301: Limerick

Limerick

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Title text: Fun game: try to post a YouTube comment so stupid that people realize you must be joking. (Hint: this is impossible)

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Explanation

A limerick is a well-known type of poem that is usually humorous or bawdy. A limerick is five lines long and has the rhyme scheme AABBA; the first, second, and fifth lines share one rhyme, while the third and fourth lines share another rhyme. The third and fourth lines are also usually shorter. Limericks, like the one written in this comic, primarily feature amphibrachic (◡–◡) trimeters, but they can also include anapestic trimeters (◡◡–), as well. Almost anyone can instantly recognize a limerick after hearing the first line.^{[citation needed]}

In poetry, a foot is a pattern unit of stressed (–) and unstressed (◡) syllables in a line. A meter measures the amount of feet per line. In this case, an 'anapestic trimeter' is a line of three anapests, where an 'anapest' is a foot that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.

Slashdot is one of the oldest forum and social news websites focused on science and technology. It was launched in 1997 and is still active to this day, although with much deterioration and little activity. The decline of Slashdot may have been caused by the lack of recent updates, and the rise of newer competitors, like Reddit and Hacker News.

In Slashdot, each article submitted by a user has a threaded comments section where other users can discuss the article. On many comments sections of forum websites, the user base can vote on comments using an upvote/downvote system; in Slashdot, however, only moderators have this privilege. Slashdot moderators are drawn from the pool of registered users based on their amount of good 'karma'. They are also given 'moderation points', where each point can be spent on voting on a comment. All users have at least one chance to be a moderator, but they have a limited time of three days to be one.

A moderator can also choose to cast a predefined descriptor for their upvote/downvote towards a comment. For example, instead of a simple +1, a comment may be voted "+1 (Funny)". Similarly, instead of -1, a comment may be voted "-1 (Off-topic)". Comments have a maximum positive score of five; a comment voted "+5 (Insightful)" means it was upvoted at least five times and has a plurality of 'Insightful' votes.

Cueball's limerick states that he does not like Slashdot any more because his sarcastic comments are being treated as insightful by its moderators. The line "the iconoclastic / keep modding to plus five (Insightful)" claims that the moderators strongly oppose Cueball's views but, since they misinterpret his sarcasm as sincere, they interpret his criticisms as insightful opinions that reinforce their own, which would warrant an upvote. This would frustrate Cueball if his goal was to mock the behavior of Slashdotters.

This is an example of Poe's law, which is an Internet adage that states that a sarcastic expression without clarification can be mistaken by readers as sincere. This can be especially true if the expression mocks extreme beliefs and the readers who mistake it share those same beliefs; you can't mock the extremists without looking like an extremist yourself.

A scansion for this poem (in the macron and breve notation) is as follows:

Line (w/ highlighted stress)	Scansion	Term
I used to find Slashdot delightful	◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡	amphibrachic trimeter
but my feelings of late are more spiteful;	◡◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡	amphibrachic trimeter with a "pickup" (or brachycatalectic amphibrachic tetrameter scanning as ◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡)
my comments sarcastic	◡–◡ ◡–◡	amphibrachic dimeter
the iconoclastic	◡–◡ ◡–◡	amphibrachic dimeter
keep modding to plus five (Insightful)	◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡	amphibrachic trimeter

The title text refers to the notoriously awful comments on YouTube, many of which are so idiotic that they're interpreted as jokes.

301, the number of this comic, is also a number often associated with YouTube. At the time this comic was published, view counts on YouTube videos would often freeze at 301, as YouTube would switch between view-counting algorithms when the number of views exceeded 300. Therefore, the comic number itself may be a reference to the title text.

Transcript

[Cueball sits at a computer, typing.]

Cueball (typing): I used to find Slashdot delightful,

Cueball (typing): but my feelings of late are more spiteful;

Cueball (typing): my comments sarcastic

Cueball (typing): the iconoclastic

Cueball (typing): keep modding to plus five (Insightful).

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Discussion

The explanation for comic 301: Limerick was selected by the Explanation Improvement Project as This Week's Explanation for Improvement after being nominated in October 2026 by Black Hat's Hat. During that week, editors focused on expanding and polishing this explanation as part of an ongoing effort to keep older or under-developed explanations fresh and complete. (compare before and after)

Wow, I just stumbled across this comic via the "Random" button, and I realized that I haven't looked at Slashdot in over a year... Feels good to be free! Now back to obsessively reloading Reddit... 173.245.55.210 20:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Limericks are not anapestic trimeter, the meter in most limericks (including this one) is an amphibrach. 141.101.104.23 (talk) 20:00, 17 July 2015 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The problem is that there's no fake comment you could add to YouTube that's so stupid it couldn't have been seriously posted by one of the common members there. — Kazvorpal (talk) 22:48, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I found someone who posted to every song in an album some variation of "Is this music?" Two of the songs were spoken word, and one was entirely instrumental, but the first song is a relatively normal punk song. I am almost completely sure they were joking. (The album is Made in a Day by Maki Yamazaki on thevoidsings youtube channel).162.158.154.73 01:25, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the claim about it being impossible to post an obviously stupid YouTube comment. I once claimed that I'm not a Flat Earther, the Earth is obviously spherical, it is hollow and we are on the inside. People sincerely argued with me. 104.251.240.78 23:57, 3 November 2026 (UTC)

Of course they did. The world is quite clearly a donut...2.98.77.182 00:19, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

Could someone add an explanation for what iconoclastic means in this context? I can't find any definition online that matches what Cueball seems to be using it for. CreatorOfWorlds (talk) 23:29, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

By my reading, it is "those that are iconoclasts", and I don't think it particularly matters much which type(s) of iconoclasm they subscribe to. ...one way or another, they seem to have been misinterpreting his comments with 'undue credit' to the intention they had been posted. 2.98.77.182 23:41, 4 November 2026 (UTC)

It means he was struggling for a rhyme for 'sarcastic'. ;o) 86.22.132.121 09:29, 5 November 2026 (UTC)

+5! 2.98.77.182 19:34, 5 November 2026 (UTC)
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