Surly Horns State of Things End 2023

YGIFS · January 31

1 hour ago, Hate said:

So are you suggesting a “I’d pee in his butt” forum for the ladies?

Get with the current lingo, it’s “pee in they butt”. Which is also the name of my forthcoming album.

other than goofing around on here and LinkedIn, I have no social Media accounts or subscriptions or presence. I read a fuckton of established news sources ranging from national review to Reason to mother Jones. And I often forget that I’m surrounded by well educated, well versed people and their opinions. And even still, most of the shit coming out of our heads is fucking insane. And we’re some of the ‘smarter’ ones. I literally grimace in fear at what the common dipshits think and say and digest. Holy fuck. I sit and read William F Buckley with a cup Of tea and realize most of Texas is the intellectual equivalent of a backstage orgy at a Jerry Springer taping.

Brew · February 1

I came for haugy, jt09, thujone, and a few others. I stuck around because there is a ton of insight (especially for a message board) in a few of the forums. However, a few things I see that make me stick around a few specific forums and avoid the broader forum.

1. Rep - it’s stupid, the people that chase people around and neg rep them are stupid, the whole concept is stupid. Instant reaction blunts long-term interaction in some cases.

2. The number of olds that post stupid memes in every thread, repost things from Twitter and other places constantly even if the same thing is 5 posts up, etc seem to be increasing. There are times it becomes painful to scroll through a thread because of the dumb shit that is posted. If I’ve seen the Denzel Washington Training Day video, once I have seen it 5000 times. Is there an option somewhere out there to ignore those type posts?

3. The football board is unreadable a lot of the time. Thread after thread, post after post, of the same stupid over reactionary garbage.

It will be interesting what the audience/interaction looks like with the move to the SEC.

thunderlounge · February 1

1 minute ago, Brew said:

It will be interesting what the audience/interaction looks like with the move to the SEC.

You think the level of visitor intelligence will go up, my sweet summer child?

Brew · February 1

10 minutes ago, thunderlounge said:

You think the level of visitor intelligence will go up, my sweet summer child?

Never said that at all, just that it will be interesting to see what it looks like. Personally, I think you could see some long-term pickups, but they will be mixed in with a massive amount of weekly garbage. Luckily, the football forum is mostly garbage already.

However, there are a number of current posters that have come from other fan bases and stuck around that provide excellent content.

shadow_operative2.0 · February 1

1 hour ago, Brew said:

2. The number of olds that post stupid memes in every thread, repost things from Twitter and other places constantly even if the same thing is 5 posts up, etc seem to be increasing. There are times it becomes painful to scroll through a thread because of the dumb shit that is posted. If I’ve seen the Denzel Washington Training Day video, once I have seen it 5000 times. Is there an option somewhere out there to ignore those type posts?

Sweet jesus, this. People that can’t be bothered to read half a fucking page of posts. And the stupid fucking Cuban gif.

thunderlounge · February 1

bernorange · February 1

It's not easy being meme. /Kermit the Frog

shadow_operative2.0 · February 1

Olds not using the quote box is insanely aggravating also. If imma/bl would give repeat offenders 12 hours off or so, they’d learn real fucking quick.

Bullneck 2.0 · February 1

More annoying is the incel thread monitor who loses his shit and berates posters over the most minor coloring outside the lines.

RDCanecutter · February 1

2 hours ago, Bullneck 2.0 said:

More annoying is the incel thread monitor who loses his shit and berates posters over the most minor coloring outside the lines.

Dude. The preferred term is "Autosexual."

gurt · February 6

Do we really want to have as broad of an appeal as possible? Then we'd just become reddit-lite, which is about the last thing I would want this place to be. I don't want to read what 18-24 year olds think, their opinions suck.

thunderlounge · February 6

45 minutes ago, gurt said:

I don't want to read what 18-24 year olds think, their opinions suck.

MissingInAction · February 6

6 hours ago, gurt said:

Do we really want to have as broad of an appeal as possible? Then we'd just become reddit-lite, which is about the last thing I would want this place to be. I don't want to read what 18-24 year olds think, their opinions suck.

The repetitive incorrect use of "literally" would drive me insane.

