There are some internet memes that are so old and passé, it is difficult to remember just how distasteful they were even in their heyday. 

One particular meme that bothered me a great deal is “first post”.  Usually found on popular blogs with an excess of early commenting (e.g. Slashdot), a person would declare “first post!” if he believed his comment to be the first against a particular article. In my experience, only the foulest dregs and attention-starved undesirables would stoop to a “first post”. There were several instances of first posting that annoyed me more than the others.

  1. Incorrectly asserting first post. This happened quite often, especially on sites that implement caching and thereby delay the appearance of comments (again, Slashdot is the quintessential example).
  2. First post comments that contained nothing else. These annoyed everybody, and in moderated blogs, were usually moderated down into oblivion.
  3. First post comments that were masquerading as real comments using some inane groupthink platitudes, which very well might have been templatized:

    This is good. I like [Insert Article Title]. Down with Microsoft. By the way, first post!

So here I am, giving as good as I got. In a world with well over 10 million blogs, what overwhelming temerity is required to declare first post? I am such a hypocrite.