This blog does not get that much exposure. Oh well.
I’m going to tell you a story, those who do read this. At the end, whoever guesses correctly what happened next, gets a prize. And whoever comes up with the funniest incorrect guess as to what happened next, gets a prize. I’ll give it 24 hours. The prize will be either a sonnet in your praise, or a cartoon.
Carlos Matias La Borde, for reasons which will become obvious, you are not eligible to guess. Though there will probably be a cartoon of the incident anyway, featuring you.
And tomorrow, I’ll discuss what happened next, and what I think of it. Hint: whatever happened next had nothing to do with Carlos.
Once upon a time, there was a Quora user named ME, who was a gentle, irenic, supportive cuddle-bunny of a business analyst.
At the same time, there was another Quora user named Carlos. Carlos was a witty prankster of a poster, and his default bio said as much:
occasional shitposter and TW ’16
The term shitposter was new to me, but by analogy to shit-talker, its meaning was clear enough.
shitposter: Urban Dictionary
A person who regularly submits terrible or nonsensical posts to an internet forum.
Shitposting: Know Your Meme
“Shitposting” is an Internet slang term describing a range of user misbehaviors and rhetoric on forums and message boards that are intended to derail a conversation off-topic, including thread jacking, circlejerking and non-commercial spamming.
So, Carlos is admitting to writing disruptive posts to Quora on occasion. I’d noticed some good snark from Carlos, but admittedly nothing that quite merited that name.
Recently, I heard a recording of Carlos’ voice. As often happens, the poster’s voice was not what I expected it would be. Because he says he’s a prankster, swears a bit (as befits a pedagogue of programming), and is youngish, I assumed he’d have a high-pitched, Quentin Tarantino kind of voice. Instead, Carlos had a mellow, West Coast baritone.
I rushed to compliment Carlos:
… You don’t sound like a shitposter at all, Carlos! What Martin Silvertant [complimenting him] said. Even your “for fuck’s sake” was more subdued than I expected!
Carlos responded courteously:
That’s how I get away with doing it in real life so much.. I’m normally not flying off the handle at every turn, I just swear a lot, but do it in a normal fashion.
As to the shitposting, it’s not constantly, but I do it from time to time:
And yes, I trust you will agree that the said answer is a hilarious exemplar of the genre.
OK, men and women of Quora.
What happened next?