cooljeanius
Member
You know, this one:
It seems that often on NeoGAF people will post it as if they were sincerely clapping for the post they quoted. I long suspected that this was the incorrect usage of this gif, but as it had been a while since I had actually seen Citizen Kane, I actually thought it was incorrect in the wrong direction. I used to interpret it as a begrudging clap, as in, "I don't normally like to clap for you, but your post was just so good that I find myself forced to clap for you despite my dislike for you. Touché, you bastard." However, I recently was reading a film theory textbook that had some analysis of Citizen Kane in it, and that reminded me that my previous interpretation was actually the exact opposite of the correct context for the scene. As some background, leading up to this scene, Kane had been trying to build up his mistress-turned-second-wife, Susan, as an opera star to make her look like more than just some fling he had. In this scene, Susan had just given a "bad" (by the standards of the time) opera performance, and Kane realized that it was bad, but was still forcing himself to clap for it to show support for his creation. So really, the correct usage of the gif would then be to have it mean, "Your post was really bad, but you are my protégé, and so I must clap for you to build the impression that your post was actually good, because my mental well-being depends on your posting success." However, I rarely ever see anyone use it in this third way. I realize that that exact context is kind of rare, but could people at least be aware of it before just using the gif willy-nilly? Unless someone else has a better interpretation...
It seems that often on NeoGAF people will post it as if they were sincerely clapping for the post they quoted. I long suspected that this was the incorrect usage of this gif, but as it had been a while since I had actually seen Citizen Kane, I actually thought it was incorrect in the wrong direction. I used to interpret it as a begrudging clap, as in, "I don't normally like to clap for you, but your post was just so good that I find myself forced to clap for you despite my dislike for you. Touché, you bastard." However, I recently was reading a film theory textbook that had some analysis of Citizen Kane in it, and that reminded me that my previous interpretation was actually the exact opposite of the correct context for the scene. As some background, leading up to this scene, Kane had been trying to build up his mistress-turned-second-wife, Susan, as an opera star to make her look like more than just some fling he had. In this scene, Susan had just given a "bad" (by the standards of the time) opera performance, and Kane realized that it was bad, but was still forcing himself to clap for it to show support for his creation. So really, the correct usage of the gif would then be to have it mean, "Your post was really bad, but you are my protégé, and so I must clap for you to build the impression that your post was actually good, because my mental well-being depends on your posting success." However, I rarely ever see anyone use it in this third way. I realize that that exact context is kind of rare, but could people at least be aware of it before just using the gif willy-nilly? Unless someone else has a better interpretation...
(and I fully expect to see someone try to use the gif self-referentially in this thread at least once... they will most likely be doing it wrong though)
