The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: Sub_Topical on November 02, 2008, 01:27:22 am
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An assbar link because I'm lazy and not on my standard machine. (http://m.assetbar.com/achewood/uua2xCd3b)
I really shouldn't have to pick up the slack when 'off campus' for a while.
ALSO: Did beef get tattoos that basically work as shirt designs too?
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The Venn Diagram thing is gettin' to be sort of a crutch...
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ARGON DOES IT NOBLY.
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Man fuck the Rutherford model. Bring probability based orbitals or go home.
Love that they all have the same dodgy pseudo-classical tattoo font.
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Is there seriously a subscriber-only fuck-you Friday strip? Is so wack.
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Perhaps he was just saying fuck you to you cheap bastards.
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Is there seriously a subscriber-only fuck-you Friday strip? Is so wack.
Somewhere, a goose wasn't shitting gold out fast enough and found its throat slashed for the hope that it might bleed out fast and dirty fortunes.
But the blood was blood and the bird was dead and there was no more gold at all.
This somewhere was a place called Metaphor.
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Is there seriously a subscriber-only fuck-you Friday strip? Is so wack.
There is. I fear this is a slippery slope. On the other hand, why shouldn't creators get paid for their work? Oh dear. I am confused.
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On the other hand, why shouldn't creators get paid for their work?
Because the piecemeal way he is doing this is just frustrating and confusing?
Also, you know, because we want it to be free.
I will program a napster that is just a thing where you can see subscriber-only achewood.
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If people stop showing up at the site to buy stuff, in the old business model, because a very very small amount of people are catered to in the new business model with a potential for more earnings but basically no capacity for those earnings... then it makes no goddamned sense.
If a bunch of people make a good amount of money off of speculating on stocks but they get greedy and start actively rigging the market into an artifical bubble so that they can make even more ridiculous profits, at the risk of the fact that some day someone will state the fraud publicly and the whole thing would fall through... yeah, kinda alike.
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Love that they all have the same dodgy pseudo-classical tattoo font.
Gothic/blackletter, surely? Also I would think tattoo lettering would be a script rather than a font. Also I am a picky bastard who has been putting too much time into my printing dissertation. Ahem.
I hope any subscription-service scripts will still appear in the books. Gappiness in compilations upsets me. Not that I have ever bought any Achewood merch at all.
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This family has purchased shot glasses, pint glasses, keychains, signed strips, and t-shirts from the Achewood shop. These are tangible things that will be of use to us for a long time after Onstad decides he'd rather just go work at Home Depot. I don't see us paying anything, ever, for what basically amounts to the right to access data. If the Internet has taught us anything, it's that business models based on paying money for zeroes and ones are on the way out.
I think Daniel was joking about building an Achester, but the fact is, someone out there is plotting to do just this. All it takes is one person to download the goods, put them in a zip file, and upload them somewhere, and the piracy begins its ultimately unstoppable momentum. I would think that he'd have more success (based on the fact that he'd be more likely to get the Hausbucks) if he had a MetaFilter-style "lifetime membership fee" where you pay $10 to get in, but once you're in, you stay in.
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I'm just wondering what's going to happen to the rest of culture and entertainment if the only way to make money from creative work is to sell tshirts. It's hard for me to think of a way to make money from my writing, for example, that involves selling tshirts and shot glasses.
Although if I had to, the long-sleeve shirt market is wide open. Now that the weather is cold there's very little that's useful in my webcomics-based wardrobe.
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ALSO: Did beef get tattoos that basically work as shirt designs too?
Augh! We've stumbled on the top-secret Achewood merchandise-producing algorithm!
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I don't think that it's anywhere near being the model for all creative work but...
Internet comics, free content/merchandising-as-revenue has pretty much been the one model that has always worked.
Some have crossed over to graphic-novel publishing, some have crossed over to publishing in alternative weeklies and so forth but...
I don't know, where has an online comic strip subscription's model worked as the artist's primary income? I don't know of any examples.
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I don't know, where has an online comic strip subscription's model worked as the artist's primary income? I don't know of any examples.
There's a few subscription only sites. Modern tales is the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Typically with those it's the most recent comic that's free and then you need to subscribe to read the archives. I imagine most of those creators use a combination of subscriptions and merchandising to make up their total income but subscription models do work for some people.
