| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Life cycle of an internet messageboard thread.
1. OP has a question or observation that is provided to the general community in a genuine attempt to provide a public service.
2. Responder attempts to provide an honest and useful reply.
3. OP indicates appreciation of response, but clarifies a misunderstanding.
4. Hyper-sensitive person jumps on some trivial semantic, ideological or rules issue in knee-jerk attempt to advance a personal agenda.
5. OP and/or first responder attempts to mollify hypersensitive person with further clarification.
6. A dozen lurkers "like" the hyper-sensitive person's off-topic rant.
7. Reasonable person attempts to intervene explaining how the hyper-sensitive person over-reacted to an innocent mistake.
8. Hyper-sensitive person and three like-minded allies gang-tackle reasonable person, calling into question their intelligence, moral clarity and upbringing.
9. Someone makes a comment about popcorn.
10. OP and/or other interested parties try one more time to restore the thread to the original purpose.
11. Ranters on both sides unload on OP and/or other interested parties to point out how completely unaware they are of the critical importance of whatever agenda item they are promoting.
12. Lurkers begin commenting about the thread going off the rails.
13. Ranters on both sides begin making personal attacks.
14. Moderators warn everyone to "play nice"
15. Innocent bystanders express indignation about being lumped in with the ranters.
16. Ranters are now lined up on both sides firing semantic nuclear bombs at each other.
17. Someone makes a statement that gives the other side their chance to claim racism, sexism, bigotry or some other "scarlet letter" level of moral turpitude.
18. Mods finally lock the thread.So it is just a bunch of bots posting back and fourth......
Oh, and for Science!
And what's wrong with Science?
My spouse used to do the budgeting for the Clearview Theatre around Branchville New Jersey. The bulk of the theatre's profit, which pays for those employees comes from the concession stands.I don't. The food concessions are the main revenue source for paying the staff. Bringing your own food in is not that much better than stealing tips from diner tables.
Who honestly doesn't just bring their own food into the theater? That's the reason you bring a date, and you tell them to bring some oversized popular purse.
That's not at all comparable. Unless I'm wildly off-base, the staff at a theater are paid hourly wages; they don't make any extra money in a given day based on how much popcorn/soda/snacks are sold, nor are they paid less if sales are bad.
Servers at restaurants can be paid below minimum wage because it's expected that they'll be tipped regularly - to say nothing of the fact that they are supposed to be waiting on you directly, taking your orders, refilling your drinks, and checking to make sure everything's okay, none of which the movie staff does - but you don't tip the theater staff.
Now, you could talk about not buying the snacks as having an impact on the theater's operating costs, true, but that's the same as patronizing any business that sells products/services. It's not at all akin to tipping.
EDIT: ...aaaand that's step 8.5.
Uh? People are actually going to movies to eat?
I suggest that everyone push the post count of this thread up to 150 and see what happens.
(dons goggles and lab coat)
But then I will have to click the hide button or be publicly declared a hypocrite!
I go to a lot of movies I'm afraid. Usually at least three or four per month. It is our general observation that all of the movie theaters we visit, and there are about four that we rotate since not all of them play the same releases at the same time, all of them are generally places where people not only snack, but eat entire friggin' dinners in their chairs.
We know because they leave their half-eaten detritus behind. Man people are slobs when they feel they aren't obligated to clean up after themselves.
It used to be that movie theaters offered popcorn and boxed or bagged candies along with soft drinks. That is no longer the case. Every theater we visit provides the traditional snacks, but also sell the following items:
1. Plates or boxes of cheese-sauce soaked nachos. This alone counts for probably 30% of the nasty sticky mess we have to avoid.
2. Hot dogs. Usually both traditional hot dogs and the corn dog variety. One of the theaters we visit sells chili dogs.
3. Chicken nuggets, with the associated nugget dipping sauces like honey mustard, barbecue sauce, etc.
4. Giant pretzels, usually also soaked in cheese sauce or sometimes in sticky sweet coatings.
My own children have begun asking to buy the chicken nuggets.
