27

Just curious. After reading about the infamous "Boat Programming" question, I wondered if anything like that has existed on Ask Ubuntu.

5
  • 2
    Does "Jorge Castro the Bot" count? Aug 12, 2014 at 6:08
  • 1
    There's also this. Aug 12, 2014 at 6:09
  • 3
    what is the boat programming question?
    – sbergeron
    Aug 12, 2014 at 13:55
  • I think it basically went like this: "What kind of programming should I do on a boat?". The question was hard deleted from the database, because I guess a certain moderator hated the question so vehemently.
    – Anon
    Aug 12, 2014 at 21:14
  • 1

9 Answers 9

37

Meme: "pulling a terdon"

Originator: terdon ♦

Examples:

"let's not pull a terdon"

"Let's not pull a Terdon here."

"I promise to never pull a Terdon :p"

Background: Our dear friend (and moderator) terdon inadvertently assisted a poor user in deleting his home directory. Terdon was quick to own up to his mistake and as a friendly gesture, we refer to an "oops" moment as "pulling a terdon".

9
  • 2
    Just read the conversation. That's why you need to be careful instructing users via written chat.
    – Anwar
    Oct 6, 2016 at 5:46
  • 17
    Oh, you dirty little. . . :P
    – terdon
    Oct 6, 2016 at 8:45
  • 9
    By the way, in my defense, the user in question had asked "How can Linux be cruel". I answered, never expecting they'd actually run the malicious command I had suggested :(
    – terdon
    Oct 6, 2016 at 13:10
  • 6
    Oh my lord I can't stop laughing XD @terdon
    – David
    Oct 6, 2016 at 13:48
  • 5
    @terdon, why is the command itself not shown in that chat history?
    – Wildcard
    Nov 1, 2016 at 8:01
  • 11
    @Wildcard because I'd rather not pull any more terdons than absolutely necessary. I deleted it as soon as the unfortunate (and rather trusting) user ran it. If you really want to know, I had suggested adding a command that deletes everything in ~/ to ~/.bashrc. I'm sure you can figure it out :)
    – terdon
    Nov 1, 2016 at 8:57
  • 2
    I laughed so hard reading that :D Feb 18, 2017 at 0:51
  • 3
    Using >> to append to .bashrc instead of overwriting it was a nice touch.
    – Dennis
    Mar 17, 2017 at 1:16
  • I see the part in the chat where Terdon says "DO NOT DO THAT!" but it's not clear where exactly it starts. Perhaps the comment by Terdon from November 2016 should be included in the answer? Jul 14, 2021 at 17:59
20

Meme: Zanna is awesome!

Originator: Serg, Rinzwind, ...

Examples:

Serg: " @Zanna without any jokes, you're awesome. " (2016-09-27)

Rinzwind: "ZANNA YOU ARE AWESOME" (2016-09-27 ★8)

Zacharee1: "oh @Zanna, did you know you're awesome?" (2016-09-28 ★4)

Kaz Wolfe: "Also, @Zanna is awesome." (2016-09-28 ★5)

Zacharee1: "@jokerdino time for a website with just "Zanna is awesome" as content" (2016-09-29)

...

Background: Well, Zanna is awesome. That's it. We can't state that often enough. And we can't refrain from starring it.

2
16

Meme: bacon

Originator: George Edison

Examples:

"I'd rather die full of bacon than not full of bacon."

"BACON WRAPPED IN BACON."

"They may take our GitHub. They may take our projects. They may even take our dignity. But they will never take our bacon!"

"Is Jono Bacon the closest thing Ubuntu will ever have as bacon?"

Background: yonder over on the Ask Ubuntu General Room, we love our bacon. It is delicious. It is awesome. It is the pinnacle of perfect foods. It also tends to attract a lot of stars.

2
  • 4
    I miss jono bacon... ;__;
    – Anon
    Oct 6, 2016 at 3:23
  • “ It is the pinnacle of perfect foods.” 🧇 would beg to differ. Jun 2, 2021 at 18:27
12

Meme: The Starboard

Originator: Ask Ubuntu Chat

Examples:

"Lol"
"Yeah, people here will star any old thing. Here, just watch."
"test"
"Star this, for no reason at all."
"."