It's also not true that the merchandising model always works, it just works better than most of the other models (and this is important) for the bigger comics. Size is an important factor, once you have a certain reader base you only need a small percentage to actually buy stuff to make it worth while. When your reader base is small I can see how a subscription model that ensures a larger percentage pays a smaller amount would be desirable. Of course you'll inevitably decimate your reader base going down that road but these are the choices people make.
Then again I can imagine subscribers being pissed about an Onstad update schedule.
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The problem with comic strips is they have always been free.
To make online them more like the print model would be to make them available, but only for only a day.
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The problem with comic strips is they have always been free.
To make online them more like the print model would be to make them available, but only for only a day.
I think a good model would be for the popular online artists to come together under one umbrella - sharing the technology costs, greater exposure and reader exchange, higher traffic and bigger demographic for advertisers, simplicity for the users who no longer have to go to 5 different websites in the morning.
If they aren't willing to do this themselves, I foresee someone forming an aggregate linky site to collect on those ad dollars - that is, if that doesn't already exist.
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yes (http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/)
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Dumbrella (http://www.dumbrella.com), Keenspot (http://www.keenspot.com), Blank Label Comics (http://www.blanklabelcomics.com), Girlamatic (http://www.girlamatic.com) are a bit ahead of you I'm afraid.
Edit: Damn hadn't heard of webcomics list.
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Dumbrella (http://www.dumbrella.com), Keenspot (http://www.keenspot.com), Blank Label Comics (http://www.blanklabelcomics.com), Girlamatic (http://www.girlamatic.com) are a bit ahead of you I'm afraid.
Edit: Damn hadn't heard of webcomics list.
And i had never seen a messageboard before here.
Do the artists hook up to do this together like a described, or are these dudes aggregating things?
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It varies. Generally they start out as a few artists banding together but when they get big (I'm thinking mainly of Keenspot here) they become more of a business to help comics advertise easily than a collection of creators. Modern Tales (http://www.moderntales.com) was started by a guy who's been doing webcomics for a while specifically to provide a subscription service for other comic creators, I think he has some of his own comics on there but I'm pretty sure it was a business thing first.
Blank Label and Dumbrella are more like the sort of artist hook up you describe, they're relatively smaller operations and have generally better quality (I think). More a group of established artists sharing costs by having a joint store and cross promoting each other with their site's advertising but (as far as I know) still retaining relatively independent income from merchandising and so on. Compare this with Keenspot that basically gives you a site and controls what ads you run and then pays you a cut from your click throughs. Which is great for people who are just starting out but maybe not as good if you already have a built in reader base.
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Gothic/blackletter, surely? Also I would think tattoo lettering would be a script rather than a font. Also I am a picky bastard who has been putting too much time into my printing dissertation. Ahem.
I am rightly chastened.
I think this is the right forum for this kind of nit-picking.
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is keenspot still like, a thing?
I just remember that it led me to a comic that had a lot of nudity and fuck*ng, and that that was exactly what I needed at that point in my life.
also, this one comic I read... Road Waffles. lots of violence that was so REALISTIC in that it was senseless and depressing.
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An assbar link because I'm lazy and not on my standard machine. (http://m.assetbar.com/achewood/uua2xCd3b)
I really shouldn't have to pick up the slack when 'off campus' for a while.
ALSO: Did beef get tattoos that basically work as shirt designs too?
We should take his sodium tattoos with a grain of salt.
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Because the piecemeal way he is doing this is just frustrating and confusing?
Also, you know, because we want it to be free.
I will program a napster that is just a thing where you can see subscriber-only achewood.
You don't need to program a napster. Just subscribe to it, then you have your own copy and can redistribute it as you please.
That said, the subscription fee is pretty low so I can't see people bitching about it on cost terms, even in this foul economy. I felt pretty burned with Serializer, inasmuch as I subscribed for an equally LOW LOW FEE and then he maybe updated once in fourteen years and so basically I felt like I was funnelling a LOW LOW FEE to Serializer as some sort of escrow for a future that would never come. I figure with Onstad's crazy schedule he'll eventually lose interest in subscriber only strips, just like he's lost interest in Ray's Place, the Achewood radio station, or updating the story arcs in the drop-down box on the front page. At which point a LOW LOW FEE would be a one-time payment, to see the backlog of everything Onstad did before he found other, more entertaining or lucrative interests. Once I skim that backlog I'll cancel my subscription, to avoid another Serializer situation.
