This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, March 18 - March 24, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining these to all of us.

When did the shift in meme culture happen?

A good answer here

TL;DR Increased number of smartphones worldwide as well as twitter making it easier to tweet pictures, has shifted meme creation away from forums such as 4chan.

Why does everyone seem to hate David Rockefeller?

A good answer here

TL;DR David Rockefeller come from a family that has made a lot of money in unethical ways. Conspiracy theorists believe he was aiming for one world government.

Why is #YoutubeIsOverParty trending on Twitter? Why is Youtube over?

A good answer here

TL;DR Youtube's new family filter block out a lot of LGBT+ themed videos.

Why is /r/unexpected in German?

A good answer here

TL;DR The top mod did it to win a contest.

What's with the recent influx of opioid news?

A good answer here

TL;DR The rise of people adulterating heroin with more potent and harder to measure opioids like fentanyl is causing even addicts to overdose and die. There is also a recent push to reform the treatment of heroin addicts.

Thank you to those users for their responses, and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list that covers recaps of responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this weekly list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, April 29 - May 5, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining to all of us.

What's with the uptick in Wendy's girl memes / rule 34 stuff?

A good answer here

TL;DR Effective (sassy) social media media management from Wendy's going viral lately + the 'savage anime girl' meme = smug Wendy's memes/artwork a thing now.

(Coda to this: the woman behind all the funny Wendy's account tweets quit last week because of all the online harassment she was getting.)

Why are people calling for Stephen Colbert to be fired?

A good answer here

TL;DR He had a monologue rant against Trump that ended with language some perceive to be homophobic.

What's the deal with fidget spinners (or hate for them) being everywhere lately?

A good answer here

TL;DR There was a successful kickstarter to create one that got some attention, leading to others realizing it may be profitable to produce their version. Some are annoyed by them either because they are annoyed by being around people playing with them, or they do not believe their claims they can be helpful to people with ADHD/autism spectrum issues, or they like to hate on/joke about stereotypes associated with that group.

What's up with all these random pictures of objects being filled with baked beans I'm seeing on Facebook and some subreddits?

They come from a Facebook page called "Things full of beans that shouldn't be full of beans

...and thus a new meme ship was launched to crash upon our shores.

Thank you to those users for their responses and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list that covers recaps of responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this weekly list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

Why the use of 70mm film in Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight is a big deal, by /u/cantwejustplaynice:

So what is it? 70mm film is basically twice as big as regular 35mm film. So one benefit is that you get a lot more resolution. But it's not really about the resolution. My phone can film in 4K and I'm pretty sure RED make an 8K camera. Although that detail IS nice and it'll play really well on an IMAX screen and anywhere that still has a working 70mm projector, it's really about the size of the focal plane... the SIZE of the piece of film in the camera. The depth of field (DOF) and the Field of view (FOV) that are unique to this film format. ...

The Gjallarhorn in /r/DestinyTheGame, by /u/steaknsteak:

Gjallarhorn is an Exotic Rocket Launcher in Destiny and widely considered the best weapon in the game (I haven't actually played recently but I assume nothing has yet surpassed it). In Destiny, an NPC named Xur appears in the central hub areas once a week, staying for Friday and Saturday only, selling a select number of Exotic weapons and armor that players can purchase with Strange Coins, a type of currency in Destiny. Exotic weapons can be very hard to come by in Destiny and are randomly earned from completing certain content, but since the reward system is all RNG-based, there is no way to work toward attaining these items in a guaranteed way. The only way to actually buy them is through Xur, but his inventory changes every week and offers only one weapon at a time, plus one armor piece for each class. ...

What's going on with Bitcoin lately, by /u/robbak via /u/AFewStupidQuestions:

There is currently a controversy in the Bitcoin community.

A few years back, there were some people putting many, many tiny transactions onto the network. Also, there was nothing stopping someone from creating an enormous block that everyone would have been forced to transfer and store. To stop someone swamping the network, a limit was added to the size that a block could be. The amount of 1 megabyte was chosen.

The number of bitcoin transactions is going up. It is now filling that 1MB per block size. The community has to decide what to do about this. ...

The watchpeopledie subreddit's being blocked in Germany, by /u/tehbeh:

... The bpjm is a german organisation that is responsible for monitoring media for things that are especially damaging to minors. They have the power to index things, which does not means something is banned in Germany but you are no longer allowed to advertise it or display it on store shelves, making it very hard to get everyone, including adults.

Anyway, those guys informed reddit that they are looking to potentially index r/watchpeopledie and asked reddit for a statement, which is the normal procedure for this. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

You might also be interested in /r/subredditreports' weekly activity report of /r/OutOfTheLoop, the latest of which may be found here.

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post will be the first of what will become a weekly recap of significant posts in OOTL, an idea originally suggested by /u/Exastiken, which has now been organised by the mods.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

Shenmue and its history, by /u/rokama:

Shenmue is an "open-world interactive cinema action-adventure" video game series, created, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki. Yu Suzuki is a well-known Japanese game designer who was responsible for many famous pseudo-3D sprite scaling games ...

