Scapegoat of the Month – A Brief History
38Welcome to a combination explanation/retrospective (explaspective) of the Meh Scapegoat of the Month. Shoutout to October's goat @Thumperchick for giving us this idea to steal.
There are a lot of reasons someone might have questions about all of the goat talk around here. Maybe you’re new to the forums and just got hipped to this goat nonsense, maybe you're a casual forum goer and just never heard the origin story behind the goat, or maybe you were just trying to buy some chevon and ended up here by mistake.
Whatever the reason, you're probably wondering what all this casting blame is about and why whoever has the tiny gray goat next to their name keeps apologizing for things.
Let's start from the beginning…actually that'll take way too long, forget about that. Let's start from June 25th, 2014 about 2 weeks before the launch of Meh. We had just successfully funded our Kickstarter campaign thanks to one David Gray (@davegray). Basically it was because of him that we'd have to actually do some work around here and get this whole website thing launched.
The O.G. (original goat) and face of blame.
As a so-called "reward" Kickstarter backers could access Meh one day before anyone else. A bunch of shit totally broke and we stayed up until 5:00am working to try to fix it all (another fine reason to look for someone to blame). Once all of that was over and our site worked we had some fun Day Zero events on the forums and one of them was a way to find out whom we would all collectively blame when anything went wrong for the rest of the month, which was sure to happen. Thus the first forum Scapegoat was crowned: @Ryaneil.
His crime? "I emailed customer service 18 times today because I didn't know my own address."
What a jerk.
So that's how the Scapegoat came to be and how our very first goat was crowned. To keep this silly post from getting even longer than it already is, I'll use the rest of it to list the scapegoats we've had since.
August: @marklog - for inappropriate animal touching.
September: @studerc - for setting up an entirely community run exchange that went extremely well! Yeah, sometimes the reasons people become the goat can be weird.
October: @Thumperchick - for being extremely helpful and liked by everyone, which clearly earns you no favors around here.
November: @cengland0 - for being randomly selected to receive a scapegoat starter kit from a Fukubukuro.
TL;DR: It started as something silly and fun because we wanted someone to take the blame for all of our mistakes and has since evolved to be a big part of the community. If you still don't get it, blame @cengland0 (for the rest of November)
- 12 comments, 41 replies
- Comment
"I never knew my predecessor, the first JonT, as he died centuries before I came to be in an orbital lab. Nor do I know what he looked like, as he lived before both World War V and the YouTube Disk Error of '71 which wiped out much of the world's knowledge. I do know that without him we wouldn't be standing here today, dedicating this monument on Syrtis Major to those who came before, the First 1000 Goats, whose names today every schoolchild can recite from memory, except of course for the schoolchildren who lost their memories in the YouTube Disk Error of '71.
Were JonT here today, what would he say? Would he shed a tear of pride at this great monument we have erected [pause for crowd giggles]? Would he tell us tales of the founding of Meh by Snapster I, which before it became the basis for galactic federal government apparently sold speaker docks? Would he tell us of even
earlier times when the pre-Meh was, according to our admittedly incomplete records, apparently invaded by Brazilian jungle warrior women? Would he tell us what "Marklog fingered his dog" meant before it became our standard spoken greeting phrase? Or would he merely choke and die again, unaccustomed to Martian atmosphere and climate? We cannot know. We do know that these First 1000 Goats were men and women of courage, who served with dedication merely for the honour, as they lived long before the days when being elected goat included a guaranteed galactic parliament seat and unlimited use of the orbital death laser on Tuesday afternoons. They were great. They were goats. And we're all pretty impressed."
Goat Monument, Syrtis Major, Mars.
Year 371 PMS (Post Meh Saga).
@Starblind Nicely done! Although I believe that is word-for-word the opening scene of the next Star Wars movie.
@Starblind wow, i didn't know you were a sci-fi author. i think this counts as being a published sci-fi author... maybe next GISHWHES if they have a similar item to complete we should just have you do it.
@Starblind
@Starblind If forum stars were tip jars I'd click it all night long.
@Starblind That looks like a ram to me.
@Fen_Star That far in the future nobody really remembers what goats looked like.
Thanks for explaining. I hate it when people have an inside joke and they keep talking about it and act like it's really funny when only a few people know what it's about.
@somf69 OMG! That's EXACTLY what @JonT said right before the mehdulla incident! That was Off. The. Hook. Amirite guys?
@Kidsandliz sure, blame the engineers, when we all know it's a classic case of pebkac.
@TerriblyHuang you mean pibkac?
@carl669 I've always heard it as pebkac, as in Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
@narfcake Another one I heard in a talk once was an ID10T error.
@dashcloud Operator Error is a fun one too.
@narfcake @TerriblyHuang interesting. i'd always heard it as Problem Is Between Keyboard And Chair. oh, and TerriblyHuang, i just got your username, very clever.
@dashcloud ID: Tent. It's less suspicious.
@narfcake our IT department called it ID 10 T error. After months of snarky grins between each other one finally wrote it down for me. Id10t. Or idiot.
@carl669 We called it PICNIC: Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.
Are you guys going to keep this list going for all the future goats?
@Thumperchick it might not be such a brief history if we do, but I'll add the next few goats at least.
@JonT poke
if I'm honest I just rolled in here and thought "well this is all ok to me" and went with the goatiness
so thanks. for making me feel at home.
And long may @narfcake reign.
@mfladd Long? It's only supposed to be for a month!
@narfcake You never know - monarchies are funny like that
@mfladd Hey that photo I found months back for another goat. What you trying to do? Stage a coup?
@Kidsandliz sorry, I haven't been around long so I did not see yours. My apologies. I will find another for @narfcake.
@mfladd No rule they can't share. Pick your goat or ex goat to blame LOL
@Kidsandliz Ok, that works. I will pick @Thumperchick for all of this.
@mfladd I'll go ahead and assign that blame to the current goat, @narfcake.
@Thumperchick I guess that means the buck stops there.
@mfladd doe not start with the goat puns, ewe will regret it.
@Thumperchick Nice!
@Kidsandliz: This will have to do for @narfcake then.
(sorry, if it has already been used)
@mfladd Here you go if you want to dress him up a little bit
@Kidsandliz sweet! Nothing says you are comfortable with your manhood like a pink feathered boa.
@mfladd LOL @narfcake did you see your pink boa that goes with your crown?
@Kidsandliz Phhhhbt! This is the kind of pink I wear.
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/fresh-cake-remix-light-pink
you didn't link to @marklog's story...
@chellemonkey unnecessary. thanks, @jont, for choosing to summarize. Also, explaspective is now a real word.
This has been a meh start to a new month for a newcomer as I now have some understanding of speaker dock Friday and goathood (goatherd?).
I curse you all!
Most likely
/8ball Does this curse work?
@ELUNO
About time.
/8ball About Time?
Signs point to yes
keyboard goat??
@Thumperchick: Congrats on being goated into becoming the latest Scapegoat.
@mfladd Ummm, you're several months late.
(Sorry, @thumperchick)
@narfcake Sorry, my bad - I did not read it well (also to @thumperchick)
@narfcake But, CONGRATS to you - I think..does a scapegoat get congrats? Or a long list of grievances?
@mfladd No worries. There's no set rule when it comes to the changing of the goats, and they may be commended and/or blamed as you see fit.
@narfcake well, since I feel bad for my grievous error, which you were kind enough to correct - I will commend. But later in the month as sh@t goes wrong it will be on you :)
dammit @narfcake! why haven't you told @mfladd it's ok to fucking swear in the forums?
@carl669 It is still a forum habit for me. But I will fucking work on it.