Obviously a situation that would obviate this is a (Lord, I can't believe I'm saying this) micropayment system (á la Scott McCloud). Basically, rather than a recurring LOW LOW SUBSCRIPTION FEE, everything in PREMIUM CONTENT (TM) would cost a token amount, say ten to twenty five cents an item. That way, if Onstad gets distracted by his child, his apparently incontinent dachshund, his rock star travel tour or what have you, I'll have paid a fair market value for what he's provided, and not pissed away any money just waiting.
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Somewhere, a goose wasn't shitting gold out fast enough and found its throat slashed for the hope that it might bleed out fast and dirty fortunes.
But the blood was blood and the bird was dead and there was no more gold at all.
This somewhere was a place called Metaphor.
It is the ultimate fuck you, to make fuck you friday pay-only.
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Basically, rather than a recurring LOW LOW SUBSCRIPTION FEE, everything in PREMIUM CONTENT (TM) would cost a token amount, say ten to twenty five cents an item.
Why not both? You can either subscribe to the newspaper, or buy it only on the days you want to read it, right?
Or... read it for free on the Internet. Hmm.
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Yeah, say y cents an item or x a month. It works two ways in that it makes the monthly payment seem like good value because you can put a price on each item.
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Here's my Beef tat: "Call me Wolfram. Tungsten is my slave name."
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That said, the subscription fee is pretty low so I can't see people bitching about it on cost terms, even in this foul economy. I felt pretty burned with Serializer, inasmuch as I subscribed for an equally LOW LOW FEE and then he maybe updated once in fourteen years and so basically I felt like I was funnelling a LOW LOW FEE to Serializer as some sort of escrow for a future that would never come. I figure with Onstad's crazy schedule he'll eventually lose interest in subscriber only strips, just like he's lost interest in Ray's Place, the Achewood radio station, or updating the story arcs in the drop-down box on the front page. At which point a LOW LOW FEE would be a one-time payment, to see the backlog of everything Onstad did before he found other, more entertaining or lucrative interests. Once I skim that backlog I'll cancel my subscription, to avoid another Serializer situation.
Which is fine, as long as what Onstad loses interest in isn't the subscriber-only scripts, but the free strips. In October of this year, there were 23 weekdays. We only got 10 strips out of Onstad last month. Last year, there were also 23 weekdays in October. We got 18 strips in October 2007. What was he doing the other days? The book tour, the sandwich shop thing that I don't really get, etc.? After seeing that people are willing to spend money on books where most of the content is already available for free, he may realize that what he can really get away with is one free strip a week, and then taking everything else to the subscription-only side. He's charting new territory - few online strips have been as popular as Achewood, and the xkcd guy isn't getting a semi-regular feature on the New Yorker online version. Most online strips, if the author says he's going to a pay model, the readers would say "Whatever, fag," and move on to YouTube videos of cats getting kicked in the nuts. Achewood has some pull, though. At some point, when does Onstad start to believe the hype and "take himself to the next level?"
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Much as I enjoy this strip, I can't imagine that it has both a large and fervent enough fanbase to really get there... unless a television or movie deal is struck somewhere down the line, of course, more on the whim of an entertainment executive than really any mass clamor.
I mean, there's us and the people on the assbar and... I mean... we are few and the vast majority of the assbar folk seem barely capable of putting on their own shoes. Maybe velcro, if they don't drool all over it in the process but that's as much as I'll give 'em.
The more of the content that gets shunted to the subscription service from the free site, the less of a continuing fanbase the dude develops.
I mean, for all the free content that's online, you can read that over a weekend easy.
The kind of fans that will buy your shirts and posters and books and... yes... your subscription service are made though the pavlovian encoding of checking in for four updates a week over the course of months and years.
The kind of identification-building that creates those kinds of fans... if the free content slows to a trickle, you're robbing from Peter to pay Paul at best.
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When this messageboard was born there was probably less than 100 strips in the archive. We are fervent.
They aren't making any new Calvin and Hobbes, haven't in years, but Watterson is still reaching new fans.
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Well, yes.