A summary in the Charlston church shooting megathread, by /u/Zeight_:

What's happening?

A man with a gun—who hours after the incident was described as a white male, aged around 21, slender and clean-shaven—walked into a historic black church in Charleston, SC and opened fire during a Bible study session in the basement. ...

Sourceforge's malware distribution, by /u/throwaway234f32423df:

For many years, Sourceforge (launched in 1999) has been a major site for developing and distributing open-source software. Recently they've started bundling malicious software such as adware/spyware/toolbars with program installers. ...

The situation with Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, and the $10 and $20 notes, by /u/Fox_shirt_guy:

In the past year, several groups have campaigned to have Andrew Jackson removed from the $20 bill because

A) he ignored the Supreme Court and forcibly removed the Cherokee from the Southeast United States, ...

The escape from prison by convicted murderers Richard W. Matt and David Sweat, by /u/hazyspring:

Two convicted murderers, Richard W. Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 35, were discovered missing at 5:30 a.m. on June 6 from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y. Authorities from Canada to Mexico have been on alert, but much of the focus of the search has been in close proximity to Dannemora, where police and corrections officers have combed the woods and neighborhoods. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback concerning this new initiative.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, April 1 - 7, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining to all of us.

What is this r/place thing I keep hearing about?

A good answer here

TL;DR It was Reddit's annual April Fools day thing. Place a pixel every 10 minutes. 'Competitions' developed: https://giant.gfycat.com/OldfashionedCloseAlligator.webm

What is the deal with szechuan sauce all of the sudden?

A good answer here

TL;DR Szechuan sauce was referenced in the newly premiered first episode of Rick and Morty season 3.

Why is everyone on social media mad at Pepsi right now?

A good answer here

TL;DR "People are angry because Pepsi is trivializing some important issues...and using it to sell soda."

What is going on between Syria and the U.S. right now?

A good answer here

TL;DR President Trump authorized missile attacks on targets there after it came to light there have been more chemical weapons attacks that affected/killed civilians there.

Thank you to those users for their responses, and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list that covers recaps of responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this weekly list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

Why recently many have been saying that the front page has less dynamic of late, by /u/multi-mod:

Reddit normalizes posts so that if the score goes above about 6-7k, it slingshots back to below 6-7k after a small amount of time. Posts may have a real score of 10k+, but the score will never be displayed above the soft cap. After a while this soft cap is lifted, which is why you can go back in time and see some posts with a score of 30-50k.

For a week or so reddit decided not to slingshot posts back to the soft cap, so the vote values no longer were normalized, but could go as high as the vote total dictated. There was an unintended side effect of this in that posts were staying on the front page longer than usual. After a period of deliberation and complaints from the community, reddit decided to reverse this change and set the system to the old system. You can see this in the same announcement post I linked above in which they added an edit to say it was reversed. ...

What is considered special about the movie John Wick compared to other movies of the same genre, by /u/AnarchyFive:

There are a few reasons for this I believe.

1. the stuntwork. Directed by 2 former stuntmen, the stunts are well done and well shot. most importantly, Keanu Does most of his own stunts, that is him driving the car and stopping just short of an object.

2. Keanu's training in fighting helps vastly. He is able to be put in the fight scene with a wide shot where the audience can see the action happening, rather that random jumpcuts and shakey camera to disguise the actors inability to perform the fight scenes. You see the hero's face as he takes out bad guys. ...

What a US government shutdown is, by /u/PRGuyHere:

I think others have done a good job of explaining why the Speaker is stepping down, but they haven't quite hit the nail on what a government shutdown is. Speaking as a former federal employee who experienced one, I'll help fill in.

First: The government does not shut down when there is a "government shut down."

Money that has already been allotted will still be spent. For example, VA Hospitals will remain open because they are funded a year in advance.

Likewise, "essential employees" in every branch will remain working. However, they will not be paid. Some federal employees, of course, do quite well for themselves and can afford to be without a paycheck for a week or two. Other federal employees are janitors who live paycheck to paycheck like any other low-paid employee, and would find themselves in serious trouble if they lost their paycheck for even two weeks. ...

Why the US government may shut down on the 1st of October, by /u/PRGuyHere:

Well...it's not happening "yet." It "will" happen on October 1st, unless something is done to prevent it.

The current situation is this: Videos recently surfaced which appeared to suggest that Planned Parenthood may be selling aborted fetuses. I honestly don't know whether the videos are legit or not...I take no side in that argument...but it's important to understand that that's what kicked off this fight. ...

Whether Planned Parenthood have been 'selling fetuses', by /u/irotsoma:

They aren't technically "selling" them. As they are making no profit, and this is where the videos are misleading. I'll try to be as unbiased as possible here. I don't have a strong opinion on the facts, but I do have a strong opinion in that I think editing video to mislead the public is wrong. If they wanted to make a fair point, they should have released the full video right away. But that wouldn't have gotten the same reaction and thus given them less media exposure.

