Failed Topics That You Felt Were Worth Discussion.

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RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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Hello again, my fellow Escapists! As some of you may know, I keep to a quota of failed topics. Gotta have at least a few every month or I figure there is something terribly wrong with the world and we're all about to die. Now, by "failed" topics I mean topics that only like, 4 people responded to, and 2 of those 4 responses were you responding to two other people in an attempt to keep the topic alive. But the greatest is, of course, the infamous no-responses-at-all topic. Not a single person on the entire forum thought that topic was worth discussing. At all. Period.

But we all know it's going to be dead and buried in short order, just vanishing into the twisting nether of deeper forum pages, never to be heard from again...until someone with a new account doesn't read the "please don't necro topics" rule and digs it out from the grave.

Well, consider this topic as being a tombstone for those long-lost Topics That Never Were. A grave marker, lest we forget them entirely. Surely the souls of those poor topics deserve at least this dignity, do they not?

Please, post the titles of the topics that have sadly withered and died before your very eyes when you really thought they were worth discussing. Describe the topic, and why you thought it would be a good/fun discussion.

Here, I lay to rest the topic:
"Memories You're "Haunted" By"
In which I asked my fellow Escapists if they had ever been "haunted" by a bad/embarrassing memory. Haunted in the sense that it just pops up every now and then and makes you facepalm at how you acted or what you said or what you did during that situation. Normally brought on by just the slightest thing that reminded you of that particular situation. I thought it'd be interesting because it happens to me every now and then and I figured that meant it likely had to happen to other people as well. So I figured I'd ask what those embarrassing memories are just for a spot of wrong.

Well, I figured wrong.

Not a single person responded, and only 22 people even bothered to give it a look. Evidently everyone on The Escapist lives a life without any kind of regret.

P.S. Yes, I do fully expect this topic to be banished to the wastes of obscurity soon. :p
 

tippy2k2

Beloved Tyrant
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I've had a couple of sports threads die immediately due to...well...me thinking that The Escapist was a good place to put a sports thread :p

I was slightly disappointed that Taco's Alien: CM [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.835034-Aliens-Colonial-Marines-A-Great-Game-or-the-GREATEST-Game#20439365] thread fell flat (namely because of my big "Intervention Joke"...what? That took me a while to make damn it >_<

My slightly more serious choice is the thread about sequels that were not bad but were considered bad because their predecessor was so good:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.834401-Sequels-that-are-good-but-not-quite-great#20414290

Partially because I think my answer was bound to twist a number of panties in a bunch (for some reason, Dragon Age 2 just pisses some people off). I stand by my statement that the thread would have taken off (or at least not died a quick and painful death) if the thread Title was better.

Lastly, while it didn't do bad, I thought for sure that with the large population of movie lovers on this thread that my "super theater" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.835240-Poll-Would-you-pay-for-a-super-movie-theater-experience] thread would have picked up past the first page. It limped it's way to almost the second page after falling off the Off-Topic front page a few times.
 

IceForce

Is this memes?
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Dec 11, 2012
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RJ 17 said:
But the greatest is, of course, the infamous no-responses-at-all topic. Not a single person on the entire forum thought that topic was worth discussing. At all. Period.
I'm still kinda new to this forum, and no one has explained to me what to do if a thread I make gets no replies.

The mods don't like people bumping their own threads. So what does one do if one makes a thread and it gets no replies at all?
 

Marter

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IceForce said:
The mods don't like people bumping their own threads. So what does one do if one makes a thread and it gets no replies at all?
Weep, wonder what you did wrong, continue weeping, eat a tub of ice cream, weep because you just ate more calories than you need in a two-day period, and then beg one of your friends to post and give your thread a second chance.

And then weep because you've sunk so low.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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IceForce said:
RJ 17 said:
But the greatest is, of course, the infamous no-responses-at-all topic. Not a single person on the entire forum thought that topic was worth discussing. At all. Period.
I'm still kinda new to this forum, and no one has explained to me what to do if a thread I make gets no replies.

The mods don't like people bumping their own threads. So what does one do if one makes a thread and it gets no replies at all?
Well it looks like one of our friendly mods just gave you the answer you seek. Sadly, that's exactly what you do: sigh dejectedly because apparently no one wants to talk about the thing you're wanting to talk about. That's the entire point of this topic, itself: giving final mention to the Topics That Never Were. The reason they never were is because no one (or very few people) was interested in them. Bumping the topic in any way won't change that fact, unfortunately.
 

Kae

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I don't think I've ever made a single topic that deserved better than it got, I've made very few of them and most were about stuff I was going through or stuff that was tangentially related to stuff I was going through and I was merely looking for answers, I don't think I've ever made a genuine attempt to start discussion just looked for answers, so really no thread I've made is probably worthy of discussion, but then again I haven't even tried to make one in a very long time.

Also I think I'm one of the people that read your thread about Haunting memories, I remember not replying because you seemed to be looking for embarrassing stuff and well those are not the kind of memories that haunt me or a lot of other people, and really if a memory haunts you there's a big chance you might consider it too personal, so it's probably more that there weren't any people willing to talk about those at the time you made that.
 

Elfgore

Your friendly local nihilist
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I've noticed that for this site it seems the really weird threads or the threads that have the most baiting titles tend to get the most replies.

I clicked the third page and one that I saw was "Things you oddly hate" Now that sounds fun, something you have an irrational fear of. I'm going to take a guess and say that everybody has to have one. Yet we have a thread about C-Strings, whatever the hell those are, getting a decent amount of replies.

But there are many threads that should have gotten more discussion. Your one about Youtube Adventures should have been better.
 
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I posted a thread asking what older movies people thought were good enough that they would pay full price to see them back up on the big screen in a theater again.

7 replies

I was . . . . shamed.
 

