate pages that way? At least that's the way I remember it.

[this is long-term memory loss]
posted by muckster at 11:33 AM on March 16, 2004


Oh. What JohnR said.
posted by muckster at 11:43 AM on March 16, 2004


Yeah, I think that's what JohnR's link refers to, muckster. Thanks, JohnR -- that seems to explain it.

I swear, it's getting damn complicated to keep up with all the in-jokes here. Damn vibrating pancake pony pikes. See, I often felt left out of things when I was a kid, and that followed me into high school. I wasn't cool enough for the cool kids, but I wasn't nerdy enough for the nerdy kids, but I was way more nerdy than cool, so I hung out with the nerdy kids and felt embarrassed by it, secretly wishing I could have been cool enough for the cool kids. I was also a drama geek, which made it more complicated, because some of the drama people hung out with the cool kids, but many of the drama people were the nerdish types.

And when I'm on MeFi sometimes it happens again. Are the MeFi people the cool kids, and do I aspire to be like them? Or are the MeFi people the nerdy kids, and while I'm aspiring to get all the jokes, there's actually a real group of cool kids pointing and laughing at all of us? I don't know.

But maybe there's yet another group of people, pointing and laughing at the "real cool" kids, and another one, so on and so forth, ad inifinitum.

Hey, it's like the Star-Bellied Sneeches! Kinda.
posted by Tin Man at 11:51 AM on March 16, 2004


I swear, it's getting damn complicated to keep up with all the in-jokes here.

hmm...

1.) Write Metafilter For Dummies?
2.) ?
3.) Profit!
posted by Dreamghost at 12:15 PM on March 16, 2004


Yeah, I think that's what JohnR's link refers to, muckster. Thanks, JohnR -- that seems to explain it.

That doesn't explain it. Filepile explains it. People are not using [this is good] because of the site he linked to. It's from filepile. How many people need to tell you this to believe it.

And they're all breaking the rules to do it! Jeez.

;)
posted by justgary at 1:32 PM on March 16, 2004


not only do you have to be an initiate here, you have to be familiar with the culture of another closed community

what's so inscrutable about [this is good] that you have to be part of two different communities to "get it"? It English. It doesn't mean any more than it says.
posted by jpoulos at 1:35 PM on March 16, 2004


Well, if [this is good] belongs to "some other closed community," why don't we use
~this is good~? What could be more MetaFilter than that?
posted by timeistight at 2:03 PM on March 16, 2004


%because "~" signifies a negation%

Hah! Private languages rule!
posted by gleuschk at 2:29 PM on March 16, 2004


So ~wink~ means not wink (not)?
posted by timeistight at 2:51 PM on March 16, 2004


~!=~
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:07 PM on March 16, 2004


And therefore, was (~was) means Was (Not Was)?

Anyway, everybody knows the symbol for negation is !
Determining the meaning of the band name !!! is left as an exercise for the reader.
posted by jjg at 3:11 PM on March 16, 2004


! is boolean negation
~ is bitwise negation
but ~= is approximately equal to
and !!! are chik-chik-chik (although I used to read it as bang-bang-bang)
posted by inpHilltr8r at 4:31 PM on March 16, 2004


~.~
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:54 PM on March 16, 2004


YOU ARE THE ONES WHO ARE THE BALL LICKERS
posted by basmati at 6:24 PM on March 16, 2004


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