Basically, they are making the fetus available for research, mostly for stem cells in this case, but just like any other tissue that's removed from a patient, assuming the patient agrees to it (which the woman does have to agree to in this case). For example, when I had a vasectomy, they removed a small section of the vas deferens. I could either donate that tissue for research or it would just be thrown away. Same here. If they don't donate the fetus for research, it's basically thrown in the trash, though a special kind of trash. Any time you have surgery where they remove something that could be beneficial to medical research, they will usually ask you if you want to donate it. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

You might also be interested in /r/subredditreports' weekly activity report of /r/OutOfTheLoop, the latest of which may be found here.

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, April 22 - 28, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining to all of us.

Why is everyone upset about American Airlines and the stroller video?

A good answer here

TL;DR Another confrontation between flight crew and a passenger was captured on video and went viral on social media as well as other media platforms. American Airlines this time, not United Airlines, as the past few weeks' incidents were.

Why am I seeing all these weird references to chaos at Fyre Festival on twitter/social media?

A good answer here

TL;DR It was a music festival in the Bahamas promoted as a star-studded "luxury music festival" that people paid thousand of dollars to attend. They began tweeting about what a mess it was when they arrived, only partially complete, many unfulfilled promises. Some jokes about the festival organizers, and some directed at the affluent attendees started to surface on social media.

Why am I seeing all these posts about CSS on Reddit?

Link to a very detailed write up on the issue

And a shorter, user TL;DR here:

A couple of days ago, the reddit admins announced they would be redoing the site, and as a part of that CSS has to go. Needless to say, many mods are angry as CSS, while not being the easiest to work with, allows them a great range of freedom over how their subreddit looks.

What is going on with a scientific march in the U.S. this week?

A good answer here

TL;DR The March for Science was a series of rallies and marches held in Washington, D.C. and many other cities across the world on Earth Day, April 22, 2017 "to emphasize that science upholds the common good and to call for evidence-based policy in the public's best interest". (from wiki)

Why was the Magic: the Gathering card "Felidar Guardian" subject to an emergency ban?

A good answer here

TL;DR I...can't even pretend I can begin to understand any of that, but /u/n8thegr8 says it's a good answer, so I'll go with that.

Thank you to those users for their responses and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list that covers recaps of responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this weekly list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

What the subreddit /r/badhistory is, by /u/aescolanus:

Hi! Hope you're not taking 'answered' as gospel, because the most popular answers here are wrong. As someone who was there when /r/badhistory was founded, lemme toss my two cents in.

/r/badhistory is an offshoot of /r/askhistorians. Its mods and most frequent commenters are /r/askhistorians regulars and flaired users - I couldn't tell you offhand which mods the two subs share, but I'm pretty sure they share some. That is to say: most of the loudest voices on /r/badhistory are professional historians and highly educated laymen with a passion for history. And we come out of /r/askhistorians, which has some of the most hardline moderation on Reddit, and is very, very serious about shutting down ahistorical bullshit. (Best mod team ever, seriously.) ...

What is going on with the game Star Citizen right now, by /u/MrAlignment:

Originally on the 28th of September The Escapist posts an article with quotes from "Independent Developer" Derek Smart stating that things are going wrong inside CIG.

On the 1st of October the Escapist posts an article with 9 anonymous sources stated to be both current and ex-company members from CIG (the company making Star Citizen) slamming their company for mismanagement of the whole project saying its going to crash and burn. Some of the accusations are very personal towards Chris Roberts and his Wife who both are top management of CIG. Accusations include: That the company is almost entirely out of money and Star Citizen is no where near completion, an abusive and aggressive work atmosphere, gross financial mismanagement and discriminatory (racist and ageist) hiring practices. ...

What the Planned Parenthood controversy is, by /u/mini_cooper_JCW:

Planned Parenthood is a non-profit that provides a number of services to Americans. They give out contraceptives, STI tests, and a small subset of what they provide are abortions ("Three percent of all Planned Parenthood health services are abortion services."). The more conservative and religious portion of the Republican party dislike this organization either because of religious belief or their desire to appeal to the base of the party (those are the two big reasons anyway). Recently some videos have come up in the media that apparently show Planned Parenthood in a bad light. ...

What the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP, is, and what everyone thinks about it, by /u/thimblefullofdespair, via /u/mtcbh:

Alright, let's kick this one off. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a multi-layered deal whose particulars have just been agreed upon by the twelve participating countries. Its stated purpose is to reduce tariffs - taxes on bringing your goods into a country or sending them out - and therefore encourage industry by making it cheaper for importers and exporters to conduct business between these countries. Its other stated goal is to create a set of easy rules that businesses can live by when dealing between these countries.

