notes: Guy Jantic

"What does it do?" "It doesn't do anything. That's the beauty of it." ~25 years ago my former partner was briefly the center of a weird internet thing surrounding the "quote" above. She is pretty sure she's the first person to put it on the internet, after a person in her social circle asked what movie (or book, etc.) it was from and started a discussion among their friends. This ended up being a Big Deal on the internet for a while (and maybe led to the longest single thread on IMDB... ever?). As the person who (arguably) put the the pseudoquote online, she was contacted by various people asking if she'd found the source or reporting what the search for the source was doing to their worlds. One person said the search for the source of the quote had shut down an entire floor of a skyscraper in NYC as virtually every worker in the area spent the day looking for, or arguing about, the source. Former partner never found a satisfying source. Best guess: it's like the Mandela Effect; a Berenstain Bears or "play it again, Sam" thing, but more extreme: nobody is misquoting a source; it just sounds like it _should_ have a source. Lots of people (including me) felt that the movie it was from was right on the tip of our tongues. I personally felt like it must be from an 80s movie in which two dudebros marvel at some ridiculous thing one of them invented. A near match can be found in an episode of Burke's Law and a nearly exact quote appears in a play called "Apocalyptic Butterflies." But how many people ever watched or even heard of those? Certainly very, very few of the thousands who have a strong feeling that they *know* this from somewhere. The mystery, as it turns out, isn't where the quote is from; it's why so. many. people. are absolutely certain they personally know it from somewhere, only to find out they don't. I love this. It has gained its own momentum, now appearing in some art works, in dozens of threads on boards and forums, and... yeah, I'm going to put it in my profile or something because I was just reminded of how much I love it. Keeping the meme alive. Here's a piece from The Verge in 2017 summarizing the saga. https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/21/14952294/what-does-it-do-thats-the-beauty-of-it-movie-quote-source #quotes #quote #movies #internet #mystery

Notes by Guy Jantic | export

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 I saw this photo shared somewhere on #mastodon a few days ago with no context. It got me interested. A friend and I had various assumptions about what it was: a sexual assault case and a horrible judge? A woman mooning a judge despite the contempt charge she would get?

Nah. Strippers accused of showing too much skin. This #stripper was showing the judge that her shorts covered up her hoo-ha just fine. The judge agreed. Case dropped.

Then #Playboy picked it up and the photo became famous.

#history #sexworkers #photography #photojournalism #journalism

https://www.tampabay.com/the-story-behind-the-photo-how-a-1983-pinellas-county-courtroom-photo/2249858/

https://s3.c.im/media_attachments/files/113/240/953/555/935/301/original/2be19dc75ccb2e9c.png

"What does it do?"
"It doesn't do anything. That's the beauty of it."

~25 years ago my former partner was briefly the center of a weird internet thing surrounding the "quote" above. She is pretty sure she's the first person to put it on the internet, after a person in her social circle asked what movie (or book, etc.) it was from and started a discussion among their friends.

This ended up being a Big Deal on the internet for a while (and maybe led to the longest single thread on IMDB... ever?). As the person who (arguably) put the the pseudoquote online, she was contacted by various people asking if she'd found the source or reporting what the search for the source was doing to their worlds.

One person said the search for the source of the quote had shut down an entire floor of a skyscraper in NYC as virtually every worker in the area spent the day looking for, or arguing about, the source.

Former partner never found a satisfying source. Best guess: it's like the Mandela Effect; a Berenstain Bears or "play it again, Sam" thing, but more extreme: nobody is misquoting a source; it just sounds like it _should_ have a source. Lots of people (including me) felt that the movie it was from was right on the tip of our tongues. I personally felt like it must be from an 80s movie in which two dudebros marvel at some ridiculous thing one of them invented.

A near match can be found in an episode of Burke's Law and a nearly exact quote appears in a play called "Apocalyptic Butterflies." But how many people ever watched or even heard of those? Certainly very, very few of the thousands who have a strong feeling that they *know* this from somewhere.

The mystery, as it turns out, isn't where the quote is from; it's why so. many. people. are absolutely certain they personally know it from somewhere, only to find out they don't.

I love this.

It has gained its own momentum, now appearing in some art works, in dozens of threads on boards and forums, and... yeah, I'm going to put it in my profile or something because I was just reminded of how much I love it. Keeping the meme alive.

Here's a piece from The Verge in 2017 summarizing the saga.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/21/14952294/what-does-it-do-thats-the-beauty-of-it-movie-quote-source

#quotes #quote #movies #internet #mystery

 Well, fuck. #dropbox is kind of pointless now, so I did a bunch of online research and decided to use sync.com. Sweet deal! Paid for the first year, got excited...

Then realized there is no #linux desktop client. 

I've been using Linux for long enough that I forget many services don't support it.

#wine isn't doing it, either; errors when trying to install any of the #windows clients so far. Dammit.

Time to beg #synccom for a refund.