posted
Are dobies common on forums other than Hatrack? I mean, they'd have different names, of course, unless the meme was transferred there from here, but does the practice of creating joke threads with names similar to the names of existing threads exist elsewhere?
For that matter, do you think that they would exist here if Dobie hadn't gotten the ball rolling with them, way back when?
Another way of phrasing this might me "if we went back in time and killed Dobie before he started posting on Hatrack, would the development of something resembling the dobie tradition have been averted".
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I thought we occasionally had some even before Dobie . . . he just contributed to the higher frequency of them.
Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
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I certainly wouldn't mind if Hatrack stopped doing them altogether. I think it's sort of rude to the original poster, especially if the first topic was a serious one.
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posted
There was recently a dobie on a non-Hatrack-related forum I frequent. One thread title had a misspelling in it, and someone else took the opportunity to make a pun on it. It's the only one I've seen outside the Hatrackosphere, though.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Interesting, Jon Boy. Sounds like the circumstances are such that it won't develop into a tradition there.
Valentine, yeah, I agree. Well, kind of; I don't find them to be terribly rude, but I generally don't find them to be funny either. The funny thing, to me, is that I occasionally get the urge to make one, despite not enjoying them when other people do so. It's an urge that I don't give in to. At most I'll post in the thread I want to parody saying what I'd name my dobie, were I to make one.
Note that I'm not trying to get people to stop with the dobies. I find them annoying, but for better or worse they're part of things here, and I accept that.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Yeah, dobie was a regular at one point. Got banned, I think.
Jennabean, I'm not sure how the original poster pronounced the name, but I pronounce it like "dough-bee". Or sometimes "daugh-bee". Never "doo-bee"
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In my head it was pronounced "doo-bee" and when I met a fellow Hatracker, he said it the same way.
Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I've always thought doe (a deer, a female deer) + bee (buzz). If it were doo-bee, it would have either a u or two o's. Or maybe one o and one u. But not just an o.
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Yeah, Ophelia, that's a simpler way of expressing what I was saying with "dough-bee". Not sure why that didn't occur to me.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I'm with Noemon and Ophelia. It's pronounced "Dough-Bee."
And the people who pronounce "Hat-rack" as "Ha-track" are on a new scale of "I don't understand you or where that came from."
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
I would have invented dobies if they hadn't been already. Then they would have been called pookas and I would be continutally correcting people that the plural is pookae.
Which is to say I think hatrack attracts a peculiar grade of literary nerd.
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When I first read Seventh Son, I said ha-track in my head. Don't know why. It wasn't until I got to the first Uncle Orson Writer's thingy that I started hearing it "hat-rack" and thought "oh, duh, that makes a *lot* more sense"
quote:Originally posted by pooka: Which is to say I think hatrack attracts a peculiar grade of literary nerd.
LOL, I guess that's why I feel at home here! Just this morning a friend emailed me a usage question and copied another friend on it. We both responded enthusiastically and probably in too much detail, and I had to observe, "Man, what a couple of word nerds we are."
Oh -- and I get a kick out of dobies (doh-bees). I wouldn't be offended if someone dobied a thread of mine, unless it was about a death in the family or something. They're usually dumb, but so what? I guess I just figure that they are an elaborate pun, and what's the harm in a pun?
As for Ha-track/Hat-rack: I keep trying to figure out how I say it. I usually just think it. I guess the t is sort of a glottal stop in my pronunciation, so it's something like HAt-rack. The "ha-track" pronunciation reminds me of a friend who used to pronounce "battery" as "BA-tree" with a very crisp T. My pronunciation is more like "baddery."
OK, like I said, "word nerd."
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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You know, I was trying to remember that when I was replying to Advent, but I don't seem to have any memory at all of the particulars. I'm sure that someone will know though.
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I always thought it was like the name of the house elf in Harry Potter. "Dob [rhymes with job]-ee". Emphasis on the first syllable.