FalloutJack

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Nov 20, 2008
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I tend to be a bit fatalistic about my escapist topics.

"Whatever happens...happens." - Spike Spiegel, Cowboy Bebop
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Elfgore said:
But there are many threads that should have gotten more discussion. Your one about Youtube Adventures should have been better.
Yeah, I was really hoping that'd turn out to be a fun topic. I wasn't expecting an epic 10-page topic or something, but I was hoping to make it to at least 3 pages. It did...decent, I think got 20 something replies, but sadly that wasn't enough. I just got to the end of one such journey and looked back over my viewing history and wondered "Pretty funny how I went from an AVGN video to watching mathematicians have fun with numbers." So I figured others might like looking back over their own little journeys for some laughs. Apparently I thought wrong. :p

And this thread itself. Only 10 responses to yet another topic that I thought would be a pretty fun and interesting one since I'm sure we've all made topics that have failed to get off the ground.

Oh well, it's not like I didn't predict this would be another failed topic to begin with, I just hate being right sometimes. :p
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Redlin5 said:
I thought my 50K post had a topic worth talking about. I thought wrong.

Oh well.
Maybe a post about your 50233 post count?

/OP I made a thread in Escapist early days about those video game urban legends, like Polybius an such. I got maybe 2 replies and one of them was off-topic :p
 

JoJo

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I remember last year making a thread about recommendations for out-of-copyright books and free fan-fiction novels, niche I know but I still only got about eight or nine replies and may not have got any at-all if the first reply hadn't bumped it from languishing around the second page.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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TopazFusion said:
Marter said:
IceForce said:
The mods don't like people bumping their own threads. So what does one do if one makes a thread and it gets no replies at all?
Weep, wonder what you did wrong, continue weeping, eat a tub of ice cream, weep because you just ate more calories than you need in a two-day period, and then beg one of your friends to post and give your thread a second chance.

And then weep because you've sunk so low.
Meh, I do all of those things even when I make a thread that DOES do well.
Personally I hope that everyone that makes one of the dime-a-dozen race/gender/sexuality-baiting topics does all of those things. I honestly find myself wondering if the authors of those topics honestly were interested in the question at hand or if they were just wanting a topic with a large number of responses.

Here's the simple recipe for getting a topic with hundreds of responses.

Step 1: Create a topic with a baiting title, something like "Would You Enter An Interracial Relationship With A Transgendered Politically Conservative Midget Who Was (Currently) The Same Sex As You?"
Step 2: Use your OP to say that you personally wouldn't and break down why each part of the hypothetical mate wouldn't work out with you except for the Politically Conservative bit.
Step 3: Watch as your in-box is filled with dozens of quotes of your OP, all from pissed off readers that have essentially the same thing to say.
Step 4: Sip your favorite champagne while kicking back with the comforting knowledge that your topic just reached page 8 in responses.
 

Atmos Duality

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Mar 3, 2010
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FalloutJack said:
I tend to be a bit fatalistic about my escapist topics.

"Whatever happens...happens." - Spike Spiegel, Cowboy Bebop
^Aye. That's exactly how I deal, and why I don't make many threads.
Just had one fail yesterday, though quite honestly, Starbound isn't really the sort of game I'd expect to make it big here.

It's not sensationalist, controversial or meme-based, so it was goin' nowhere.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Atmos Duality said:
It's not sensationalist, controversial or meme-based, so it was goin' nowhere.
And that's really where I come from as well. I prefer to be a bit more light-hearted in the topics that I come up with. That is, I try to come up with topics that are more "fun" to partake in rather than controversial or sensationalist. I used to try and make topics in the Religion and Politics section. But seeing as how I'm one of the exceedingly rare Conservatives on this sight, I got tired of having my inbox flooded with people getting overly excited to tell me just how wrong my beliefs are compared to their own. So I pretty much stopped posting there. I like wandering here into the Off Topic Discussion area every now and then, but I just groan every time I look at the topic list and see it cluttered up by race/gender/sexuality-based topics all with numerous pages worth of responses. I don't mind such discussions, really, but it's just there's always new ones popping up every frickin' day. Gets a little bit stale after a while, if you ask me.

But I'm starting to ramble. The point is that I don't make very many topics because apparently "fun" topics aren't what people want to talk about. That, or maybe I just have a different idea of what a "fun" topic is compared to the majority of other Escapists. :p
 

Mister K

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I personally feel bad only about one of my attempts: "Which Personas would you like to see?". I thought it was going to be a discussion about mythological beings, religious deities and historical figures that could be shown in newer SMT:persona games. Instead, I got a single reply, a comment to my original post.

Oh well, I had other great ones.
 

PsychicTaco115

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Basically, all the satire threads I do XD

Because people take them too seriously and ruin all the fun; All I want to do is make people laugh at the crazy shenanigans I say, is that too much to ask? >.>
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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PsychicTaco115 said:
Because people take them too seriously and ruin all the fun; All I want to do is make people laugh at the crazy shenanigans I say, is that too much to ask? >.>
Apparently it is, my friend, apparently it is. I too have noticed a severe case of Seriousitis sweeping across these forums like a plague! You can't use sarcasm without someone taking it completely literally, you can't make a witty joke playing off of someone else's post without 9 people flipping out about because they took it seriously.

For instance, there's a Lord of the Rings thread floating around, and all I did was mention the whole "Why didn't they just take the Eagles to Mordor?" question, going on to say that my favorite answer to that question is "Because the fun of the story lies in the adventure and journey that the heroes go through, not the end result of that journey." Meaning I'm agreeing with those that think they shouldn't have taken the Eagles.

Still, I've so far had four separate people all saying "NUH-UHHHHHH! If they took the Eagles they'd be noticed and the mission would be doomed to failure!!!!"