If you read many sites/blogs with comments, you've probably been exposed to the 'first' phenomenon. There are commenters on your more popular sites (and by more popular, I mean more popular than this one, anyway) who take great joy in leaving a comment that notes that they are the first to comment. Often, that's all the comment says. And often, the comment is not in fact the first comment. There were no comments when the commenter started writing 'First!' but somehow, in what little time it took to click OK or whatever, someone else with something more substantial to say snuck in there.
Some of us readers find this phenomenon infuriating. Over at the Onion A/V Club site, not only is a not-first first (or 'firstie') mocked, there's a meme going on where anyone who succeeds or fails at firsties is wished a combination of cancer and AIDS. One commenter there started his own parodic blog devoted solely to his travails as a firstie. Point being, unlike everything else that makes me crazy beyond all reasonable proportion, I'm not alone on this one. But I was just wondering, after seeing a firstie on Joe Posnanski's awesome-beyond-all-reasonable-expectations blog, why. Why do I hate firsties so much?
Then I figured it out. Firsties are like climbing a mountain (in my case, a small mountain) and reaching the summit and as you prepare to take in the view, you see some jackass has written 'First!' with white spray paint on a rock. It's not clear what benefit the jerkweed got from doing it, but everyone else who utilizes the site (or mountain) is going to be at least a little bit annoyed by it.
Now I can move on to more pressing issues, like why the people in front of me walk so slowly during rush hour. I mean, it's called 'rush hour,' you know?
Wildfires Of No Consequence
4 days ago
Posts
3 comments:
First!!
But seriously.... firsties are just noise. The internet is full of enough noise already. That is why repeat firsties suck and why they will all die of canceraids, if the chatter on the AV Club has anything to do with it.
You know, sure, this is America, so there was a pretty good chance that first comment was going to be my first comment. But I have so few readers. And by so few, I mean one. I thought I could get away with it. I really feel like I've learned something today.
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