Literally.

safe sex · February 6

Do we need to have another discussion about descriptive vs prescriptive linguistics?

RDCanecutter · February 7

20 hours ago, safe sex said:

Do we need to have another discussion about descriptive vs prescriptive linguistics?

Too many French and Latin words. Also, starting questions with "do" seems to be a trait adopted from ancient Welsh/Brythonic. I'll not abide it. "Need we", by Thor!

bolverk · February 7

2 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

Too many French and Latin words. Also, starting questions with "do" seems to be a trait adopted from ancient Welsh/Brythonic. I'll not abide it. "Need we", by Thor!

Est-ce que ta règle s'applique également au français?

ou bien

Ta règle, s'applique-t-elle également au français?

safe sex · February 7

immamac · February 7

On 2/6/2024 at 9:51 AM, gurt said:

Do we really want to have as broad of an appeal as possible? Then we'd just become reddit-lite, which is about the last thing I would want this place to be. I don't want to read what 18-24 year olds think, their opinions suck.

no, we want to have more people come here who fit in. That's why we are stuck so to speak.

bolverk · February 7

56 minutes ago, safe sex said:

I had to look up this reference since I'd never seen it before, because I certainly wasn't watching Nickelodeon in the 1990s.

I guess it's official now:

« Zhuh swee uhn vieeyay uhmm treest oh shuhvuh gree. Manzh pah mohn tacos oh pwassohn aypeessay. Oh! Hohn, hohn, hohn! »

"I'm a sad old man with gray hair. Don't eat my spicy fish tacos. Oh! Ha, ha, ha!"

RDCanecutter · February 7

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Est-ce que ta règle s'applique également au français?

ou bien

Ta règle, s'applique-t-elle également au français?

I'm afraid your French is most excessively full of French words, old man. You do know that Johnnie Froggy will hop to good plain English, if shouted clearly.

UT_OB1 · February 9

@immamac is there some way to change the latest post feature to only include 1 “reply” to a thread? Last, for instance, the only thing on the latest post was a shitfest in the CR of people talking past each other because people were responding so fast back and forth. Obviously that happens from time to time in all boards, but it kind of suppresses the other threads people might be interested in if they saw them updated. I’d also suggest maybe making it the last 10 posts instead of just 5.

Nicole44 · February 11

As a forum @immamacis doing everything you can do to promote surly and draw in people. I’m sorry I can’t participate in an OnlyFans…lol.

I do think a better onboarding/welcome process to lure in guests and keep new members might be cool. I also think it would be cool to have some kind of once a month zoom with members. I’d be down with that. Maybe that type of discussion in addition to this thread etc…would help.
I have some people interested perhaps (they have a certain level of fame and interest sports wise) that would go on the podcast. A lot of people can’t make the tailgate for whatever reason but would be down with a zoom happy hour or something similar. Limit it to an hour or an hour a half a month. Might be fun. Or do different ones for different sections.

I think trying to draw in traffic from outside—start with the spring game. Most people are “what’s in it for me” —this is like a family to me. But promoting things like our business and also travel and food threads is a great move. But especially the football board. We have a lot of lurkers and there will be more with the move to the SEC.

I know fans of other schools come here but it seems like as soon as they talk trash they are voted off surly island. Maybe we shouldn’t be so hasty with that? Some of the fans of other schools are our best contributors. Not everyone starts out posting the best shit. Takes a while to find your niche. Lol.

maybe have a sticky for content at the top of each board (pick best content) for each board and switch them out. Pin the best content to the top? Rotate out different posters. Those are my thoughts as I currently don’t have the cash at present.

Edited February 11 by Nicole44

Hate · February 11

On 2/7/2024 at 3:57 PM, immamac said:

no, we want to have more people come here who fit in. That's why we are stuck so to speak.

Ummm...how many people in the general pop would fit in here? It was probably more true of Shaggy, but still?

Celery Man · February 11

Is barstool pretty much the example of a shag demo sports internet thing thriving? What all do they do?

immamac · February 11

10 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Is barstool pretty much the example of a shag demo sports internet thing thriving? What all do they do?

