Fark NotNewsletter: Who got butthurt over what a Fark headline said about him, plus learn about how to get a greenlight from Drew

This is a multi-part message in MIME format... ------------=_1557852593-87658-59051 Content-Type: text/html Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable [3D"The](3D")= > [3D"Facebook"](3D") [=3D"Twitter"](3D") [3D"Totalfark"](3D") Having trouble reading thi= s email? View it online [here](3D". Comments thread: [ 5794](3D" Unsubscribe links are at the bottom of this message. =20 =20 Hey kid, want to get more greenlights? Scroll = down to read about Drew's selection criteria for Fark headlines. And in cas= e you missed it, [Fa= rk managed to earn the squirrelly wrath of Ben Shapiro](3D"=) last week becaus= e of [= this thread](3D"=), and a good time was had by all. XOXO, DisseminationMonkey = Comment Votes Some of the top-voted smartest and funni= est comments from the past week Funny: gar1013 would [be more cautious in Ama= nda Knox's position](3D"https://=) Man On A Mission shared a very bad line to use on dates Starkaryen noticed that [last week's "Game of Thrones" episode stood out in stark contrast to the p= revious week's](3D" lack of warmth shared the proper re= ply for [when a cop requests permission= to search your phone](3D"=) jbc had a solution for = [when your mom plans a surprise bris for you= r child](3D") feckingmorons had a feeling about [charges against a man whose bumper sticker dec= lared his tendency to "eat" booty](3D") Ow! That was my feelings! = was [fed up with a popular TV= show](3D"https://w=) Pazuzu Smith-Jones was familiar with [a dating faux pas](3D") joeparker543= 3 [couldn't make it through a= n entire article](3D"=) thatguyoverthere70 made [a note about a fellow Farker](3D") Sma= rt: Miss5280 had a suggestion for [helping kids do well in school](3D") Benevol= ent Misanthrope thought of some [reasons people might consent to police searches](3D" armyofbe= es figured that [it's nobody= 's business what a man is doing with his doll in private](=3D" ecm= oRandomNumbers suggested a way of [changing the way school administrators approach things](3D" Pocket Ninja found something [unrealistic in a television show that features dragons, an antagonist wh= o can raise this dead, and a child with psychic powers](3D" (spoilers) The Third Man noted another time [police had been warned about someone who was involved in a school sh= ooting](3D" lilbjorn [fl= ipped a Fark headline around to explain behavior](3D" grokca = rong> looked on the bright side when [cheerleaders at a kids' basketball game were criticized for being overly r= isque](3D" MattytheMouse marveled at [the existence of gamergaters](3D") aukie = ng> shared a story about an interactio= n with Apache County, AZ law enforcement CSB Sunday Morning:= [What's your phobia, or, if y= ou don't have one, your biggest "NOPE"?](3D"https://w=) Smart: Persnick= ety Paladin learned to manage [a fear that arose from a horrible experience](3D" Funny: The Pope of Manwich Village [co= nfronted a powerful enemy](3D" CSB [Cool Story, Bro] Sunday Morning i= s a thread where Farkers share stories based on a weekly topic. If you have= a topic idea for a CSB Sunday Morning thread, please [submit it](3D" on= Saturday afternoon/evening (if you're posting an intro, you'll want to wri= te it out first so you can copy and paste it in for the Boobies), or email&= nbsp;[dugitman](3D"). To= talFark Discussion: Note: This section can only be accessed by [TotalFarkers](3D") Funny: sarahthustra = ng>was happy for [a Farker who criticiz= ed the spouse's dishwasher loading](3D"https:=) Funny: unremarka= ble asterisk helped a Farker who needed [a "get well soon" card for a golden retriever](3D") Smart:= Drew gave [the = short version of how to get your submission greenlit](3D" Funny:= Barry McCockner congratulated someone who claimed to hav= e just [married someone after meeting i= n TotalFark Discussion](3D"=) Funny: JerseyTim ha= d an idea for [how "Game of Thrones" sh= ould end](3D"https://w=) Politics Funny: Subtonic = had an idea of [how Drew](3D"https://=)= g> might have felt about Ben Shapiro complaining about us on Twitter stir22 found interesting parallels in [the election of Donald Trump and another controversial r= ace](3D") JerseyTim figured out [what kind of photos Jerry Falwell Jr. needed Michael Cohen to = handle](3D") Non Sequitur Man had [a message for Ben Shapiro](3D") FortyHams = > saw that [Ben Shapiro just couldn't s= top](3D".