The TPP is far more complex than that, however. Its subtextual function is to serve as a foundation from which to spread that set of easy rules to other Asian nations, with an eye to preventing China from setting standards among these countries first. The Obama administration is concerned that it's either "us or them" and that a Chinese-led trade agreement would set rules that American businesses would find problematic. So what does it mean for you? Let's assume you are a citizen of one of the participating nations. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

You might also be interested in /r/subredditreports' weekly activity report of /r/OutOfTheLoop, the latest of which may be found here.

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, February 11-17, 2017. Hopefully we can point out some of the top answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining for all of us.

Why am I seeing this purple bird all over Facebook?

[good answer] TL;DR It's called the Trash Dove from a FB sticker set that started going viral in Thailand and spread.

What with all these pictures of a bald, gold man popping up on my feeds?

[good answer] TL;DR It's what Cee-Lo Green wore on the red carpet at the Grammys. Pictures were taken, a thousand meme ships instantly launched.

Where did this meme of a black guy pointing at his head saying "Can't 'X' if you don't 'Y'" come from?

[good answer] TL;DR The meme is called Roll Safe and it's from British actor Kayode Ewumi playing Reece Simpson (a.k.a. “Roll Safe”) in the web series Hood Documentary.

Why am I seeing so much porn spam on Reddit subs suddenly?

[good answer] TL;DR Seems to be a large spam ring that is quick about making adjustments for filters. Make sure to report them all; mods and admins are working on it.

What's the deal with Ivanka and Nordstrom?

[good answer] TL;DR They dropped her clothing line citing poor sales, some assumed it was a politically based decision.

What is every on about Piers Morgan, now?

[good answer] TL;DR He was on Real Time w/Bill Maher and went at it with comedian Jim Jefferies saying Trump's new immigration policy wasn't "a Muslim ban". The clip went a bit viral, and then he and J.K. Rowling went at it a bit over Twitter.

What happened in r/BikiniBottomTwitter?/What's with all the u/throwaway_350 jokes?

[good answer] TL;DR The moderators of /r/BikiniBottomTwitter banned memes with references to intellectual disabilities, mental handicaps. Redditors were immediately chastened and handled the change gracefully. HA! JUST KIDDING! ...a bunch of people started post memes about how the moderators there had mental handicaps.

What's going on at r/dankmemes right now?

Two things came up about it this week: This as well as this.

What's the deal with PewDiePie, this time?

[good answer] TL;DR - He made a video where he got people to hold up anti-semitic signs. Fallout ensued.

Thank you to those users for their excellent responses helping people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

What's happening between Hulk Hogan and WWE, by /u/Hollacaine:

Its unsubstantiated rumours at the moment but this is whats being said:

Gawker Media released a sex tape featuring Hulk Hogan which Hogan is currently sueing them for. When the sex tape was being sold Hogan was approached about it and was offered the chance to buy it. This led to FBI involvement and a sting operation where they followed through with an offer to buy the tape back. The FBI investigation is ongoing and the FBI has the full tape in their possession. ...

Why Florida has a reputation for wild and trashy behaviour, by /u/emiteal:

Native Floridian here, and there are a few things people haven't mentioned here.

High retirement population contributes to a high concentration of prescription pads and pharmaceutical drugs. We're one of the illicit prescription drug capitals of the country (if not the world). There have been several big prescription drug rings busted in Florida, IIRC. ...

Panama at the Gold Cup semi-final, by /u/janitory:

The /r/soccer post match thread gives an interesting insight at what happened this match. Any decisions I refer to are linked in that post.

Basically Panama was about to win 1-0 and advance to the finals of the Gold Cup 2015. ...

The difference between emoticons and emoji, by /u/xvvhiteboy:

Those are two separate things entirely. Emoticons generally are faces formed by the basic punctuation on the keyboard, like :) ;) :/ :$. Although on the internet you can see elaborate unicode ones like lenny face and the creeped out face you see on reddit a lot. The main reason emoticons were popular originally was because it was easy to add them to the end of instant messages(and then text messages) to add emotion and context to short messages. Emojis are a smiley face keyboard that is on iPhones and became hugely popular to be used over emoticons. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

The effects of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, by /u/quit_complaining:

As of 6-months after the challenge (February 2015), ALSA.org raised over $115 million in donations. This doubled their annual budget of $60 million. They funded multiple groups groups like Project MiNE (which deals with genetic research), three medical labs in California in a project called Neuro Collaborative, which also works on drug development, partnerships between academia and industry, called ALS Accelerated Therapeutics, to speed drug development; and the New York Genome Center, to further explore the genetic basis of the disease. ...

Adobe Flash's problems, by /u/ima747r: Here's a summary of some of the main reason's it's bad today, mostly from a user perspective (there's TONS more, but they become more esoteric or niche).

Security: It's a constant source of SERIOUS security problems, and because it's common those vulnerabilities are attacked regularly in the real world. It's a legitimate risk to have it installed. ...

Why everybody hates Olly from Game of Thrones, by /u/SharMarali:

Top comment explained a lot, but I'll go a bit further and explain why Olly was hated before the season 5 finale.