But my point is that most of us became fans during times when the free content strips were most of the thrust of the Ache-output and they were frequent.
As for Calvin and Hobbes, that's basically an entirely different size and type of cultural critical mass right there. Possibly tens of millions of people loved the hell out of that stuff for free for many years and there's a half an aisle of books of it at the local B&N to pass down to your kids... not to mention hillbillies and religious fanatics plastering bootleg images of Calvin onto their tacky-ass trucks to this day.
At this level of notoriety, if a large amount of the content goes gay-for-pay as the kids say, the engine for sustaining sustaining a person's interest until they become a fan to the point where they'd pay for merch or pay for content basically seizes up and dies.
Who knows, maybe this is just a bump in the road for the book tour.
But if this is a developing trend... I can't see it ending well, in the long term, for Mr. O and his finances.
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As for Calvin and Hobbes, that's basically an entirely different size and type of cultural critical mass right there. Possibly tens of millions of people loved the hell out of that stuff for free for many years
For free? Calvin and Hobbes was never free. You had to pay for the newspaper in those days.
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People were buying the paper anyway, though.
I doubt that many people were dropping their fifty cents for the comics or any one comic.
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Hey, back in the day that is why the comics started, right?
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People were buying the paper anyway, though.
I doubt that many people were dropping their fifty cents for the comics or any one comic.
That's probably true but papers have spent a lot of money over the years to be the only one in their market to carry particular comics. That tells me the people who make their living getting people to buy newspapers think it matters. People are funny that way, they figure they'll get more or less the same news from any paper so they make their choice on whether or not they want to read ziggy.
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I used to buy the paper mainly for the comics. When I was a kid I didn't buy the paper, but my parents did and the comics were the main thing I read from them.
You know, back in the day BC was funny as hell.
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You know, back in the day BC was funny as hell.
Johnny Hart would rather you use a less Satan-y simile.
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Nothing else the paper on the Peninsula in Hampton Roads did attracted more audience participation than their annual customer review of the comics page. Mallard Fillmore always rated in the top three of Most Loved and Most Hated comic strip simultaneously. People disliked Cathy pretty roundly. My sister and I always submitted hate-filled vitriol about The Dinette Set. People CARE about their comics. But are they buying the newspaper to get them? I doubt that.
Why are we talking about newspaper comics on the Achewood forum? Perhaps because there was no strip today, only a message.
We will see you tonight (Wednesday, 11/5) in Evanston, IL! Comix Revolution, 606 Davis Street, Signing. 4-7PM.
Next up: Chicago (Th), Brooklyn (F), and Boston (Sat)! (Full tour dates and times)
Doesn't take a lot to read between the lines there.
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Maybe he'll come back all recharged and ready to deliver 4 strips no more than 6 hours late over the next week.
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Wait, Onstad still makes comic strips?
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I mean, there's us and the people on the assbar and... I mean... we are few and the vast majority of the assbar folk seem barely capable of putting on their own shoes. Maybe velcro, if they don't drool all over it in the process but that's as much as I'll give 'em.
Yeah, I know. It is so difficult to get these dang shoes on. But the rest of my fellow Assetbarbaryans honyxly seem quite capable with both their shoe ligature and literacy.
I don't think you understand the wit and intelligence most of these guys have.
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By signing up to a messageboard for the sole purpose of arguing with someone you've pretty much solidified our opinion of Assbar.
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Yeah, I mean you seriously signed up for this? At least troll us a little, post enourmous cocks, give us something to work with over here.
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...and the magpie returns to the dumpster after growing tired of the shiny bauble he spied on the pavement.
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Why theorize? Here are the comments over there on the most recent strip, Nov 20, courtesy of me not having enough work to do and not wanting to go out of the house in the freezing cold. I apologize for nevertheless being unable to give a fuck enough to include the YouTube link in the penultimate post.
gormster: Pfah!
falseprophet: It muft be both in the dialogue and as a sound effect.
It muft be both.
beanmom: Maybe it's the Beaujolais Nouveau talking, or maybe it's my dusty Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology, but the suitcase thing made me laugh.
anyclark: Man! I can so hear Percy Sledge singing "When A Dog Mounts A Suitcase"!
achewood: Someone please record this idea in full falsetto
metagrrrl: Dang that pale grey on white text! Cheer! I said Cheer not Jeer!
