Private Jokes Made Public

November 9, 2003 6:50 PM

That's What Friends Are For:Laughing, getting drunk together, telling all...and making celebratory, determinedly silly websites like this one. Generally, private jokes are painfully unfunny but, when the vicarious instinct kicks in, other people's gregarious joie de vivre is contagious, touching - and great fun.
posted by MiguelCardoso (7 comments total)

Let me be the first to say: HOLY DUCT TAPE, BATMAN!

Migs, I don't know if this is the "best" of the web in any identifiable category. After all, "Tom Brokaw Approved" is okay, but I wanna know what Keith Olbermann thinks of it.
posted by wendell at 7:55 PM on November 9, 2003

I just don't know about that.
posted by majcher at 9:32 PM on November 9, 2003

Yes you do, Majcher. These are not the times for uncertainty--we need those decisions to be fast, final, arbitrary and above all, rash. So rash you'll be reaching for the calamine lotion.

Oh, and Miguel, that site reminds me of the sort of quirky, idiosyncratic humour that used to be the web's (and Usenet's before that) stock-in-trade back in the Good Old Days. I'm getting nostalgic here; I need a Moment.

(Wonder if they've ever heard of Red Green?)
posted by arto at 9:52 PM on November 9, 2003

I enjoyed the tribute to Cronan Thompson. Seems like he was a great guy to have known.
posted by PrinceValium at 1:07 AM on November 10, 2003

Maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't seem particularly funny, but as you say, private jokes generally aren't. I know mine aren't!
posted by Orange Goblin at 1:35 AM on November 10, 2003

Goodness knows we're too mature here at MetaFilter for Private Jokes.

Maybe we can retire "I just don't know about that" in favor of something more original, like "I don't think so, Tim."
posted by wendell at 1:44 AM on November 10, 2003

I knew Cronan Thompson solely as a troll on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5. He was the first (and, for several years, only) person I ever put in my e-mail killfile, thanks to a couple of truly nasty personal responses that he sent me.

Now that I know he's gone (a terrible tragedy for such a young kid, of course), I guess I can take him off the list....
posted by Epenthesis at 11:08 AM on November 10, 2003