It's Not a Streetlamp Photo
February 22, 2016 12:16 PM   Subscribe

On Fark.com, a user asked for help identifying the mysterious subject of a photo he'd taken. "Why don't we let William of Occam sort this out: William, what is more likely: a) that a hitherto unobserved light source hovvering over some hills very far away just happens to look exactly like a nearby streelamp when photographed, or b) Forked accidentally took a picture of said nearby streetlight and didn't realise it?"
posted by Peregrine Pickle (73 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
1) Fark is still a thing??

2) Oh bless your boots, sweetie, that is a streetlight.
posted by Kitteh at 12:18 PM on February 22, 2016 [11 favorites]


1) Fark is still a thing??

I have no idea if Fark is still a thing, but the linked thread is from 2007.
posted by aubilenon at 12:20 PM on February 22, 2016 [18 favorites]


How many pages of that thread do we have to go through before the Farkian shenanigans cease? (trick question)
posted by NoMich at 12:22 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Most of the snarky images in it don't even work any more since it's from 2007, and those tend to be the best parts of a Fark thread.
posted by charred husk at 12:22 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Fark is still a thing, but only 4-5 days per week.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:22 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


This is almost 10 years old, right? Definitely one of the peak-Fark moments, but not particularly current.

Was anyone else here on Fark back in the day? Anyone remember the Pickle Incident? Or the guy stuck to the chair with the wooden slats?

I was pretty active on Fark from 2000-2007ish. During college I shared a TotalFark account with my college roommate and I remember excitedly calling him when we got our first submission on the front page.

Then one day I got an invitation to UltraFark and +++**NO CARRIER**+++
posted by paulcole at 12:23 PM on February 22, 2016 [17 favorites]


It reminds me a lot of this.
posted by DaddyNewt at 12:29 PM on February 22, 2016


Fark is still a thing, but only 4-5 days per week.

Hey, being a thing every other day in a week is still pretty good.
posted by Copronymus at 12:31 PM on February 22, 2016 [61 favorites]


But are you sure that's not being too much of a thing? Wouldn't want to risk an oversnarking injury.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:36 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Was anyone else here on Fark back in the day?

Sorry, I have to link this any time people act surprised that Fark is or was a thing -- one of my claims to fame is that Fark is what it is because of me:

We liked the idea of commenting on Derek's purchases so much that we added comments to our articles shortly after linking to this site.

Whether it's real or not I have no idea, but the timing does line up; they had linked to my site back when Fark was little more than Drew Curtis' "twitter", a link and a line of text, and the site didn't blow up until shortly thereafter, once they made it a message board.

I was really active up until probably around 2003 or so, when they added pagination which made it hard to follow along much. I still go there from time to time when I've got a "news of the weird" hunger that Reddit isn't satisfying.

Is it like throwback time here on Metafilter? The "Set Up Us The Bomb" post from last week, now this?
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:37 PM on February 22, 2016 [12 favorites]


Oh Fark!

The cat & lipstick incident is still one of its greatest moments.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 12:41 PM on February 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


Fark is still a thing, but only 4-5 days per week.

Hey, being a thing every other day in a week is still pretty good.


Learn math dude 4-5 = -1 so technically Fark is still a thing slightly less often than there are days in the week so we can tell when we're nearing t=∞ (i.e. the end of time) because we'll start to see Fark not existing anymore so we can calculate exactly how much time we have left using the formula tremaining=Fark-1 where F-1=the number of weeks Fark has only been a think for -1 days per week and tremaining is expressed in days.

Also dude that's totally not a streetlamp, that guy said so and I'm pretty sure he'd know.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:41 PM on February 22, 2016 [9 favorites]


1484 comments
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:43 PM on February 22, 2016


King Douchenozzle vonCrunk frowns on your shenanigans
posted by exparrot at 12:43 PM on February 22, 2016


Fark was my primary news source in the early 2000s.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:44 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Was anyone else here on Fark back in the day?

I was, from 2001 until last year. Woke up one morning, opened the politics tab, and was suddenly utterly sick of all things Fark. Deleted my account (as much as is possible) and haven't been back.