The result is that during the previews and movies, a good fraction of the audience is chowing down like a group of cowboys on a cattle drive.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Oh, Hell...
For BACON!
And what's wrong with Science?Life cycle of an internet messageboard thread.
1. OP has a question or observation that is provided to the general community in a genuine attempt to provide a public service.
2. Responder attempts to provide an honest and useful reply.
3. OP indicates appreciation of response, but clarifies a misunderstanding.
4. Hyper-sensitive person jumps on some trivial semantic, ideological or rules issue in knee-jerk attempt to advance a personal agenda.
5. OP and/or first responder attempts to mollify hypersensitive person with further clarification.
6. A dozen lurkers "like" the hyper-sensitive person's off-topic rant.
7. Reasonable person attempts to intervene explaining how the hyper-sensitive person over-reacted to an innocent mistake.
8. Hyper-sensitive person and three like-minded allies gang-tackle reasonable person, calling into question their intelligence, moral clarity and upbringing.
9. Someone makes a comment about popcorn.
10. OP and/or other interested parties try one more time to restore the thread to the original purpose.
11. Ranters on both sides unload on OP and/or other interested parties to point out how completely unaware they are of the critical importance of whatever agenda item they are promoting.
12. Lurkers begin commenting about the thread going off the rails.
13. Ranters on both sides begin making personal attacks.
14. Moderators warn everyone to "play nice"
15. Innocent bystanders express indignation about being lumped in with the ranters.
16. Ranters are now lined up on both sides firing semantic nuclear bombs at each other.
17. Someone makes a statement that gives the other side their chance to claim racism, sexism, bigotry or some other "scarlet letter" level of moral turpitude.
18. Mods finally lock the thread.So it is just a bunch of bots posting back and fourth......
Oh, and for Science!
Nothing's wrong with Science, infact I find your doubt about Science unsettling.
I've got much more proficient at hiding threads that I know I wont care about. I was off the forums for almost a week and when I came back I was able to hide over 2 pages of threads that just sounded like 'I will have no interest in this'....
Contrary to the OP I have found some threads that only get really GOOD after page 6, but the OP is right. Thats more the exception than the rule.
Every theater we visit provides the traditional snacks, but also sell the following items: [snip]
For God's sake man, all that and you mean to tell me they don't have any BACON?!
bacon flavored popcorn butter
I almost never get snacks but I don't bring my own either (used to as a kid but I do feel sort of crummy about it sometimes). At most I'll have some gum or mints in my pockets.
Generally if I feel motivated enough to see it in the theater, I don't want there to be any chance of having to "go" halfway through.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
bacon flavored popcorn butter
Theater in my area has their "special section". On of their specialty items is bacon flavored popcorn. The pop it in bacon grease, drizzle more bacon grease on it, I believe put some bacon crumbs in it, etc. I haven't had it yet, because it always closes early and I like to go to the last showing of a night (I often have a theater to myself).
You ever notice that by the time a thread reaches about 150 posts, it has usually become a complete waste of time?
After a certain point the only people still posting are just venting their spleen at the few other people that are venting their spleen.
No one is really reading the other posts (at least not really trying to understand them) except to find a little snippet they can take out of context to try and make the other poster look foolish. Often they don’t even realize they are not even arguing on the same topic anymore.
If you don’t really want to communicate and aren’t going to even try to understand, why bother posting?I don’t know about you, but I’ve reached the point where (even if it is a topic I am very interested in reading) I don’t even bother opening a thread if it has gotten fairly long. If I really want to discuss it I will start a new thread.
Even if I started the thread. Once it has gotten to more than a couple of pages (not that that happens too often), I will click the hide button to keep my blood pressure down.That’s not even starting to talk about the folks that feel the need to import old off-topic arguments. I find that more than just a bit annoying.
Sometimes I really don’t understand people.
Nope Kydeem, some get back on track, new posters come in, have their say, people respond to that, and then it meanders back to sub-par for a while before getting better again, or it finally dies.
