Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Richards]

I'm told the "ba dum tss" sound has a name... it's a rimshot. Which I thought was a shooting term.

According to my good friend, Mr. Wikipedia:

A rimshot is a percussion technique used to produce an accented snare drum backbeat. The sound is produced by simultaneously hitting the rim and head of the drum with a drum stick.

The musical phrase played on percussion instruments used to punctuate jokes is known in percussion jargon as a sting. This is often called a rimshot, although some versions of it do not include a rimshot in the technical sense.

A rimshot when used to accent the punchline of a joke being told by a live comedian may or may not simultaneously be played with a small cymbal crash. This was popularized in standup comedy by comedians performing at the resorts in the Catskill Mountains region. Many of these comics were of Jewish heritage and were known as "Borscht Belt comics", after a vacation spot in the Catskills. Comedian Henny Youngman used a drummer to play rimshots after his fast-paced, one-liner type of jokes; his most famous line was "Take my wife… please!"

Sometimes, the comedian would react to the rimshot as if they did not expect it and in doing so, pass the reaction and responsibility for the rimshot on to the drummer, when in fact, the comedian had previously instructed the drummer when to use and when not to use the rimshot. Despite having previously been scripted into the routine by the comedian, these were designed to appear to be improvised by the drummer, so as to accentuate the joke.

So apparently you're correct, in that many people refer to the "ba dum tss" sound as a rimshot, but the more technical term (for those who care) is a sting.

I do not count myself among those who care.

Johnathan

 

[Bedrockgames]

To my tastes:

As Pepsi tastes like flat Coke, New Coke tasted like flat Pepsi.

It was actually a response to the pepsi challenge. There was a whole series of ads by Pepsi leading up to new coke. Pepsi is sweeter than coke and they realized they could beat coke in taste tests if people were just reacting to the sweetness of the sip. But this was a big problem because while you might like something sweeter on the first sip in a blind taste test it is very different to compare drinking the whole can (and they underestimated how attached people were to the flavor of original coke). If people think folks are angry about things being sold today, they have nothing on how outraged society was by new coke lol

 

[Ryujin]

It was actually a response to the pepsi challenge. There was a whole series of ads by Pepsi leading up to new coke. Pepsi is sweeter than coke and they realized they could beat coke in taste tests if people were just reacting to the sweetness of the sip. But this was a big problem because while you might like something sweeter on the first sip in a blind taste test it is very different to compare drinking the whole can (and they underestimated how attached people were to the flavor of original coke). If people think folks are angry about things being sold today, they have nothing on how outraged society was by new coke lol

I've always preferred the acidic bite of Coke and even the first sip of Pepsi puts me off. I remember taking the challenge and getting Coke

 

[Umbran]

Most people are not very good at critical thinking, not an insult, just the way they are.

Well, even people who are good at critical thinking are not always good at critical thinking.

Especially when we note that critical thinking, criticism, and critique are not the same thing.

 

[Umbran]

(and they underestimated how attached people were to the flavor of original coke).

Not just the flavor. Coca-cola is part of people's cultural identity. The idea that it needed changing was an affront to that identity.

Parallels to community responses to changes in game rules... are very likely valid

 

[Richards]

I had a brother-in-law who collected Coke paraphernalia, everything from specialty bottles and cans to Christmas ornaments to model train cars to neon light fixtures to blankets. He got very upset if anyone used "the P-word" in his presence, as if even bringing up the concept of Pepsi caused him actual pain.

Johnathan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Not just the flavor. Coca-cola is part of people's cultural identity. The idea that it needed changing was an affront to that identity.

According to the lessons taught in my marketing classes, THIS is the key to why New Coke failed. People were fine with New Coke as a supplement to the product line; they had no interest in a replacement.

Initial sales were very strong; the hottest product in the market. But when people started to realize that Coca-Cola was replacing their classic soda with New Coke, there was a rapid downturn that proved permanent.

The actual flavor was secondary. What the flavor had come to mean in the context of the soda marketing war was paramount.

Personally, I wasn’t drinking sodas at all* at the time of the New Coke fiasco; it’s one of the few major flavors I never tasted. But I probably wouldn’t have liked it. Coke, 7-Up and A&W were my preferred drinks, and if I wanted a sweeter cola, I reached for Dr. Pepper, Royal Crown, or Shasta. I drank Pepsi on occasion, but it never really did it for me.

After the advent of artificial sweeteners other than saccharine (which I find bitter), I started drinking diet soft drinks on occasion. I’m probably averaging around .5-.75 servings per day.




* I went cold turkey after drinking a 6-pack plus per day for years

 

[Bedrockgames]

Not just the flavor. Coca-cola is part of people's cultural identity. The idea that it needed changing was an affront to that identity.

Parallels to community responses to changes in game rules... are very likely valid

This might be a regional thing. I get the impression coke has more cultural power in some places than others. Where I grew up in Boston I remember lots of people drinking coke, I think it was more popular than Pepsi. Growing up drinking both coke and fanta were very common in my household. But coke was largely just about the taste and the comfort of what you grew up drinking. Coke just had a flavor that worked. When I moved out west for a bit, Pepsi seemed a bit more popular (at least where I was).

I do think identity can be a part of it. Fanta on the other hand, for example, was more about identity for me because my mom's family drank it because it was one vowel off from her family's last name. Somehow we took pride in that lol. We liked Fanta but I am guessing any brand of orange soda would have been agreeable had it not been for the coincidence of the name.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The actual flavor was secondary. What the flavor had come to mean in the context of the soda marketing war was paramount.

I would disagree sharply with this, remembering what it was like when new coke came out. I don't think you can minimize the role that flavor played here. The problem was a lot of people didn't like new coke and they wanted the old taste. The flavor was huge here. There may have been other factors like nostalgia. But that boiled down to people were not being given the flavor coke they wanted the most. It only sold well initially because the campaigns promised us, from the Bill Cosby himself, a new and improved taste (and we were naive enough to think that just meant they were going to make coke even better lol). Once people got a taste of it, we didn't want it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is one of those things I got to pass on, as I've never understood the attraction to the flavor of any cola. Of course back in my Dr. Pepper drinking days, plenty of people felt the same about it.