I'm newish here, but I quickly noticed many peeps always used the terms candy, HFS and clown. I understood why when someone didn't and kinda cheated me out of the moment of Fun, so I support the idea of using the slang as a matter of courtesy. I've never enjoyed a spoiler, no matter how small.
As I've read other posts were the member stated they don't care or even "...HATE the people who do it.", I've started wondering what the general opinion on this matter is.
It's mostly us oldies not liking it for one or two reasons, either because we don't like the terminology, or because we're tired of the same old overdone memes being spouted over and over again.
See, for the first reason. When I first started here, the Hidden Fun Stuff was still called that, or HFS, on a regular basis, and people actually mare an effort not to spoil it. It worked for me. I didn't know what it meant until I ran into it. But during my starting year of play, the clown metaphor started up. Even to someone who still didn't have much experience with anything HFS, the analogies were obvious. Clowns? Obviously special enemies. Clownite? Obviously special metal. And so on. It doesn't keep anything from being spoilered, it just changes the names. Do you really think anyone is surprised when the "clowns" show up because they were told "clowns will show up and kill your fort" rather than "demons will show up and kill your fort"? I don't.
That's why I personally dislike the terminology. It is a lazy attempt to disguise your spoilers as not being spoilers while not actually having to do anything or make any kind of effort to not reveal it to new players. That it's also a in-joke so you can tell the community "Look guys! I'm one of you!" is just a bonus, hut it brings us to the second reason; the stupid memes.
You see, you haven't been a member of these forums for very long (though I don't know if you've been lurking long before joining), but if you stay long enough you'll notice that these forums have a problem with memes. They stopped making new ones years ago. Instead, they just keep using the same old worn down stuff over, and over, and over again. When you first join, they're funny and fresh (and I have a theory that the whole reason for the meme stagnancy is because there's such a flow of people joining but not staying for long, hence many people never tire of the jokes), but when you've been here a while, they aren't particularly interesting any more. It's like the people who are still using "The cake is a lie!" or "One does not simply X into Mordor!". No, in fact it's worse, because those two have died out and are seldom used, while the old DF memes are still being told all the time, making them annoying rather than sigh-and-chuckle worthy.
Those are the main two reasons people dislike the clownology.
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Topic: Protocol of the deep and this forum (Read 4160 times)