The headlines of the week/month/year were my favorite bits.
posted by JohnFromGR at 12:45 PM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


I won a couple of Photoshop contests back in the day, and someone gave me TotalFark for a month for my Lindsay Lohan/Paint Huffer Warrior 'shop, so I do have a fondness for the site.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:46 PM on February 22, 2016


I go check in on Fark every so often to read the headlines, and definitely for the Headline of the Year contest.
posted by eriko at 12:49 PM on February 22, 2016


MetaFilter: we outlasted Fark
posted by Nelson at 12:50 PM on February 22, 2016 [45 favorites]


My Fark heyday was 2000-2003-ish (almost entirely lurking). I left at some point during college and never really looked back until one day I started getting a whole bunch of e-mails from them. They had started notifying you when someone was replying to you, and I think the script just assumed that any bold username meant a reply, because I was getting an e-mail every time someone bolded the word "too", which it turns out is a word people want to bold fairly often.
posted by Copronymus at 12:52 PM on February 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


I used to spend a fair bit of time lurking on Fark at a past job. How long ago are we talking here? I would go back and forth between the internet and checking out the day's headlines on my office's edition of Lotus Notes.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:58 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I used to read Fark, but I got more and more disillusioned with the types of comments that I kept seeing--the best way I can describe it is that it had a high proportion of the sort of commentors that people think of when they think of reddit--and I gradually decreased the number of categories and sites that I would read the comments for, until the only thing that I'd check out would be The Smoking Gun's weekly mugshot roundup. And then I realized how skeevy that was (very transphobic, and enamored of young, pretty women getting busted for DUIs), and that was that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:05 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Fark (since 2002), Feedly and Metafilter are my holy trinity.

/Don't judge me
//slashies!
///it's what they do
posted by exparrot at 1:06 PM on February 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


Learn math dude 4-5 = -1 so technically Fark is still a thing slightly less often than there are days in the week so we can tell when we're nearing t=∞ (i.e. the end of time) because we'll start to see Fark not existing anymore

Hold on just a second there. You're assuming that Fark exists inside of time, but the evidence suggests that it may not (or may do so only occasionally, perhaps a few times per week while remaining outside of time on at least a half-time basis). What evidence, you ask? Why, here we are, talking about Fark in the year 2016, and specifically about an event that may or may not have happened in what you Earth-timers would perceive as nearly 10 years ago. Did the Fark server fall into a black hole and begin to drift slowly and sporadically across time until it was used by extraterrestrial beings to help construct the pyramids? We may never know.
posted by Copronymus at 1:09 PM on February 22, 2016


I still skim the FARK headlines every day, as I have since 2001. but have never actually read the threads, which is probably why I still look at it after all these years.
posted by briank at 1:20 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


In lieu of regularly accessing the site, I have an email subscription to the "Fark Not-Newsleter", where Fark's Drew (or his surrogate writing the email) declared "Another epic Farkiversary: Last week was the ninth anniversary of an oft-referenced, much-loved epic Fark thread: the "It's a streetlight" thread. It's a personal favorite of mine because it's truly beautiful to watch it unfold as the submitter goes through the five stages of grief." I don't know why they made a big deal of the 9th anniversary; either they couldn't think of another lead item for the newsletter, or somebody sincerely doubts they'll make it to the 10th.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:34 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


This was 9 years ago? Shit I'm old.
posted by ShakeyJake at 1:37 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


For a decent chunk there being up to date with Fark was a surefire way to win at "Wait Wait Don't tell me"

I've been "on" Fark for a long time but just a viewer, not really a commenter.
posted by bitdamaged at 1:41 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Learn math dude 4-5 = -1 so technically Fark is still a thing slightly less often than there are days in the week so we can tell when we're nearing t=∞ (i.e. the end of time) because we'll start to see Fark not existing anymore

Hold on just a second there. You're assuming that Fark exists inside of time, but the evidence suggests that it may not (or may do so only occasionally, perhaps a few times per week while remaining outside of time on at least a half-time basis). What evidence, you ask? Why, here we are, talking about Fark in the year 2016, and specifically about an event that may or may not have happened in what you Earth-timers would perceive as nearly 10 years ago. Did the Fark server fall into a black hole and begin to drift slowly and sporadically across time until it was used by extraterrestrial beings to help construct the pyramids? We may never know.
posted by Copronymus at 4:09 PM on February 22 [+] [!]