=) Politics Smart: Subtonic had a= n idea of [how Drew mi= ght have felt about Ben Shapiro complaining about us on Twitter](3D"=) Marcus Aurelius disagreed with [Jerry Falwell Jr.'s characterization of Mueller's investigation](3D" responded to [Trump's complaint about attempts to have Mueller testify before the= House Judiciary Committee](3D" Weaver95 had a theory on= what has contributed to [a decline in disciplin= e in the Marine Corps](=3D" Jack Sabbath believed that&n= bsp;[some information about Trump points to = him being susceptible to foreign influence](3D") Contest Votes Some of the top-voted co= ntest entries from last week, listed from highest number of votes down Photoshops: verchad showed us that [Goose was more of a swan](3D") Yamme= ring_Splat_Vector didn't have any [money to lend to Britney and Paris](3D" Circusdog320 = ong> [made Darth Maul even meaner](3D") Don_cos requested [no da= rk sarcasm in the bathroom](3D" Circusdog320 put a mustache in a strange place (probably = awkward to view at work) durbnpoisn [gave Grumpy Cat a new look](3D") Herb Utsmelz = rong> found out [why money keeps disapp= earing](3D"https:/=) RedZoneTuba downgraded [Pee-Wee's bicycle](3D") Alligator showe= d us [the power of beer](3D"=) = Daddy's Big Pink Man-Squirrel gave us [the sequel we've all been waiting for](3D" Farktograp= hy: Farktography Contest No. 731: "[Happy Farktography Anniversary 14](3D")" ended in a = tie with bobug's [gorgeous blue morpho butterfly](3D" and Deveyn's = ;[little orange fish](3D") Farktography= is Fark's weekly photography contest. If you would like to suggest a Farkt= ography theme, you can contact [Elsinore](3D" or sto= p by the [Farktography Forum](3D"=). Fark Headline Tips (brought to you by Drew) Recently, SomeDude210 posted a thread ask= ing if anyone had any tips or best practices for Fark tagline construction.= I thought that was a great idea because even though I've got my pers= onal preferences, that's only half of the process. Some submitters ha= ve discovered over the years that I've got soft spots for certain types of = tagline construction, and surprisingly not the ones you'd think necessarily= . For example, even though it shows up a lot on Fark, I don't persona= lly prefer the "Thing happens, do you A) action, B) action 2, or C) What re= ally happened in the article" structured taglines. They'll do in a pinch if= nothing else comes along, however. One of the difficulties we have o= n the admin side is that once an article appears in the general news cycle,= we've only got an hour or two before it's everywhere on social media. &nbs= p;Sometimes we can't wait for the best tagline to be submitted - which inci= dentally seems to alwayshappen right when I've given up waiting. I don't personally know all of my selection criteria, and to give an = example of what I mean by soft spots, our community manager Unfreak= able years ago brought to my attention that he'd noticed that I'd = greenlight damn near any tagline along the lines of "Band releases new albu= m, but they suck." Until he'd pointed it out, I hadn't noticed.  = ;Going forward, I started doing that less often. I'm sure they still = get by me once in a while. I've got blind spots is what I'm saying. So let's start with some background on how things work on the Admin s= ide. There are several admins, but at any given moment, only one of = us is designated as the person who's on queue duty. From about 7 a.m.= ish 'til about 5 p.m.ish on weekdays, that person is me. Over the pas= t 20 years or so, it's usually always been me. Occasionally I've step= ped away for a week or two, but I've discovered that when I step away, I su= ddenly have no idea what's going on in the world. Running the Fark qu= eue is the only time I ever consume news, and when I do run the queue, I en= d up reading everything published in a given day. To the point where = my friends at my local bar have totally given up asking me if I saw the one= about etc. because I can usually finish their sentences. Usually. In the evenings I start drinking. and that's not a good time to b= e online for me or anyone else, so I hand it off to one of our West Coast a= dmins, who handles it into the evening Pacific Coast time until our Europe-= based admin wakes up in the morning in his home time zone. His mornin= g is the overnight shift for East Coast time, he handles things until I wak= e up at 7 a.m. and then it's handed back to me again. Another admin h= andles weekends and holidays. And there are a few other admins who us= ed to be more frequent but are still around to handle things in a pinch, ma= ke edits, and so on. They also do most of the Live thread scheduling Newsflashes are handled by me if I'm awake. I can run the enti= re article queue off my phone wherever I happen to be, so if news breaks la= te at night and I'm still sober enough to read, one of the mods will text m= e when we have a newsflash event. If I'm at a bar, I quickly take bet= s from my friends to see if anyone can guess what it's about, then I open u= p the queue and look for the best