First post
From Free net encyclopedia
Image:Slashdotfirstpost.png "First Post!" is an Internet phenomenon on Internet discussion groups (notably Slashdot and LiveJournal), where participants strive to be the first person to "post" a comment to a new article or discussion thread. This terminology dates back to the days of the BBS, when one would post a comment, much as one would post a reply on a physical bulletin board.
The phenomenon is largely confined to sites that have reached a high degree of popularity, such that users are genuinely surprised to see an article without any associated comments. In its original form, a first post was a light-hearted expression of the poster's excitement at being the first person to write a comment. However, it is now more widely intended as a means of annoying other site users (see Internet troll), with the aim of provoking a negative reaction (see Flamebait). There is also the necessary condition that comments are displayed in chronological order (meaning the first message is the most prominently displayed). It is prevalent among user-commentary sites and does not often appear on conventional webboards, community journals, etc.
Since the chance of achieving a first post is increased by making the comment quickly, the message is usually short, adding no insight to the discussion. Often, it only contains the text "First post!" (or variations thereof). Some people would even argue that a comment is only a true "first post" if it contains no relevant information.
In internet culture
Some forums have devised creative ways of eliminating messages of this type: the filters on Fark.com message boards automatically turn the words "First Post!" into the word "boobies" and timestamp the comment 12 hours after it was actually posted. Meanwhile, Something Awful made posting "First Post!" a bannable offense. One way users have subverted this rule is to adopt a similar but different message (most notably "Frost Pist"):
- On Blog for America, "44!" is used to represent a first post, in reference to the 44th presidency.
- On political blogs (such as Atrios), "first post" is often typed as "Frist," a reference to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (and depending on the forum, as a way to add an extra dash of irritation to an already irritating practice).
- Some Slashdot readers parody the words 'first post' with many alternate spellings: 'frist psot!', 'firts pots!', etc. This stems presumably from the unintentional typos created by users trying to beat each other in being the first post after an article has been posted. Slashdot has a short time period after the article is posted in which users can not post comments.
- On some social networking sites such as MySpace, the first person posting a comment on a user's profile is said to have taken their "comment virginity".
- On Dutch weblogs it's often shortened to 'Fipo', the first two letters of both 'first' and 'post'.
- In Russia, there exists an analogue of this phenomenon. People post messages with the words "Первый нах!" ['pervij 'na:h] - which rough translation would be "first and the hell with it". These words are believed to first appear on un-moderated subcultural websites, such as Udaff and Padonki (a misspelled Russian for Riff-raffs).
- In Brazil, a popular humour site, Charges.com.br has a section of e-mails sent to the page (in which the users can comment), updated daily, some people race to be the first posters (with even a final score each day).