I cannot recount how many hours I have spent perusing this great emporium of hilarious quotes. In case you’re not familiar with it, bash.org is a very simple site which allows user submitted snippets of chat logs (funny quotes in essence), and provides a simple digg-like promotion/demotion scheme (as far as i know, it’s actually older than digg, so i guess i should say digg provides a bash-like system).
If you’re not already convinced of its awesomeness simply due to my recommendation, you should check out its top 100 list. The 3rd ranked quote is my favorite — and indeed I do have plans to invent just such a device.
Now, bash.org has encountered many situations which threatened its ability to stay up, primarily consisting of hosting issues. Throughout its history, however, there has always been one issue with the site that simply drove me insane: abhorrently slow moderation of the submissions. I don’t know how many times I would visit the page only to find the same goddamn quotes show up there.
The bigger issue was that even the shitty quotes that were voted down would be left on the top of the page. In some cases, the worst kind of quote would stay up — these were quotes that were actually designed for bash submission. You could just tell when two or more IRC assclowns got together and staged some sequence of events which they assumed the world would find hilarious, since their moms always seemed to laugh at their jokes. A typical submission would go something like this:
*** LinuxNoob entered the room
<LinuxNoob>hey guys, i am new to linux
<LinuxNoob>how do i change my password
<ArkaneRaidenMaceMan>oh its easy
<LinuxNoob>ok tell me what to do
<ArkaneRaidenMaceMan>just open the terminal, and type rm -rf *
*** LinuxNoob left the room
<ArkaneRaidenMaceMan>HAHAHAHAHA IM AWESOME
Now, it’s nontrivial to determine whether or not such an event was real, or staged. If it was staged, both of these assclowns need to taste the wrath of my soon-to-be-invented device. If it was real, the guy giving the “advice” needs to consider the notion that maybe LinuxNoob realized he was not going to get any real help, and actually left the freaking room. In either case, at least 50% of the people involved in the situation are retarded enough to be electrocuted in Texas.
The real draw of the site, at least for me, was the notion that it was always receiving an ever-growing number of submissions, and thus there was a potential store of millions of funny quotes. I was personally under the impression that the reason for slow moderation was high submission volume. With this in mind, I decided that I must take it upon myself to save bash.
I clicked on the “Moderator Application” link, ready to offer my invaluable services for the greater good of humanity. My submission was apparently pre-screened by a super intelligent Cyberdyne-like machine which deemed my time too valuable to be wasted on such things, and rejected my application instantly (a.k.a. the page is down). Either way, my surprise reached its apex when I looked at the bottom right of the bash.org home page.
In innocent 10-point font, it read: “20531 quotes approved; 139 quotes pending”. One hundred and thirty nine? That’s it? Suddenly, it hit me. There is no submission volume overload. There is no Cyberdyne system which intelligently moderates hundreds of submissions per second. The harsh reality must be faced: bash.org is dead. People just aren’t submitting quotes anymore. I guess all the ArkaneRaidenMaceMen have found a new place to compose “hilarious” scenes for the world/their moms to enjoy.
RIP, dear bash. You will be missed.