Jesus dude do you even math?
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:43 PM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


MetaFilter: we outlasted Fark

...and Plastic.com. Kuro5hin and Slashdot are abandoned husks of what they once were, Digg is kaput, and BoingBoing keeps trying to sell me stuff.

'Look on my community weblogs, ye Mighty, and despair!'
posted by leotrotsky at 1:44 PM on February 22, 2016 [22 favorites]


paulcole: Was anyone else here on Fark back in the day? Anyone remember the Pickle Incident? Or the guy stuck to the chair with the wooden slats?

The clamcakes thread was comedy gold. Also, never a June went by when I wonder if that TFer ever married that guy she never met or talked to in-person for several years.
posted by dr_dank at 1:47 PM on February 22, 2016


I went Fark - SomethingAwful - Metafilter - Reddit. Though obviously still read/enjoy Metafilter.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 1:48 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


We need a FLORIDA tag.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:50 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Is memepool just utterly forgotten, then?
posted by contraption at 1:57 PM on February 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


MetaFilter: we outlasted Fark

...and Plastic.com. Kuro5hin and Slashdot are abandoned husks of what they once were, Digg is kaput, and BoingBoing keeps trying to sell me stuff.


Thinking about this again. We're the little tortoise in the internet ecosystem. No one pays us that much attention. We're not huge, and we change very slowly

...but we're really really old and we're not going anywhere anytime soon.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:59 PM on February 22, 2016 [18 favorites]


...Kuro5hin and Slashdot are abandoned husks of what they once were.

I wonder what Rusty's doing with his dwindling supply of monocle polish, and what CmdrTaco is doing with his no-longer-hot grits.

Even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
posted by infinitewindow at 2:09 PM on February 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


Fark is still a thing, but only 4-5 days per week.

Hey, being a thing every other day in a week is still pretty good.


Dude, you don't count the day a post is made as a day.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:09 PM on February 22, 2016 [13 favorites]


I quit reading at the comment "the error of you being on drugs or just and attention whore and taking picture of a streetlight is astronomically higher than that of it being anything else.", because really, is there anything more to be said?

...Actually, is there? Is it worth sifting through all 1484 comments to find anymore golden nuggets?
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:13 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Fark is still a thing, but only 4-5 days per week.

So there are what, Nine days in a week, right? count the fukin days.
posted by marienbad at 2:16 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: Your dog wants beans.
posted by fedward at 2:25 PM on February 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


Look, these are the days of the week. Count them.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday
posted by Ned G at 2:25 PM on February 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


Oh man! I was there for the streetlamp thread! And the wood slat chair! Is this the Woodstock of my generation?

Sadly I can't remember my username, and although a few on the thread seem plausible, there is no way I will remember a password from 2000, or my hotmail recovery email.

The period between 1996 and 2001 is all fuzzy in my head, it was when I was moving from usenet to the web, and from being a straight-edge teenager to a fully committed psychonaut. At the time my rounds included Fark, Slashdot, whatever was linked on the NTK newsletter, Drool Donkey, Robot Wisdom, and BoingBoing. All these places felt so full of possibility, like we were really building a global village, where information actually wanted to be free, and no one would be judged on nationality, color, gender, age, religion, etc... but on the quality of their posts.

After 2001 I added Metafilter, Something Awful, a bunch of friend's and friend's of friends blogs, Digg, Reddit, Barbelith, and then too many to remember. I was kind of jaded by then.

I really miss the NTK newsletter, BoingBoing has fully embraced their selling out, Jorn Barger from Robot Wisdom slowly and steadily self destructed, Drool Donkey (anyone else here remembers that? It was the first place after some niche usenet groups where I felt at home) was closed around the time most of the administrators of similar sites got arrested. Digg, Fark and Slashdot are deserted....

