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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   1788 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 27, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Gilbert & Sullivan were everywhere when I was a kid, I still have I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General memorized, but I had no idea Americans had ever heard of it. Echo your sadness that the connection to the past has disappeared.

a capella groups and improv

A scourge. I recall touring US colleges and every single one had a moment in the tour where they described their quiiiiiirky acapella group as if they were the only college that had thought to have it.

It does make me wonder, what do you think the image today of the "slightly pretentious but admirably cultured intellectual" looks like today, in the popular imagination? Do any fictional characters come to mind? What are the markers that would identify such a person most accurately?

In the UK, a Daunt Books tote bag, New York Review of Books in the US. New Yorker for the person pretending to be such.

Gilbert & Sullivan were everywhere when I was a kid, I still have I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General memorized, but I had no idea Americans had ever heard of it.

What? Of course Americans have heard of it! It's a popular stock parody. Just to name one example, xkcd's "Every Major's Terrible", which was later turned into a music video (Randall Munroe is, of course, American).

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