And apparently there's no way to undo it.
ccp: Hopefully my vote will offset the mistake. By god, the perfection of the observation becomes abundant after a brief reminder.
x189player: Heh. Nice job Cornelius, throwing Ray off-balance with a tempation like that.
Fine Brown LIquor! Call Lyle, this is ripe for a new bottle label (and I'll wait for the t-shirt)
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine whether the corresponding thread here would be any more entertaining, also taken out of a context in which one is familiar with the partici#####.
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I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine whether the corresponding thread here would be any more entertaining, also taken out of a context in which one is familiar with the partici******.
I had a similar thought with my post, but didn't want to go there.
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By signing up to a messageboard for the sole purpose of arguing with someone you've pretty much solidified our opinion of Assbar.
This does not follow, good sir. Your opinion is that we are a bunch of idiots a la 4chan, not that we post on other boards to defend each other.
Crude? Sometimes. But we are also sometimes incredibly poetic and witty, and incredibly well-learned. We know how to tie our own shoes. And we have a sense of humor as well.
@Wombat: I know nothing of this suscriber nonsense. I am on the free section, which I guess is the section I'm defending. Even so, what you copypasta'd shows wit and learnedness as well.
@ Doc:
I signed up a few weeks ago. I just didn't post until now. And I don't post cocks, only cat cocks. And by cat cock I mean a cat with the head of a cock.(http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm73/sje46/cat.jpg)
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Points for the picture. For the rest of it... Look: Come in, look around, have a seat, join the party. But don't blather on about all of your other friends that none of us know. No matter what you have to say about them, that's always a boring thing to do, you know?
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He did the cat cock thing, this indicates sufficient lurking to please me.
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But where are the barbs? THE BARBS!!!!
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Plus those fools made me their wicker man style king,
The king is dead, long live the king!
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I am more confused here than I am at Assetbar. And that is saying a lot.
Points for the picture. For the rest of it... Look: Come in, look around, have a seat, join the party. But don't blather on about all of your other friends that none of us know. No matter what you have to say about them, that's always a boring thing to do, you know?
Thank you.
I wasn't just blabbing on about my friends; I was defending them.
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I gave sje46 a can because they seemed OK and can-debt is dispiriting. But I have taken it away again because he just seemed too enamored by this bunch. I mean, I have no reason to believe they're not perfectly lovely et cetera, having never had a moment's contact with any of them, but this kind of gushing seems unhealthy and I don't want to encourage it.
Also I don't think you can really know whether or not someone can tie their own shoelaces from text-based interaction, so why are we all pretending?
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I can tie my shoes, but I avoid it like the plague.
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I wasn't just blabbing on about my friends; I was defending them.
No matter what you have to say about them, that's always a boring thing to do, you know?
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Not really enamored by them either. I just saw the first thread at this site that affected me enough to make me post something. I'm not here just to defend anyone or to write sonnets about them.
I'm not here to troll or nothin'. If you are bored by my opinion on something, then don't listen.
*shrug*
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I gave sje46 a can because they seemed OK and can-debt is dispiriting. But I have taken it away again because he just seemed too enamored by this bunch. I mean, I have no reason to believe they're not perfectly lovely et cetera, having never had a moment's contact with any of them, but this kind of gushing seems unhealthy and I don't want to encourage it.
Also I don't think you can really know whether or not someone can tie their own shoelaces from text-based interaction, so why are we all pretending?
I've cast my vote and restored the fellow back to 0. I say this I was entertained by his/her/its posts. Far more than THA SUGAH RAIN HATH COMETH or whatever.
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Not really enamored by them either. I just saw the first thread at this site that affected me enough to make me post something. I'm not here just to defend anyone or to write sonnets about them.
I'm not here to troll or nothin'. If you are bored by my opinion on something, then don't listen.
*shrug*
Well, if you're not going to use it to inflict psychological damage on yourself, you can have your can back!
Hooray!
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Well, if you're not going to use it to inflict psychological damage on yourself, you can have your can back!
He could use it to cook beer can chicken... Tomorrow!
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Your opinion is that we are a bunch of idiots a la 4chan
copypasta
Using 4chan slang probably isn't helping out your case much here.
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I was wondering if someone would catch that.