It all started simply enough: a spam email lands in a cryptography software mailing list. It turns out the sender got hacked. One person helpfully suggests using a stronger password in the future. End of story, right?

( Ohoho, of course not. This is the Internet. )

Small, I know, but it's just so completely ridiculous.

Jill, at Feministe, makes a blog post ridiculing a comment that uses Mensa membership to validate a fondness for the Cathy comic strip.

The first comment starts off with a defense of Mensa and an earnest explanation of what it means to be a genius. But soon comments erupt criticizing all standard tests, defending standardized tests and Mensa, along with accusations of ableism, lamenting the loneliness and social ostracization that is the lot of smart people and horror at Jill's very appalling anti-intellectualism.

SweetMachine nicely rounds up the kerfuffle: Way to fight the good fight, Mensa lovers! Put that genius to work!

Seattleite killthief is disappointed in Seattle's lack of chain restaurants.

seattle is disappointed in her lack of taste; her appalling lack of taste.

You guys like food wank right? How about some Olive Oil wank? That's what I call a well lubed wank.

lovethatlovage posts a picture of their stovetop on picturing food. sjaustin then comments on their olive oil storage method and it devolves. As if that's not fun enough, lovethatlovage then drags the issue over to stupid_free where sjaustin gets in the first comment. Calls of grudgewank ensue and people start discussing their favorite food wanks of the past.

What's your favorite/most delicious food wank?

It's all the fault of literary agents, who are single-handedly destroying literature everywhere!

Excerpt:

The substantial and nearly unassailable wall that separates you from us has been under construction for decades. You can find the names of its architects and gatekeepers on your telephone-callers list, and in your email in-box. They are the literary agents—that league of intellectual-property purveyors who bring you every new manuscript you ever see, those men and women who are so anxious to gain access to the caverns of treasure they believe you sit upon like some great golden goose that they would likely hack one another’s heads off were they not united by one self-serving mission: to ensure that quality fiction never hits your desk.

Just a tiny bit of entitlement, elitism, and self-delusion.

And some responses...

A blog that lists popular websites that still use Tables is dugg.

Cue hundreds of comments of Tables vs DIVs wank at both the blog and digg, including lots of mentions of Web 2.0 and people saying they went back to tables after that mean ol' CSS didn't work properly.

EDIT: Godwin's.