(yes, that last one is a single dot)

Background: The absolute easiest place to get the Outspoken badge is right here in Ask Ubuntu General, because literally anything will get starred just because it exists. This has led to many debates about removing the star board, because it serves no more purpose than the generic transcript.

3
  • 6
    ★ 5 Ma precious stars! Noooooo! Oct 6, 2016 at 4:31
  • 3
    A synonym for this could be the 'starwall' too, I've seen it called both.
    – Thomas Ward Mod
    Oct 6, 2016 at 17:36
  • 6
    Is it called the starboard because it appears on the right side of the chat page? :) Jan 25, 2017 at 15:25
11

Meme: Chaos / Darkness (and other joinings of these two)

Originator: Thomas Ward

Background: In recent days, one of our moderators, Thomas Ward took some D&D tests to determine his alignment, and ended up Chaotic Neutral/Evil. He's since taken a liking to the terms "Chaos" and "Darkness" in regular greetings, or when doing some moderator-ly actions. A regular greeting, in place of "Hello" or "Good day" from Thomas, is "Good Chaos to thee" or "Good Darkness to thee" or similar, and is mostly the origin of this meme. Due to the origin of this being one of our Moderators, Thomas is sometimes called "The Dark One" or "The Chaotic One" solely because of the adoption of these terms in regular messages from him.

Examples of Originator Invocations:

Examples of Community invocations:


And just because I should probably show these, some typical community responses to the "Good Chaos to thee" greetings:

4
  • 2
    Since nobody ELSE would put this up there and it's been said that it's a wonder I'm not up here on the meme list for this, I thought I'd create this since nobody else will.
    – Thomas Ward Mod
    Feb 17, 2017 at 16:11
  • 2
    Eh, I'd just lock the whole post. Is there even a point to this? Most, if not all, of these are only seen in chat. How many of these are actually seen on the site itself, where a passing user might see them and wonder, "what is this meme"?
    – muru
    Feb 18, 2017 at 5:43
  • @muru I'm sure some of them are used on the main site too (I've seen it a few times) but there's no good way to search comments and something like this isn't likely to be in an answer (nor should it).
    – Seth
    Feb 19, 2017 at 16:45
  • @Seth why not in answers? For example, one meme I have seen a few times in answers of Code Golf is the "Crossed out 44 is still regular 44" one. When I saw that a couple of times, I went looking for their meta's meme post. That's an instance of actual usefulness of a meme list, which I don't think this post ever had or will have.
    – muru
    Feb 20, 2017 at 2:33
11

Meme: Getting Eliah'd

Originator: FEichinger (??)

Background: Eliah Kagan is known (and loved) for posting long and well researched answers on both main and meta. His answers are so long and well researched that you don't bother disagreeing with Eliah, you just admit he has you beat. If you are writing an answer when Eliah posts one, there's no point. He will have covered everything you were going to say. (all of this in the best way possible)

Examples:

Variants:

10

Meme: nubcake

Originator: edwinksl

Examples:

"rare to see seth be such a nubcake" -- Originator

"at least im not a nubcake like @Seth"

"If you're alive, you're a nubcake. No exceptions."

"Yep, and I can't. I'm probably gonna be like "lol gtfo nubcake, ban hammer in yo face"

Variant Forms:

"Oops. I've been nubcaked."

"Speaking of which. What manner of nubcakery is this?"

Background: Our Glorious Leader Moderator Seth made a mistake, prompting edwinksl to call him a nubcake. The meme then spread to be a Seth-specific meme, but then jumped to other people in time, and is now a badge of honor in the Ask Ubuntu General Room.

9

Meme: systemd is evil

Originator: htorque

Background: systemd is not generally well-liked by everyone in the room. In fact, due to its invasive nature, systemd is generally well-hated. It is used as the brunt of jokes and blamed for all things wrong in Ubuntu.

Examples:

1
  • 2
    Is it a meme if it's true tho?
    – Seth
    Jul 14, 2018 at 17:44

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .