Difference between revisions of "User:Zipzinger"

Revision as of 23:47, June 19, 2008

Introduction

God damn I have absolutely no practice or experience with code or writing wikis, so I hope this turns out alright. I make absolutely mediocre YTMNDs. They are usually not extremely good. They hardly ever go below a three. I vote extremely fairly, as a matter of fact my OCD has led me to vote a more or less even number stars. I always try and make thoughtful comments seeing as I'm generally just the kind of person who thinks things through.

How I Got Hooked

I'm ZipZinger, I joined in July 07 after lurking for about a year. A friend of mine showed me a few gman sites and although I wasn't a Tiny Tim fan and didn't play Half Life I couldn't stop myself from laughing. I remembered the URL and checked the site from time to time over the next year or so.

When summer started up last year I got a job where I could sit at a computer for long hours unsupervised. Jackpot. I started visiting YTMND in abundance. I was sucked into the abyss of fads and users and brought them up in my day to day conversations. Even things that don't make me laugh on the site make me laugh in real life if my best friend tehjugulator or I mention them in day to day conversation.

About My Sites

I'm technologically savvy in the sense that I can navigate interfaces and gather information efficiently even if a system is incoherently bad. Unfortunately, I get technologically retarded when it comes to things like downloading photoshop off a torrent, doing totally sweet remixes in audacity, or editing a wiki (I'm honestly only able to write this by looking at Darthwang's wiki entry and copying his code while I put in my content). Therefore, when I make sites my software limits my capabilities severly. Oftentimes I have a really good idea in my head but all I end up with is a .gif I didn't make or another poorly made image in paint along with some commonplace music.

I try to make up for those shortcomings by having a good sense of what the YTMND community likes. I've been told I have something of a way with words, so I sit down and really think through a joke I can tell using the title, URL, and zoomout text that would make a YTMNDer lol even if I have sub-par core material.

As for why they get completely mediocre ratings, I have no idea. The ones I've made that are under three are pretty much things that I made purposely bad. My favorite out of those would be the 9/11 National Fun Day site. No one noticed the subtle airplane flying into the two exclamation points.

I feel like I'm probably one of the few people not to use alt accounts, although a surprising number of my sites have been upvoted to unusually high levels lately. I've noticed the same thing with comments I've been leaving - those get upvoted too. I s'pose after basically living a life filled with YTMND for 9 months I was bound to make jokes that other users think are funny.

HISTORYTMND

My personal favorite out of all of my sites is my HISTORYTMND: Benefits of the Agricultural Revolution and Selective Breeding because I'm a bit of a history nerd and because it's totally sweet original content (I scanned it out of my AP Euro book, it's technically plagerism). I actually recieved a bit of flak for taking HISTORYTMND in a new direction. Honestly, I feel like the fad works just as well and has increased opportunity for longevity if it's allowed to cover a humorous past event as well as the way atomicbolt had intended.

"Holy Shit" Moments

My Big Site

On August 2, 2007 Jake Brown took a gnarly slam on the Mega Ramp. I like to skate so I was keeping in touch with what was going on in the X Games. I asked a friend of mine if he could get a gif of that for me as quick as he could. When I was making the site I realized I didn't have the standard epic music, so I said fuck it and picked what I always felt was more epic music in the first place: Ride of the Valkyres. In my haste to put up a Jake Brown site before anyone else I spelled 'Maneuver' incorrectly and was not able to figure out how to edit my site (I was still new to authoring sites).

It owned U & C and finished out the week in Top Rated and took a brief stint on most viewed for a couple days. I'm flattered that it started its own mini fad. If you search Jake Brown you get a few funny spinoffs but it's nothing worth making a whole wiki article about. But really, I'm especially flattered that keatonkeaton999 faved it and said it made him laugh out loud.

Surprise Meeting With a Featured User

I live in the suburbs west of Chicago in a city called Naperville. On the night that Harry Potter 7 was being released I was out with a friend of mine in Downtown Naperville where an enormous opening event was taking place. The streets were filled with thousands in wizards robes and all that shit. So of course, I was just shouting out who dies, who marries who, etc.

Then my voice was getting a little hoarse so I headed to the starbucks to try and get some free water. I was in the parking lot when I saw a guy on his cell phone carrying on a conversation with someone stop and spoil the ending for three kids walking by. "This guy knows what it's all about." I suppose he overheard me because he looked up and quickly asked, "Are you guys from YTMND!?" I nodded. He quickly said goodbye to whoever he was on the phone with and introduced himself to me. Turns out he was the featured user MeatwadPwnsYou.

I put his name in my cell phone so that I would remember to look up his sites later that night. Occasionally I've PMed him to see if he wants to go Downtown and hang out, but I think that just creeps him out. Oh well.

April Fool's day

This year I was expecting a totally awesome april fool's day joke like that one with the spinning George Bush heads telling me I fell for the trap. Too bad all I got was a notice that the site was shutting down. And I believed it - but only because it would be so like Max to announce it like it was an April Fool's Day joke and then have it be serious. I flipped out and wrote down every fad I could think of so that I could try and recreate the best of the site when that tool came out to download ytmnd's onto your computer.

After that I've taken more effort to make good sites. I want to make a difference and actually keep this good thing going. I do believe, after analyzing all of the changes the site has been through, that YTMND is still a good thing.