Your Excellency
Banned
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to write a classic first reply.
You know the score: someone writes a really long new thread, and the first response they get is short, witty, and hilarious. Sometimes it's a pun, sometimes a sentence, sometimes a picture. What never changes is that it is utterly perfect.
Great comedy is all about timing, and perhaps the reason they're so effective is that these are one of the few moments on a forum where you can really use timing to your advantage. It inevitably sets in motion the standard two-pronged approach to Neogaf threads: one half of the forum makes jokes, whilst the other half write angry essays and argue with anyone they can find.
A few months ago, this inner drive to get the perfect first reply almost led to my downfall. You see, I cheated. Someone had just made a thread about Madonna, and I, in my madness, couldn't think of anything on the spot. I was desperate, I was frantic, and due to the fear that someone else would steal my position as the first responder, I replied with a quick 'placeholder' post, which would give me time to think of a funny response and then edit it into my original post. Sadly, my plan failed as people realised I'd edited my post, and mods were informed, a meeting took place and I was banned for a week. It was the most humble week of my life.
The closest I ever came to nailing it was with this thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=430778 , but I still think I can do better. I want a write a first reply which is so funny, so incredibly perfect that people are still quoting it 5 pages in, even 10 pages into the thread.
SO GAF: What are the best first responses you've ever seen? Here's a classic to get you started, although sadly it'll only make sense to those who were there at the time:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=369009
You know the score: someone writes a really long new thread, and the first response they get is short, witty, and hilarious. Sometimes it's a pun, sometimes a sentence, sometimes a picture. What never changes is that it is utterly perfect.
Great comedy is all about timing, and perhaps the reason they're so effective is that these are one of the few moments on a forum where you can really use timing to your advantage. It inevitably sets in motion the standard two-pronged approach to Neogaf threads: one half of the forum makes jokes, whilst the other half write angry essays and argue with anyone they can find.
A few months ago, this inner drive to get the perfect first reply almost led to my downfall. You see, I cheated. Someone had just made a thread about Madonna, and I, in my madness, couldn't think of anything on the spot. I was desperate, I was frantic, and due to the fear that someone else would steal my position as the first responder, I replied with a quick 'placeholder' post, which would give me time to think of a funny response and then edit it into my original post. Sadly, my plan failed as people realised I'd edited my post, and mods were informed, a meeting took place and I was banned for a week. It was the most humble week of my life.
The closest I ever came to nailing it was with this thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=430778 , but I still think I can do better. I want a write a first reply which is so funny, so incredibly perfect that people are still quoting it 5 pages in, even 10 pages into the thread.
SO GAF: What are the best first responses you've ever seen? Here's a classic to get you started, although sadly it'll only make sense to those who were there at the time:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=369009