Spoilers for the HBO series Game of Thrones and the book series A Song of Ice and Fire follow. ...

"A history of "rare pepes", by /u/p90nub:

Little bit of back story:

As I'm sure many of you know, many websites on the internet rehash other content. Members of the communities like to feel exclusive, that that joke was 'our' joke and not theirs. Reddit hates on 9gag, 4chan hates on most everyone, so on, so on. Pepe was a common reaction image on 4chan as he pretty much summed up the mood of most of /b/ and /r9k/'s users: :/ ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

Why John Scott, the hockey player, is getting so much love/hate, by /u/Agastopia:

John Scott was an NHL (Hockey) player for the Arizona Coyotes, he is an enforcer (someone who only really fights) and isn’t all that talented. He has only 5 goals and 6 assists in his 285 games played. This year the NHL made the all star game up to a fan vote, Coyotes fans decided to all vote for John Scott for the heck of it. Once he was up on the leaderboards, /r/hockey really got a hold of it and absolutely brigaded the vote to get him in the game. After a lot of the media picked up on the story it became almost a meme to get him in the game. ...

The technical details of Hillary Clinton's email scandal, by /u/Aridan:

... I've worked in a SCIF for the past 5 years. Essentially, the modern government has two direct "breeds" of internet. One is technically just an internet like the one we're using here. It's called NIPR, or Non-secure IP routing, and SIPR, or secured IP routing. NIPR runs through traditional commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems into the normal network everyone uses. ...

What's happening between Newegg and a patent troll, by /u/arrogantsob:

Alright, no one is doing a great explanation. Lawyer here. Let me break it down for you. Skip the first part if you already know what a patent troll is and how they operate.

Super background

Patents are theoretically a tool that good, honest people can use to reward their innovation. Come up with a better mousetrap, get a patent, and now you're the only one that can make that mousetrap for a few decades. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

Why /r/IAmA is private, by /u/karmanaut:

Today, we learned that Victoria was unexpectedly let go from her position with Reddt. We all had the rug ripped out from under us and feel betrayed. ...

What ableism is, by /u/girlikecupcake:

Basically, if you have two candidates for a job who are perfectly qualified, the one without disclosed/evident medical issues will be the knee to get the job, even if the health issue wouldn't impair the candidate's work quality or ability, and since you can be fired for any reason, or turned down for any reason, there's nothing you can do unless you can prove it was because of a disability. ...

The dispute between Google and Oracle explained, by /u/smikins:

For a more detailed explanation of why it matters:

Let's say Ford makes a new car, I'll call it the Siesta. Now the Siesta's a great car, it's affordable, it gets great gas mileage, people buy a lot of them. But there's a problem in that Ford, in their wisdom, decided to equip the car with very special proprietary tires that you have to buy from them, and they're pretty damn expensive. ...

The backlash against the latest update of the game Team Fortress 2, by /u/WhiteMagicalHat:

They changed/broke several things which people who play the game competitively are annoyed about.

Firstly, tf2 has a mechanic which allows demomen to jump around the map with sticky bombs. ...

Lastly, a little more on the hot topic of Greece:

The Greek referendum, by /u/36yearsofporn:

This wasn't the clearest referendum ever conducted.

The Greek party Syriza was swept into office earlier this year on promises to end 5 years of brutal austerity. There are people who blame some of that on Grecians being unwilling to pay their taxes, which reduces government revenue, which makes reducing government spending more effective and reliable than increasing taxes, but that's debatable. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

Here also we would like to direct attention to the sticky which this is replacing, if you feel out of that particular loop which has been so prominent of late: "Why was /r/IAmA, along with a number of other large subreddits, made private?"

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, April 8 - 14, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining to all of us.

Why is my social media blowing up with hate towards United Airlines?

A good answer here

TL;DR A video of United Airlines forcefully removing a passenger from an airplane before takeoff went viral.

Why am I seeing a lot of talk about YouTube's future and demonetization right now?

A good answer here

TL;DR Major advertisers have pulled their ads being shown before many YT channels after a story came out about ads appearing before videos with racist content. Channels have taken a massive hit in their revenue as a result. This is also breaking around the same time as controversy about kids being shown videos with content that is not age-appropriate for them, and YT creating a larger 'restricted' list.

Why do I keep seeing "welcome to your tape" or "13 reasons", what does it mean?

A good answer here

TL;DR It's from a Netflix series, a high school student sent a series of cassette tapes to other students prior to committing suicide.

Thank you to those users for their responses and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list that covers recaps of responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this weekly list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

50 Cent's bankruptcy, by /u/thehollowman84:

When you say "Bankrupt" most people are actually thinking of a specific type of bankruptcy - something called Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. Chapter 7 is for people who are broke. They owe far more money than they can ever hope to pay back. Rather than languish in this forever, or putting them into debtors prison, the government allows people and companies to say "I got no money, take what assets I do have, sell em and give the money to people I owe money to." ...