I have the number here *rustle rustle*.
Nope, kidding, I just have observations. :) Now in regards to this:
"I don’t know about you, but I’ve reached the point where (even if it is a topic I am very interested in reading) I don’t even bother opening a thread if it has gotten fairly long."
If you do not read, you will not know.
Yeah, and "the bulk" of a hardware store's profits, which pays its employees, comes from its sales of tools. But if I ask to borrow a friend's hacksaw instead of buying one from said store, that is not the equivalent to "stealing tips from a diner table."My spouse used to do the budgeting for the Clearview Theatre around Branchville New Jersey. The bulk of the theatre's profit, which pays for those employees comes from the concession stands.I don't. The food concessions are the main revenue source for paying the staff. Bringing your own food in is not that much better than stealing tips from diner tables.
Who honestly doesn't just bring their own food into the theater? That's the reason you bring a date, and you tell them to bring some oversized popular purse.
That's not at all comparable. Unless I'm wildly off-base, the staff at a theater are paid hourly wages; they don't make any extra money in a given day based on how much popcorn/soda/snacks are sold, nor are they paid less if sales are bad.
Servers at restaurants can be paid below minimum wage because it's expected that they'll be tipped regularly - to say nothing of the fact that they are supposed to be waiting on you directly, taking your orders, refilling your drinks, and checking to make sure everything's okay, none of which the movie staff does - but you don't tip the theater staff.
Now, you could talk about not buying the snacks as having an impact on the theater's operating costs, true, but that's the same as patronizing any business that sells products/services. It's not at all akin to tipping.
EDIT: ...aaaand that's step 8.5.
My Green, Lefty, Liberal community bought an historic theater that still has a ginormous old screen. We run it as a co-op. Pay the staff fair wages with benefits. Show Indy films. Tickets are $3. Snacks are 50c.
Did I mention the big, old screen? Wins for everyone!I love my green-party town.
And... for Science!
...the science of Baconology!
|
I was just thinking...
The threads that are good over 150 posts are generally threads where someone is creating something, or helping someone else.
The threads that get terrible are usually the ones where people are criticizing something, or tearing down other people.
And this thread would be placed in which category?
Asking purely for the sake of Science, of course.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Got two theaters in town that serve actual food ... one is a pizza shop / brewery / theater ... so good beer, good pizza and movies on a big screen ... and they show classics on a fairly regular basis ... got to finally see Reservoir Dogs on the big screen not to long ago while drinking porter and eating a barbeque chicken, sundried tomato and bacon pizza.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
No real point. More of annoyed observation.
Posted after yet another thread where a few of us were trying to have an actual conversation/discussion but got buried under an avalanche of rabid off-topic vitriol until we finally gave up.
Several weeks ago now. I don't remember the exact details, but the OP (a new GM) had players bring mutually exlusive (or nearly so) PC to the campaign and expected the GM to take care of the problems.
I don't remember what example he gave (seems like it was a knight and a pirate for an underground campaign), but it wasn't what really happened since he didn't want to post the real details to avoid embarassing anyone.
He didn't want to just tell them no (which I think he should have done). So we were trying to give him ideas. Most of which revolved around, "You have to talk to the players and get them to agree on something."
But there were many more posts arguing about the [Evil] descriptor, some sidebar in the GMG, social contract, medieval morality, good points of slavery, law vs lawful, etc... There were at least 4 arguments going on. The OP couldn't understand who was telling him what and was being ignored by most of the posters. I think it was eventually locked because it is gone from the lists now.
Halfway there...
|
|
Ah the legitimate advice thread derail ... I have to admit those do tick me off as well. For some of the "advice" threads (I'm looking at you "is xyz evil", "how do we fix xyz class (that really isn't broken)", "is this obviously broken thing I made broken" type threads), a good derailing can be in order (especially if the initial post is clearly way out in left field or tongue in cheek). But for threads looking for actual advice, yeah, derailing can be a pain.