Not at all there are hardly even parallels between surly and barstool.

https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3503185/is-it-normal-to-never-fart-in-front-of-the-woman-youre-going-to-marry

they are like a frat kid idiot blog without any original content. They just repurpose other stuff people do and then do some troll content and podcasts and use their incredible amount of funding and SEO to be prevalent in feeds. You thought surly was bad with ads before go check out their site its aids.

There’s a certain level of irreverence that we share but that’s about it. We are a community built primarily on high engagement and a rule set that allows for conversations to fully happen.

Celery Man · February 11

I never interact directly with that site or their content really, sounds like I’m not missing much

just trying to shake something loose creatively outside of “have a thujone type strike gold here repeatedly for free”. I wonder if there are any opportunities for… high engagement discussion stuff around NIL that aren’t already being done or being done well elsewhere in the college fb internet. A Texas board would be a natural hub for that given our rightful place at the top of the gold pile.

Edited February 11 by Celery Man

February 11

"Frat kid idiot blog" is freaking perfect description of that bullshit.

Nicole44 · February 11

I’ll offer myself up (since my rep has increased from annoying thirsty poster to serial killer) as a to add or award no points of some kind…like a sticker. I can be thirst trap or thirsty rep. I don’t care. My rep is ever evolving and I can’t control it. Lol. Just click on my face to insult other posters for being thirsty or whatever.

Maybe rotate some posters for rep sticker things. Like I said, it’s just an idea. But I don’t care if my face gets used to mess with others. It probably will just get used on me though…on second thought…you can use this one or the tailgate on (both surly events last year.) sorry my outside of the box thinking is limited lately. Been busy.

RDCanecutter · February 11

Yeah, about that sticker thing, I'll jump in for cartooning. I did illustrations for a 1990s UT French site that some of y'all might have used. The main character is my avatar, an armadillo who thinks he's French. The rest of the characters are still out there doing their thing:

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/gr/characters.html

Obviously you might not want these exact ones. Just showing the style.

G650 · February 12

23 hours ago, Celery Man said:

Is barstool pretty much the example of a shag demo sports internet thing thriving?

Gatorubet · February 13

On 1/31/2024 at 7:35 PM, Brew said:

It will be interesting what the audience/interaction looks like with the move to the SEC.

Gatorubet · February 13

On 2/10/2024 at 9:10 PM, Nicole44 said:

As a forum @immamacis doing everything you can do to promote surly and draw in people. I’m sorry I can’t participate in an OnlyFans…lol.

If you get an Amazon delivery of Sharpies, just throw it away, it was an accident.

immamac · February 13

On 2/11/2024 at 12:55 PM, RDCanecutter said:

Yeah, about that sticker thing, I'll jump in for cartooning. I did illustrations for a 1990s UT French site that some of y'all might have used. The main character is my avatar, an armadillo who thinks he's French. The rest of the characters are still out there doing their thing:

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/gr/characters.html

Obviously you might not want these exact ones. Just showing the style.

If we did a starting 22 each season that would be absolutely money.

Gatorubet · February 14

On 2/11/2024 at 12:55 PM, RDCanecutter said:

Yeah, about that sticker thing, I'll jump in for cartooning. I did illustrations for a 1990s UT French site that some of y'all might have used. The main character is my avatar, an armadillo who thinks he's French. The rest of the characters are still out there doing their thing:

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/gr/characters.html

Obviously you might not want these exact ones. Just showing the style.

Fourmi de feu?

RDCanecutter · February 14

44 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:
Fourmi de feu?

Ouais. She never got many lines. Cutting room floor and all that.

MissingInAction · February 17

We are internet boomers.

Kennythetiger · February 18

On 2/10/2024 at 9:10 PM, Nicole44 said:

Some of the fans of other schools are our best contributors.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Nicole44 · February 18

21 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

We are internet boomers.

It’s weird though because going to high school in the 1990’s and college/law school in the 2000’s now everything from that era is what the 18-25 demographic is into. We can tap into that. Also be a place for students to showcase their art and creativity. They have to see a message board as a cool place to throw out their ideas and shit. Our we could just blackmail a few of the popular ones and make them use surly. Just kidding. But I’m not kidding when I say they are into 80-90’s shit. Early 2000’s. We can be that spot for them.

hornian · February 18

7 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

It’s weird though because going to high school in the 1990’s and college/law school in the 2000’s now everything from that era is what the 18-25 demographic is into. We can tap into that. Also be a place for students to showcase their art and creativity. They have to see a message board as a cool place to throw out their ideas and shit. Our we could just blackmail a few of the popular ones and make them use surly. Just kidding. But I’m not kidding when I say they are into 80-90’s shit. Early 2000’s. We can be that spot for them.