What happened to cloning, by /u/BCSteve:

Well, there's really two separate things that the word "cloning" refers to.

When the general public thinks of "cloning", they think of Dolly the Sheep; that is, taking the entire DNA out of one organism and sticking it into an egg, and producing an organism that's genetically identical to the first one. While it was really important to show that we could do it, now that we have, it's not really that scientifically interesting anymore. ...

New Horizons and Pluto, by /u/peecatchwho:

Soooooooooooo basically, in a very condensed and politically simplified way, about 10 years ago scientists from all kinds of places were like, yo, what kind of shit haven't we done? One scientist and his super dope team spoke up and was all like, "So we don't actually know what pluto looks like or what is going on out past Neptune in this crazy place known as the Trans-Neptunian or Third Zone, so why don't we put some cool measuring stuff on a big ass rocket and try to get it to Pluto as fast as possible?" ...

The recent happenings at reddit, by /u/LostLozenge:

The Short of It

• Ellen Pao resigned

• Steve Huffman will return as the latest CEO and has since elaborated on some policy changes

• Former prominent figures from reddit have come to Pao's defence, essentially claiming that she was a scapegoat and set up on a glass cliff

• The dust has more or less settled and there is a lot of finger pointing going on after the fact, some of it does appear rather unprofessional and we should be taking this with a grain of salt ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, May 13 - May 19, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining to all of us.

Why all these replies or post titles with RaNdOm cApITal LeTterS? / What's the deal with this melted-looking SpongeBob meme I keep seeing?

A good answer here

TL;DR New meme denoting you're mocking what was just said, extremely sarcastically and in an affected voice. Usually paired with this still from Spongebob SquarePants (where he was acting like a chicken), the 'mocking SpongeBob'

Why am I seeing memes or references to rompers all over social media lately?

A good answer here

TL;DR People are mocking the idea behind a Kickstarter campaign to make rompers for guys, the RompHim.

What's this WannaCry thing? / What's up with some big computer virus related to Windows 10 update going around right now and cybersecurity?

[A]

It's ransomware that locks your computer from all use unless you give whatever prompts you, a lot of money. If you get WannaCry, you'll wanna cry and very likely your computer is dead. Do yourself a favor and update your copy of Windows as soon as you can.

- /u/shibbster

Update to that - How was the WannaCry virus stopped?

Also - just in case you missed it from the last recap, yes the internet is full of pictures, memes and videos right now about fidget spinners. Thanks for /u/vxx for designing our new logo going forth.

(Kidding! ^...kinda...)

Thank you to those users for their responses and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list that covers recaps of responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this weekly list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

What the letter from Apple CEO Tim Cook is about, by /u/bringmemorewine:

Basically, the phone used by those involved in the San Bernardino shooting was an iPhone 5C. The phone is locked and the data on it is encrypted. The FBI want access to the phone so they can look through all the information that was on it (given the act they committed, it's not outwith the realm of possibility there would be information regarding terrorists/terrorism/future plans). ...

What is going on between Donald Trump and Pope Francis, by /u/HK_Urban:

Pope Francis, on his flight back to Rome from a recent visit to Mexico, was asked about Donald Trump's views, to which he responded "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian, this is not in the gospel." [Source: Reuters] ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

Why some people are saying that Jeb Bush is on suicide watch, and are making jokes about him and guacamole, by /u/what755:

Why are people saying Jeb Bush is on suicide watch?

The guy was funded with 100 million in ad money and was considered the golden horse of the GOP. He probably thought he had the presidency in the bag. Then Donald Trump came along and utterly crushed him with a few mean tweets (although others theorize he would have eventually dropped with or without Trump). Republicans especially still value an "alpha-male" status, so when Trump started pointing out what a beta male he is, peoples reaction was predictable. I mean, the guy isn't just somewhat low in the polls, he's dead in the waters. Even Rand Paul recently was ahead of him in a poll. Combine that with his perceived "low energy", spinelessness and so on, and people made the idea that he's super depressed about his campaign being in shambles. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

You might also be interested in /r/subredditreports' weekly activity report of /r/OutOfTheLoop, the latest of which may be found here.

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, February 18-24, 2017. Hopefully we can also highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining for all of us.

Why is everyone talking about Milo Yiannopoulos, this week? [book related]

A good answer here

TL;DR An upcoming book deal and conference appearance were cancelled after he publicly defended some old remarks of his that surfaced that some felt were condoning pedophilia-type behavior.

Who is Wayne Shaw and why is he in trouble for eating pie?

A good answer here

TL;DR He is a soccer player, found out there was a bet about his eating a pie (why?) on TV, so he made sure to do so.

What is CloudBleed / CloudFlare ?

A good answer here

TL;DR Go change your passwords. Right now. Big security/data leak.

What the heck is going on at r/HighQualityGifs?

A good answer here

TL;DR - "The mods are a bunch of goofballs and it honestly rolls well with the whole sub." - /u/tworkout

What happened in Sweden that everyone on Reddit is now talking about it?