Fuck, I am old.
posted by Doroteo Arango II at 2:33 PM on February 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


I don't really remember, but it's possible that Fark was my gateway drug to MetaFilter back in the early 2000s.

/Wasn't there a MetaFilter tag?
//Thanks I guess
///No really, thanks
posted by Rock Steady at 2:35 PM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


My wife just asked why I looked melancholy and teary eyed and I showed her this post.

She confessed that just before we started dating she shoulder surfed me and started reading the b3ta and NTK newsletters in secret to have something 'interesting' to talk about. She still is subscribed to b3ta, and about every 6 months they publish one of their weekly newsletters. Last one in December.

So there is still hope.
posted by Doroteo Arango II at 2:43 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


that fark guy is not as smart as he thinks he is
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:59 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


The high-resolution version is my new desktop background.
posted by mbrubeck at 3:02 PM on February 22, 2016 [4 favorites]


I WANT TO BELIEVE
posted by mbrubeck at 3:05 PM on February 22, 2016


I wonder what Rusty's doing

Posting on Metafilter occasionally...
posted by Ian A.T. at 3:15 PM on February 22, 2016


MetaFilter: we outlasted Fark

...and Plastic.com. Kuro5hin and Slashdot are abandoned husks of what they once were, Digg is kaput, and BoingBoing keeps trying to sell me stuff.


And I find myself suddenly longing for suck.com....
posted by lumpenprole at 3:18 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


So this is what Mulder has been up to...
posted by CMcG at 3:22 PM on February 22, 2016


"The high-resolution version is my new desktop background."

"I WANT TO BELIEVE"

So I have that image open in Photoshop right now and a custom t-shirt website open in my browser because I thought that something like that image posterized with a slogan would be obscurely cool.

And then I realized this was actually pretty stupid.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 3:38 PM on February 22, 2016 [8 favorites]


...Actually, is there? Is it worth sifting through all 1484 comments to find anymore golden nuggets?

Page 2:
ArbitraryConstant 2007-02-18 01:52:43 PM

forked_at_fark: Could it have been a shuttle or the ISS, or perhaps a satellite?

If the ISS were a tube of mercury vapor on a pole on your street, then yes.
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:52 PM on February 22, 2016 [9 favorites]


The cat & lipstick incident is still one of its greatest moments.

So did anyone finally put lipstick on a cat's ass? All the image links are "too old to be available."
posted by kanewai at 3:53 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Drew ran for KY governor last year. Somehow he lost.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:19 PM on February 22, 2016


Fuck, I am old.
posted by Doroteo Arango II at 17:33 on February 22


You're not old.

I remember when my High Speed Internet was a 75 baud Teletype machine muxed through a high-speed 1/3 of a relay rack 300 baud modem.
posted by pjern at 5:49 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


I totally remember killing a morning (Sunday I think?) on this thread laughing out loud 9 years ago. I still thing about it every time I hear Don't Stop Believing.
posted by sourwookie at 6:03 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Or the guy stuck to the chair with the wooden slats?

The Ballsack Conundrum was one of the funniest Fark threads ever. I remember this streetlight one, too. I was a daily reader/lurker for years in the mid-2000s, and then gradually faded away... but I still go back sometimes for political threads on election nights (for the rapid-fire jokes), or when there's a big natural disaster and everyone adds little bits of information to the thread. I guess threads like that remind me what online community feels like, in real time.

Also, the best Fark headline ever will always be: Bear attack victim had 'tender heart,' according to friends, family, bear
posted by southern_sky at 6:34 PM on February 22, 2016 [7 favorites]


Drew ran for KY governor last year. Somehow he lost.