tagline. Newsflashes need to get ou= t quickly, so I can only wait about 10-15 minutes before posting someth= ing, and some breaking news events are just not funny, so when that ha= ppens, I'll just go with whichever tagline on TotalFark has the most commen= ts currently. I strongly prefer a good riff for a tagline, although w= ith newsflashes, this can spiral out of control as events continue. F= or example, when the Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire, I went with "[France elects new Pope](3D")," which was pretty fu= nny initially, until it became apparent that the situation was much more se= rious than we first thought. So it goes. It's not the first tag= line that got messed up by the severity of events and it won't be the last = either, I bet. My philosophy is a Fark tagline's implicit duty is to= tell you why you should click on a link. Most of the time, it's tell= ing you to click because the article is funny. Sometimes, however, th= e tagline points out something that the original headline writer missed tha= t is way more important than the article writer realized. Example: O= ne of my all-time favorites was a multi-page article from I think an Iowa n= ews outlet about a man who had a premonition that he was about to die, so h= e recorded a series of videos saying goodbye to his friends and loved ones = - and then he actually died. For the first few pages, the article was= fairly heartwarming. He said goodbye to his wife and his kids and hi= s friends, and so on. On page six or seven, however, the article= mentioned that he had recorded a special video for his atheist friends, on= e where he told them he loved them very much but that they were all going t= o burn in hell for eternity - complete with explicit detail after explicit = detail. We linked to that part of the article instead of page one, be= cause that was the best part, after all. The other admins may chime = in here with their preferences - I don't tell them what to choose, and= their selection process works as well as mine, it's just different. Things I look for in a Fark tagline: If a tagline makes me laugh ou= t loud or spit coffee all over my keyboard, it gets the greenlight. I= will even occasionally back out an earlier tagline greenlight if something= funnier comes in later. This incidentally is why we have the "Repeat= " tag - sometimes the best tagline comes very late, as in hours or day= s later. Also, some events seem to stay in the news cycle for multipl= e days for whatever reason as people discover them elsewhere, so we'll use = the Repeat tag for those, too. This week, the first story that comes = to mind that was submitted across multiple days was [Florida woman pulling an alligator out of her= yoga pants](3D"). These happen several times a week I do keep a= n eye on how many +1 votes TotalFarkers give taglines. It's not my ma= in criteria, but I'll take an extra hard look at those. These especia= lly help my selection during newsflashes, so if you've ever wondered if any= one looks at those, I do and they're especially helpful when I'm in a hurry= to get a link out the door. Speaking of +1 votes - I strongly consid= er these when picking headlines of the week/month etc., because it's usuall= y a good indicator of quality when a link gets votes aftera link g= oes green. My absolute favorite tagline structure of all time is&nbs= p;one that initially seems super offensive, but on further examination= is not, but boy is it right on the line. You'll know them when you s= ee them. When I am hungover, I seem to prefer weirder taglines that = make no sense. No idea why, or how to even explain it. It's a t= hing though. Things I don't like: Clickbait structure. = Many news outlets submit their own links, which is fine by me, and some of = them are quite good at coming up with a Fark tagline. However, many a= re not. My advice to news outlets is to submit their links with the h= eadline they couldn't use. As in, a tagline that crossed the line wit= h their own internal standards, because odds are it doesn't cross ours. &nb= sp;We have one news outlet in particular that submits a couple links a day,= and all their taglines are the actual headline followed by "What do you th= ink of that??" Nope. Puns. Personal preference, I= 'm just not a fan. I will greenlight them, but I prefer not to.  = ;Once in a blue moon, a pun is funny. Puns are not, by the way, just = words that rhyme with each other - I highly dislike rhymes that think they = are puns. Not saying I never greenlight them, but I'll take almost an= ything else over them. Except for... Only as a last resort wil= l I greenlight an article that has the same tagline as its headline. = Sometimes articles only get submitted once, and I'll try to come up with so= mething better if I can. I will almost always pass over these if I ca= n. We have had on occasion one or two tagline writers that vote for = their own link on TotalFark and vote against all the others. This isn= 't an instant disqualification but I take a dim view towards it. Don'= t be that guy Don't submit politics links to the [Main page](3D" tab. = The reason why is I read that one first, and while in the past I've retabbe= d those submissions to [Politics](3D"https=), a few astute subbies have figured o= ut that I read Main page links first when I do a queue run. As a res= ult, I got into a bad habit of greening the retabbed links before reading t= he politics submissions. I'm not doing that anymore, and in fact I've= often started ignoring politics submissions posted to the Main tab altoget= her Actual Admin guidelines we have: Don't link to articles t= hat aren't funny. Boring is OK, sad is not. It's not a 100% dea= l killer, but I'd rather not greenlight these if I can avoid it. &nb= sp; Try not to make fun of victims. This is incidentally why a= ll the teachers having sex with students articles disappeared. I'm no= t asking everyone to agree with me on this, I'm just explaining what happen= ed and why. Making fun of the person who committed the crime is a-OK,= however. Others appear in the [FArQ](3D" somewhere, I forget = [where exactly](3D"). My weak spots: I'm the worst admin o= f all of us at posting repeat articles. Part of my problem is I don't= have a perfect memory for what has been greenlit. This gets particul= arly bad when I've passed over a few bland taglines on the original article= already, and soon I can't remember if I posted it or not. Rather tha= n miss a story, I'll risk running a repeat. Luckily the other admins = come in behind and delete repeats. We also get email notifications when oth= er Farkers flag repeats and this helps immensely. I'm so terrible at = remembering repeats that I have sometimes greened the same story three = ;or even four different times. I have noticed recently I= 'm a sucker for taglines that pretend to misunderstand what the article is = about due to bad sentence structure in the original headline. Like th= e famous Panda eats shoots and leaves headline. I still like these an= d will probably continue greening them more often than I otherwise should. Duke sucks. Other things to know: I've told all the ad= mins that they're welcome to alter or delete any tagline I greenlight witho= ut telling me first. I'm totally fine with them doing whatever.  = ;There will always be more news articles in the day. Up until= recently, I personally didn't like taglines that didn't give you = some idea of what was going on in the article. However, with the new = mobile format that displays a full article summary, not only is this no lon= ger a problem, but there's something about the combination of vague headlin= e followed by article summary and photo that is extra hilarious to me. &nbs= p;This format has gone from being less preferred to more preferred. A= nd at least one submitter has figured this out - if you take a look at the = [G= eek tab](3D" you'll see much of his work there. I would very = much like more [D'awww](3D"=) submissions. If you're looking to pad your = greenlight count, that's the easiest way to do it. D'awww taglines a= re hard to make funny in general, and damn near anything cute qualifies for= a greenlight in my book. Sad stuff will never make the cut into the = D'awww tab, by the way. Same goes with [Discussion](3D" submissio= ns - I will greenlight damn near any discussion link. The notable exc= eption being political links submitted to the discussion tab - I'm trying t= o keep politics on the Politics tab. Sometimes politics is newsworthy= , though. Can't be helped. I have violated every one of these bullet= points at one time or another, often intentionally. I am inconsisten= t, I read too fast, and my memory sucks. So it goes. This isn'= t the full list, but it's a good start. Others may have noticed thing= s that work well that I'm not even aware of. Last but not least, I a= m eternally grateful to each and every one of you who submits links. = Thank you from the bottom of my heart and/or beer glass. If we ever g= et the chance to hang out in real life, I'm getting your beer tabs. --------------------------------------------------------------- ([Fark.com](3D"") sent this newsletter emai= l to: {EMAIL}) To stop these emails, go to the Notifications tab of your [MyFark profile](3D"https:=) to change your subscription preferences. Or, [click here to unsubscribe](3D") from newsletter emails, even if your Fark login isn't '{NAME}'. [Click her= e to unsubscribe from ALL Fark emails](3D"). Fark, Inc. 333 West Vine St Suite 210, Lexington KY 40507 = ------------=_1557852593-87658-59051--