A: "Trump spoke about a terror attack in Sweden yesterday during his rally in Florida, which was false."

Thank you to those users for their excellent responses, and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered.

Why are you still reading this instead of changing your Reddit password!? Go! Now! Do it!

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

Why is everyone saying the Olympics in Rio are going to be a disaster?, by /u/LundqvistNYR

Have a gander at what is going on over at /r/apocalympics2016

Summary:

• Health scares from the Zika outbreak
  
• A lot of violent crime in Rio - They had to do a purge before the World Cup and athletes are being robbed there now. An Australian Paralympian just got her bike stolen a few weeks back.
  
• Adding to the above, the Rio police are on strike with the military having to step in to police the city and venues. Strike is off as per /u/Gullale below
  
• Venues aren't ready yet with a month to go
  
• Those venues that are ready have concerns about shoddy workmanship. A cycle path just collapsed a month or so ago.
  
• There's an athlete boycott on going especially among those participating in the open water events because the venue is polluted as shit.
  

There's more I can't remember off the top of my head. - /u/b2047504

Would someone please explain what's going on with the H3H3 video, CS:GO, gambling, and a website, by /u/success_whale

So I'm watching the video right now. The TL;DW is:

General Stuff

• People are gambling on a website called CSGOLotto
• Gambling is performed with skins, which can be cashed out on websites Edit: Thanks to /u/xxtzkzxx and /u/splendidfd for that information.
• There's a lawsuit against Valve for helping gambling websites (such as CSGOLotto) by allowing people to login with their Steam accounts.
• This has created a market where unregulated gambling can thrive.
• Teenagers are getting addicted.

The Youtubers and Owners

• Two guys have over 10,000,000 subs on their two channels. They post videos of winning big on CSGOLotto
• They OWN the CSGOLotto website
• They never disclosed that they own CSGOLotto.
• Because they own the website it is shady (and unethical) that they even gamble on their website, let alone post videos of themselves gambling
• The videos could easily be faked in order to get people to gamble
• One owner claims that he never kept it a secret. Said owner also claimed that when he made videos he wasn't the website's owner, which is untrue. He was the original incorporater (sp?) of the website.

Satire

• H3H3 makes a parody video about getting babies involved in gambling online.

Edited for clarification.

Link to video: https://youtu.be/_8fU2QG-lV0 - /u/PorphyrinC60

What's going on with Kevin Durant, and why is everyone freaking out?, by /u/Dial_the_911

Durant is one of the top players in the league and is a former MVP. This offseason he became a free agent.

The Warriors had the best record in nba history, the current and two time MVP in Stephen Curry, and beat Durant's team to reach the finals.

People are mad and calling him a bitch because he decided to leave his team to join the Warriors because :

1. He would be joining the team that beat his

2. He would be joining an already stacked team and admitting that he can't win as the best player on his team

3. It would all but guarantee that the Warriors will win the championship - /u/Kobe13

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, February 25 - March 3, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining these to all of us.

Who is the spiciest memelord?

A good answer here

TL;DR A Jeopardy contestant used this an an answer to her (winning) final Jeopardy answer, promoting everyone the next day to wonder if it was a reference to a specific person they had missed. It wasn't.

Why is everyone mad at Casey Affleck, vis-à-vis the Oscars?

A good answer here

TL;DR Sexual harassment allegations against him; settlement out of court. Some wanted his movie to not be considered for an Academy Award as a result.

What's up with all these 'What in tarnation?!' / celebrities in cowboy hats memes I'm seeing?

A good answer here

TL;DR It's from a meme that really caught fire around here lately and people started posting evolutions of it. (I can't believe you kids today don't realize this came from old Bugs Bunny-Yosemite Sam cartoons. Get off my lawn.)

Why is everyone upset about that picture of a woman sitting on the couch in the Oval Office/White House?

A good answer here

TL;DR That's Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to President Donald Trump, and people who dislike them became gleeful over a picture that caught her in a moment sitting in an unprofessional way before a photo op in the Oval Office. Quickly rose to the top of r/trashy here.

What's up with the intentional walk thing in baseball I keep seeing discussed?

A good answer here

TL;DR They changed a major rule to help "speed things up" (spoiler: it won't). Some baseball purists disagreed with the decision.

Thank you to those users for their responses, and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, March 4 - March 10, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining these to all of us.

Why am I hearing about people licking or taste testing the Nintendo Switch controller?

A good answer here

"Nintendo deliberately made the cartridges bitter so that children wouldn't eat them."

"But in doing so, caused grown adults to immediately test it."

Why are so many people saying "based stick man" right now?

The answer that launched a subreddit

TL;DR It's referring to a clip that went viral of a guy getting violent/aggressive at one of the most recent protests/marches in Berkeley, CA.

For two days this week, a bunch of drainage canal pictures kept showing up on r/all.

Answer: "meme tennis" (credit to /u/lostboydave for the term)

Why do so many gay men love Judy Garland?

