Table of Contents
Unfortunate Thread Juxtaposition
When two or more unrelated threads, especially in Chat, are juxtaposed next to each other to create an amusing unintended meaning. For example:
“Are You Circumcised?”
“Flocc's Monumental Task”
“1500 Members!!”
Unfortunate Thread Juxtapositions were being occasionally posted in several threads for a while before Thande created a thread devoted to them. Many people contribute to that thread, but perhaps the three biggest contributors are Thande himself, King Thomas, and MrP.
Irritatingly, Private Eye have recently stolen the phrase “Unfortunate Juxtapositions”, although since they used it to mock the Guardian, Thande can't really get all that angry.
Due to the vast number of (often identical) juxtapositions posted involving Max Sinister's Chaos timeline1), Max has been made the Patron Saint of Unfortunate Thread Juxtapositions. Another claimant to this title is Croesus, whose Fitter Italian Military TL has also been used to similar effect.
The Poirot-esque phrase “use ze little blue dots” (in MSPaint to resize the picture) is used to refer to people who post UTJs with massive areas of white space.
Variations
Several variant forms have become accepted, i.e. unlike any other editing, they are considered acceptable if they are not overused and if it makes a UTJ funnier.
Ran-Style Edit
Ran Exilis pioneered the “Ran-Style Edit”, in which the word 'by' is removed from a blue-background UTJ (sometimes just a single post), e.g. “Most Evil Woman…” by IronYuppie).
Thande-Style Double Preview Edit
Used for juxtapositions on the front page. Because the thread titles are abbreviated and passing the cursor over the link causes them to pop up as previews, in order to do a full juxtaposition with both threads, two screenshots are pasted together so both thread titles are shown as previews.
Imajin-Style Reverse Juxtaposition
Due to the relative placement of NPC and PC, often a frontpage juxtaposition works better backwards, so you must Use Your Brain.
Cutoffs
First posted by Imajin (“South Carolina to outlaw sex…”) this is when a thread title is cut off on the main page to produce an amusing result. Sometimes posted singly, more commonly combined with standard UTJ.
Non-AH.com Material
It is acceptable to occasionally post juxtapositions or other amusing thread combinations from other forums, or story juxtapositions from news websites.