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I always assumed 'Dobie' was pronounced the same way as the name of that little gnome dude in Harry Potter.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I slur my words anyways, so I say Doo-bie. I know it's wrong, but it's been forever ingrained in my mind. It's one of those things where, once I hear it said once, I can't stop thinking that way.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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Dobie was the first one to ever make a dobie. None of them have been funny yet. I get the urge too, which is odd since they annoy me too, lol, and I've always resisted so far. I guess it's one of those things like popping bubble wrap that's fun to do but annoying as all get out to watch someone else do.
Do the satellite fora have dobies?
Dobie was banned for breaking the forum. Nothing to do with making dobies, though if we'd known in advance, we possibly could have banned him preemptively and avoided having to go back in time and kill him.
I'm resigned to the fact that hatrack (hat-rack) will never be rid of the dobie (dough-bee).
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I say ha-track because the other way is just impossible in Rhode Islandese... the "r" would just disappear.
Posts: 3636 | Registered: Oct 2001
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When someone makes a thread to make fun of a another thread with a similar name, and the first post contains (MUST contain, or it isn't really a dobie) a link to something. It is usually a play on words, or somtimes a misspelling of the original thread.
I don't think they are particularly funny, or original, so I usually just ignore them.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Dobies are usually a play on the words of another thread. They don't make fun of the original thread...at least I can't remember any that have.
For instance, I would play on the thread titled "The Juliana Theory Is Dead." by posting a thread called "The Julienne Theory Is Dead", and linking in the first post to, say, here.
Sometimes they're funny, if you have an overactive sense of humor (like some of us do). Mostly, they're groaned at (often with good reason) by the curmudgeons of the forum. These are the same people who will someday tell your children (or childrens' children) to stop running around on their prize-winning lawns, and can be paid about the same amount of attention.
That said, always give yourself a good cooling off period between the birth of the idea and the posting of the thread...if it's not still gut-bustingly funny to you in 15-20 minutes, it's probably not all that good, and you're just giving dobies a bad name.
Posts: 270 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I'm convinced that it's a meme that's taken possession of our brains and won't let go, like the flu. It just keeps infecting more people.
It reminds me of when my little brother would start repeating every word I said and he would get so into that mode that he just couldn't stop despite the fact that it was driving everyone crazy. <laughs> It's like a compulsion that people have, and they just can't fight it.
It's always possible, however, that I just don't understand the true beauty and wonder that is the dobie. Just like there are some people who totally don't get the last post threads.
It's easy enough to ignore dobies, at least. And I never understood those people who don't want kids on their beautiful lush grass. Don't they know that sort of grass is for rolling in and walking barefoot through and feeling the cool blades between your toes on a sunny summer day?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
I don't think it's a meme at all. I think newbies with little else to offer the forum just like to make fun of thread titles. I've seen it done at other forums where the average population tends to be young. Calling it a meme is just over-analyzing immaturity.
That said, there have been some really good dobies and most of them have either made fun of another thread or at least been a derivative of the title of a serious thread. Some of the best dobies take advantage of misspellings or grammatical errors on the part of the original poster.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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You think newbies are more likely to create dobies than Hatrack veterans are? I haven't really seen that to be the case.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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He hacked into something and it went down, I think. I really only have a vague memory of it, but it probably cost the administrators a good bit of time and effort to fix, and... well... who invites back a guest who trashes the place?
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: You think newbies are more likely to create dobies than Hatrack veterans are? I haven't really seen that to be the case.
What hatrack have you been reading?!
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
One where people like Geoff and Alt persist in the foolish belief that their dobies are funny enough to warrant creation.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:How in the world do you BREAK a forum?! [Confused]
older versions of UBB used to be easier to break.
they were not as restrictive of what could be typed in, so you could trick it into doing all kinds of things. Frequently, it would involve using special characters to trick the board into running javascript even when the admin has it set not to allow it.
Common things were adding music, changing the background, creating loops between two threads (one thread would send you to another, that thread would send you back to the first) and so forth.
The problem was, there were other things if done that would completely bring down the board.
It made being an admin very interesting.
I wasn't there at the time, so I don't know if he did one of those things, or something else...but that would be my guess.
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