Wait. You’re a lawyer?

Nicole44 · February 18

2 minutes ago, hornian said:

Wait. You’re a lawyer?

I don’t practice but I did graduate and pass the bar. It just wasn’t for me.

Gatorubet · February 18

1 hour ago, Nicole44 said:

I don’t practice but I did graduate and pass the bar. It just wasn’t for me.

…and she’s well-versed in Bass Law

Nicole44 · February 18

21 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

…and she’s well-versed in Bass Law

Well my dad (RIP) always told me:

MissingInAction · February 18

13 hours ago, hornian said:

Wait. You’re a lawyer?

I wasn't until I read shaggy and Surly for the past 20 years.

YGIFS · February 18

Hey, I finished law school too. And the in the immortal words of Shakespeare via Dick the Butcher said, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the Rainey Tourists." or was it, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the Chilean Sea Bass." Dammit, Nicole had something for this..."

Gatorubet · February 18

18 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

Well my dad (RIP) always told me:

I take this to mean he knew you were killing people and throwing them in the lake - but he wanted you to be careful and not get caught because he loved you.

Nicole44 · February 18

13 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

I take this to mean he knew you were killing people and throwing them in the lake - but he wanted you to be careful and not get caught because he loved you.

Celery Man · February 18

I took the lsat and was a regular at several bars.

RDCanecutter · February 19

3 hours ago, Celery Man said:

I took the lsat and was a regular at several bars.

I took the mock-up LSAT and did fine, but when I saw actual lawyers they were all getting drunk, but not fun-drunk, like, way-too-tight-tie-cinched-up drunk, and the young ones were mechanically, seriously drinking, trying not to slip up in front of their drunk elders.

So I said fuck it and went for the $$$ of t-shirt design.

troph · March 1

On 1/31/2024 at 2:26 PM, safe sex said:

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." - Sartre

This applies to bigotries of almost all kinds

On 1/31/2024 at 2:31 PM, Mrs Whiggins said:

This is a perspective that perhaps needs further discussion with respect to the topic. To step away from that for just a second, though, some other thoughts...

Most collegiate sports message boards are +87% male. Among those males, a higher percentage are white, possess at minimum a bachelor's degree, and around 40% earn a higher than average salary of $100K/year.*

Considering that the applied, admitted, enrolled data for the University of Texas (Austin campus only) shows that since at least 2013 (as far back as their dashboard goes--they have more data but the dashboard is quick and easy), Texas has enrolled an average of 52.8% female students. Of those females going back the decade, they're an average of 40% Hispanic identified ethnicity. Whereas, the percentage of males enrolled since 2013 averages to 47.2%. Of those males, ~35% enrolled were Hispanic, 26% White, 18% Asian-American, 11% Black or African-American, 6% Intl, and Other had no figures/were identifiable.

Those numbers matter depending upon what you want your site to be and what your goals are. I enjoy the site and (most) of the posters, but it's not really welcoming to females and that's +50% of your graduates right there. That may not concern you and that's okay too. It's an observation based on the data from the UT campus. Focusing on males, there were 2,364 enrolled (freshmen) for 2023. Over the last decade, that number is 19,133. Presuming everyone graduates that enrolled, from 2013-2023, that is 21,404 females to 19,133 males.

Given some of those numbers and percentages, it might be that Neonmoon's comment is not out of line. What makes the culture of Surly appealing is its infinite capacity for debate, discussion, diatribes, and devil-may-care digs, but boundaries--should they exist? Or not? That may determine engagement among the lurkers you try and attract or repel. Edit: and @safe sex had a beautiful response that came as I was typing.

This is not meant as an attack on the site. I've gotten a lot of joy from hanging around here.

*This was taken from a paper in the Intl. Journal of Sports Communication

Damn we need more posters like these. Smart women are sexy women.

mchookem · March 1

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