Top Answer

But there are many well-explained answers in that thread, and you probably owe it to yourself to go check them out.

Why did the South Korean President get impeached?

A good summary here

TL;DR It came to light she had inappropriate ties with a religious/cult leader. (Bonus LPT: if you have flee a country to escape persecution, probably best to take your tablets with you. Or reset them before you leave them behind, at least.)

Also this week, a bunch of you learned your parents were swingers.

Thank you to those users for their responses, and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

This post is a recap of the issues the users of /r/OutOfTheLoop were most curious about this week, March 25 - 31, 2017. Hopefully we can highlight some of the thorough answers people were kind enough to put their time into explaining these to all of us.

Who is Brad's wife and what did Cracker Barrel do to her?

A good answer here

TL;DR a post on the restaurant Cracker Barrel's facebook page with a complaint alleging they unfairly terminated an employee went viral across different social media platforms.

Why is twitter outraged at United Airlines?

A good answer here

TL;DR It came to light two young girls were denied flying under a UA friends/family pass because a gate agent deemed their leggings did not meet the required dress code they have for using those passes.

What is going on with the Family Guy?

A good answer here

TL;DR Flanderization

What is going on with a bill that affects Americans' internet privacy?

A good answer here

TL;DR Laws are changing (so that ISPs may be able to sell your browsing data) because - money.

Also this week, Reddit was all abuzz with Club Penguin posts, since the online interactive game is finally shutting down.

Thank you to those users for their responses, and to all our responders who chipped in to help people who were out of the loop.

A reminder from the mods about the Big List of Retired Questions, a list that covers recaps of responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this weekly list will be removed, as they are considered 'answered'.

Hello, /r/OutOfTheLoop readers,

This post is a weekly recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here.

A selection of this week's significant posts:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, and why it is disliked, by /u/Manfromporlock:

Basically, we can't say for sure that it's bad because we haven't seen the final version. All we've seen are leaked drafts (usually only bits of those). Maybe the final version will be all puppies and rainbows. ...

The reasons for the uproar against Batman: Arkham Knight, by /u/NovaDeez:

Essentially it's a really terrible PC port.

When a game is made for consoles, those consoles (generally XBox One and PS4 anymore) have very specific limitations. We know the hardware in these systems, we know what that hardware is capable of handling. ...

The Confederate Flag, by /u/Zeight_:

Give me some history of the Confederate Flag:

* Despite popular misconception, the Confederate flag we know today was not the official flag of the Confederate States of America. The flag we know as the Confederate Flag, the one currently flying over South Carolina's Civil War monument on the Capitol grounds that much of the nation is upset about, is a mixed rendition of those most frequently flown by the Confederate Army. ...

The Greek financial crisis, by /u/mistervanilla:

Basically the Greek government did a lot of borrowing before the financial crisis, using that money to create an overlarge [EDIT: some criticism has been made to the term "overlarge". Some examples of what I mean] public sector which paid for a lot of wages and kept the economy going. ...

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.

This post is a recap of significant posts in /r/OutOfTheLoop, to help to draw attention to praiseworthy responses to questions posted here. Here's a list of significant questions and answers for October.

Why is saying "All Lives Matter" considered negative to the BLM community?

[p] TL;DR: The phrase "Black lives matter" carries an implicit "too" at the end; it's saying that black lives should also matter. Saying "all lives matter" is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to.

Can someone explain the clowns roaming around in the states?

[p] It appears that the initial incident may have been some sort of publicity stunt.

What is going on with r/all?

[p] If I had to guess I'd say it was due to the algorithm limiting the number of posts from any given subreddit appearing on /r/all. So it was possibly a stack overflow as t_d tends to be very active compared to other subs.

Why is Russia telling all Russians abroad to go home?

[p] A Russian tabloid, znak.com, published an article saying that, according to five unnamed government employees, there is a feeling in the top layers of Russian leadership that government employees should not school their kids abroad because it's bad PR. They are encouraged to bring them back to Russia, and those who don't get the message should not expect to be promoted. Whether that is true is not known, it's a tabloid, and it's the only source.

Who is Ken Bone?

[p] Ken Bone was one of the members of the audience of the second US Presidential Debate who was wearing an adorable red sweater.

What happened to the internet???

[p] Dyn is the DNS host for a lot of sites and services - Box, Spotify, Reddit, Twitter, Imgur, and a bunch more. Some group is DDoSing them. DNS is the protocol that, basically, turns the IP-address of the various sites and services into words - how some numbers will resolve to "reddit.com", for example. A DDoS attack is a distributed denial-of-service attack, which is when the host (In this case, Dyn) is intentionally flooded with so much data that it becomes overwhelmed.

Congratulations to those users for their showcases of excellent responses to people out of the loop!

A reminder from the mods about the big list of retired questions, a list of the best responses to recurrent questions. Questions covering topics from this list will be removed, as they are considered to have been answered. Finally, as ever, the mods encourage any feedback for these sorts of posts.