It was because he was completely unknowledgeable about any of the issues and ran it as a vanity campaign. Seriously, he had his wife as his running mate and endorsed Trump a week before the election. While the whole time had a sneering attitude against both parties and anyone who questioned whether he had any idea what he was doing. It was literally a "pox on both your houses". Drew Curtis is a dick.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:16 PM on February 22, 2016


I really miss the NTK newsletter
Me too, but we still have Oblomovka.
posted by unliteral at 7:53 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Fark and Boingboing were also my early 2000's go-to sites.

What in the world happened to Boing Boing to turn it into a glorified Skymall catalog?!? I remember I thought that they were all such cool geeks.

At least kottke is still doing his thing. I remember when I figured out that a large percentage of BB posts that I liked originated there anyway.
posted by montag2k at 8:48 PM on February 22, 2016


"The high-resolution version is my new desktop background."

"I WANT TO BELIEVE"

So I have that image open in Photoshop right now and a custom t-shirt website open in my browser because I thought that something like that image posterized with a slogan would be obscurely cool.

And then I realized this was actually pretty stupid.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 3:38 PM on February 22 [7 favorites +] [!]



You can get the shirt without a slogan.

http://www.cafepress.com/mf/17802828/its-a-streetlight_tshirt?shop=markjamesmurphy&productId=69276031
posted by Peregrine Pickle at 8:50 PM on February 22, 2016


Oh man, the prank opportunity to go mark up that guy's whole house with lipstick.
posted by ctmf at 9:56 PM on February 22, 2016


Tell me his wife did that after telling him she would do the cat experiment.
posted by ctmf at 9:57 PM on February 22, 2016


Bear attack victim had 'tender heart,' according to friends, family, bear

I still like...

Sports radio host compares Tim Tebow to a Nazi, which is ridiculous considering the Nazis had a devastating air attack

... and, of course...

Carpenters face higher-than-average asbestos death rate, higher-than-average resurrection rate
posted by eriko at 10:10 PM on February 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


/came here for mention of memepool, leaves satisfied.

not to mention cardhouse and spinnwebe.

fark remains strangely relevant. where else would I get my Caturday fix?
posted by dorian at 10:15 PM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh my god!

I was in that thread. In fact, Peregrine Pickle linked above to the shirt I created.

I don't know if anyone ever bought one.

Those were the days.
posted by markjamesmurphy at 10:18 PM on February 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


southern_sky: "The Ballsack Conundrum"

Tell me more.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 12:05 AM on February 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


What in the world happened to Boing Boing to turn it into a glorified Skymall catalog?!? I remember I thought that they were all such cool geeks.

The monthly bills on all that warehouse space for Doctorow's ego add up.
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:19 AM on February 23, 2016 [6 favorites]


Tell me more.

The Ballsack Conundrum
posted by eriko at 5:57 AM on February 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


not to mention cardhouse and spinnwebe.

Ha! I was just at cardhouse randomly last week, wondering if they were still alive. Sort-of, like always. Still on about the coco-nuts.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:13 PM on February 23, 2016


What in the world happened to Boing Boing to turn it into a glorified Skymall catalog?!? I remember I thought that they were all such cool geeks.

The monthly bills on all that warehouse space for Doctorow's ego add up.


Heh. But, in all seriousness, I think that they, and a lot of these sites, are dying a slow death by social media. Why should I send in a submission that Cory or Xeni will publish under their own name with maybe a "h/t" at the end, when I could publish it on Facebook or Twitter? Or here? Ditto for Fark, where "submitted this earlier with a funnier headline" long since stopped being a joke.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:03 PM on February 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


Or post it to Reddit, the current 500 lb gorilla. The depth that those specialized subreddits provide through their members, posts, wikis, and FAQs is really something new and neat. For example, classical resources for those who want an introduction to a particular time period of music. But Reddit doesn't do well when it gets to the big default subreddits, that's a junk pile of reposts and lowest common denominator fluff. And then there's the cesspool underneath.
posted by leotrotsky at 3:36 PM on February 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


Mod note: A couple of comments deleted. Let's not turn this into an argument about Drew Curtis' gubernatorial race please.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:38 AM on February 24, 2016


« Older "Single Women Are Our Most Potent Political Force"   |   Terrible Tilly Newer »


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