What do you get out of signatures?

[invokethehojo]

My user title is an inside joke from high school that doesn't have to do with hotels, although I have stayed at a howard johnson before.

My grammar isn't great, and for some reason I have always spelled their thier, it's like selective dyslexia or something.

Here is the particular signature that inspired me to stat this thread, just to show you what I mean.

"life is blond"
"stirges suck"
"so do vampires"
"in other games you get to fight... broccoli?"

What do you get out of putting 4 random, silly, out of context quotes at the end of everyone of your posts?

To me at least, this is like wearing a "Git-r-done" t-shirt, or having multiple singing fish mounted in your living room... am I the only one out there who feels this way? Surely not. Come on, seriously..... come on.... you're honestly telling me that in any other converstation you would be defending bumper stickers and those who stick them. or anyone with a git-r-done t-shirt?

 

[Verdande]

I don't really understand the OP's point. I don't hardly notice signatures; maybe one out of five actually gets my attention.

And of those five, it's usually the concise, visually interesting, and unusual ones that really get me to read them.

Most of them are just quotes about some nonsense that I could care less about, but I've learned about some cool features, products, services, and people from a couple well-used signatures.

EDIT: Now that I've seen the offending signatures you were talking about, I can see what you mean. Clearly, that's an awful signature.

 

[coyote6]

What do I get out of my signature? Money. Piratecat provides a small kickback with every post where my sig with the quote from his story hour appears. It's sort of like Google Ads, really.

Spoiler

Disclaimer: Not necessarily true, at all.

 

[Nifft]

I don't mind sigs: just keep them short.

I tend to adblock images in sigs, so those only annoy me once.

I'd like to think my own is a tolerable example: it's got links to some things people might want to find, and a brief message which I feel merits some repetition. Sometimes I remember to disable my sig when I'm posting a one-liner. I should remember to do that more often: IMHO it's poor form to have a sig longer than one's post, and -- as one who bitches about the length of other's sigs -- it's especially poor form for me to pollute a thread with too many instances of my own.

Also.... come on, seriously, come on.... you're honestly telling me that in any other converstation you would be defending bumper stickers and those who stick them?

Bumper stickers are a social signal. They tell you if you are likely to be able to settle a driving dispute with mere harsh language, or if you're going to want to be able to return fire.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Cadfan]

1. My signature is for advertising some neat homebrew stuff I made. Unfortunately I made it all right after 4e came out, so a lot of it has been rendered obsolete by WotC. I did some things better than them, though. I've been thinking of taking it down, but, meh.

2. There are several official forum rules, and several general social rules, that set forum signatures off in their own little world and instructs people not to find them offensive. That means that if you want to offend, you can put your insult into your signature and claim that it wasn't targeted towards any specific person. You can insult a game system or a company or a general group of people, and when someone takes offense, you can claim that you weren't directing it towards them, they should have a sense of humor, they were the ones bringing it up, etc, etc, etc.

As a result I sometimes use signatures as a cue for my ignore list.

 

[amysrevenge]

Keep it simple is my motto. A lot of times knowing where someone is from can add an interesting context to what they post, so I put my own location in my .sig in a Golden Rule sort of way.

 

[Pseudonym]

My only qualm with other people's signatures are when they are longer than whatever post they are making. I really appreciate people who make use of the spoiler function in their signatures.

My signature is not witty or amusing, but it is, as of this moment, functional.

 

[MrMyth]

My user title is an inside joke from high school...

"life is blond"
"stirges suck"
"so do vampires"
"in other games you get to fight... broccoli?"

What do you get out of putting 4 random, silly, out of context quotes at the end of everyone of your posts?

Honestly, you are basically answering your own question. They found the quotes entertaining at the time, or they are inside jokes from their own gaming group or circle of friends. Is it funny if you don't know the joke? No, not really - but if there are other users on the board who were privy to the original quotes, I imagine those lines might be entertaining reminders to them.

And for those who don't get the joke, neither a bizarre signature nor strange username should make a difference - if you have other evidence to judge them by (such as a well-thought out and intelligent post), then you can easily use that instead!

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I use my sig for a little levity and to link to threads on other parts of ENWorld with less traffic.

 

[billd91]

Come on, seriously..... come on.... you're honestly telling me that in any other converstation you would be defending bumper stickers and those who stick them. or anyone with a git-r-done t-shirt?

Considering I have more than just a couple of bumper stickers on my car... yes.