The best NYTimes correction of all time

January 6, 2012 1:21 PM

First, the article, about a young couple with Asperger's. Second, the correction to the story. Third, the story behind the correction. Finally, the story behind the story behind the correction, featuring dubtrot, My Little Pony dubstep. Via kottke
posted by MadamM (35 comments total)

Previously.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 1:23 PM on January 6, 2012

My little pony problem came to our attention through multiple channels.

The fact that the story concerned Asperger's and also got a detail wrong about a children's cartoon makes me think that "came to our attention through multiple channels" might have been a really diplomatic way of putting it.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 1:25 PM on January 6, 2012 [35 favorites]

Oh no! I searched for the link and everything. Weird that it didn't show up, even in the built-in FPP link checker
posted by MadamM at 1:28 PM on January 6, 2012

featuring dubtrot, My Little Pony dubstep

Ok. My camel just experienced a catastrophic structural failure. Bring me my sword and fully automatic grenade launcher, my stoneburner and the Family Atomics. Someone call up jonmc, we're going to get positively Bruce Campbell on this shit.
posted by loquacious at 1:32 PM on January 6, 2012 [18 favorites]

My favorite MLP remix.
posted by empath at 1:32 PM on January 6, 2012

I "came out" to my supervisor this week. He had asked if there was a reason I never addressed my teammates by name.

"You probably noticed I never look at people when speaking to them," I said, not looking at him. He nodded sympathetically. (He's a nice boss.)

This syndrome is no picnic.
posted by Trurl at 1:46 PM on January 6, 2012 [17 favorites]

Mod note: This is sort of, although not entirely, a double but it's Friday and also dubtrot!
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 1:49 PM on January 6, 2012 [9 favorites]

Somebody really should have been fired over this. Messing up the WMD stories and Jayson Blair was understandable, but you don't mess around with pony journalism.

That Rainbowstep is awesome.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:06 PM on January 6, 2012

I find it funny that in "the story behind the correction" which is all about correcting a small detail about My Little Pony, the picture of Fluttershy is an innacurate fan art from someone's DA account, not an actual picture of Fluttershy.
posted by picklenickle at 2:09 PM on January 6, 2012 [3 favorites]

I work in an office that gets sent samples of children's toys. I mentioned to a colleague that MLP:FIM has a massive following on the internet amongst adults, and the look of confusion on her face stopped me from going far enough as uttering the word 'brony'.

Oh, internet.
posted by mippy at 2:31 PM on January 6, 2012 [3 favorites]

But when it comes to something substantial, like Iran's Nuclear Program, The New York Times is mute when it comes to corrections:

Indeed, if you try now to find the offending paragraph on the New York Times website, you can't. They took it down. But there is no note, like there is supposed to be, acknowledging that they changed the article, and that there was something wrong with it before. Sneaky, huh?

(And seeing the HuffPo trying to keep the NYT honest? How the mighty have fallen.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:49 PM on January 6, 2012 [5 favorites]

Awesome story (well the correction part), and awesome dubtrot! I think though, that maybe sometimes there is a certain level of ... victimization of Aspergers. I'm not sure what to call it. I guess maybe I think lots of people seem to do better with it then the muggles think they do.
posted by Bovine Love at 3:03 PM on January 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

I "came out" to my supervisor this week.

At first I thought your comment would be about "coming out" as a brony. Your supervisor would probably be less understanding about that.
posted by ymgve at 3:17 PM on January 6, 2012 [22 favorites]

...Ok. My camel just experienced a catastrophic structural failure.

I knew I should have given my Pope the jetpack
posted by y2karl at 3:44 PM on January 6, 2012 [3 favorites]

There's no overlap in tags between this and the previous link, people! We can do better!
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 4:00 PM on January 6, 2012

dubtrot makes this not a repost.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 4:31 PM on January 6, 2012

I "came out" to my supervisor this week. He had asked if there was a reason I never addressed my teammates by name.

I expected the next sentence to be something like, "I had assigned them the names 'Fluttershy,' 'Rainbow Dash,' 'Twilight Sparkle,' 'Pinkie Pie,' etc. and didn't want to accidentally use the wrong names out loud."
posted by RobotHero at 5:01 PM on January 6, 2012 [7 favorites]

There's a pretty big brony music scene out there. It reminds me of the Wizard Rock phenomenon in a lot of ways. Another one you might want to look at is this album-length MLP+Gorillaz mashup.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:08 PM on January 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

I "came out" to my supervisor this week. He had asked if there was a reason I never addressed my teammates by name.

1) I almost never address anyone by name. I wait for my data packets to have unambiguous addressing. I do look at peoples' faces when I talk to them, though. But no chit-chat.

2) I'm really surprised anyone would ever notice that, let alone comment on it.
posted by DU at 6:21 PM on January 6, 2012 [2 favorites]

Also, now I'm watching pony dubstep on repeat.
posted by DU at 6:46 PM on January 6, 2012

It's threads like these that make me realize I have zero cultural awareness. I came over to make a minor objection to the statement that this was the best NYT correction ever. In my opinion, the best ever was the one that, "due to a transcription error," referred to an Orthodox Israeli as a "Bedouin of Israeli politics" when what the reporter had dictated was "A veteran of Israeli politics." But maybe that's just me.

I'll just go back to reading Urban Dictionary now.
posted by etaoin at 7:41 PM on January 6, 2012

It might help to know that the last episode of season one of MLP was entitled "The Best Night Ever". I assume "Best Correction Ever" is a parody of that.

(Twilight Sparkle is best pony.)
posted by SPrintF at 6:30 AM on January 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I really wanted to believe that in some darkened room somewhere, an advertising thinktank dreamt up bronies as viral marketing for an upcoming Judd Apatow project. And any minute now they'd reveal the whole thing as a hoax.

But it might actually be real; a strange otaku offshoot that's grown enough to be a demographic that buys stuff. And so it will continue and beget even stranger subcultures.

It's like we're living in a William Gibson story that was adapted for TV by the Farrelly Brothers.
posted by dubold at 7:26 AM on January 7, 2012

Metafilter: not an obsessive subculture to be taken lightly.
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 7:33 AM on January 7, 2012

Some people take it too far, though.
posted by empath at 8:20 AM on January 7, 2012

I don't think it's actually true that the New York Times publishes a correction for every error. I pointed out to them that this article wrongly identified Thomas Aquinas as "Sir Thomas Aquinas" and they deleted the honorific, but there's no correction appended.
posted by Jahaza at 9:55 AM on January 7, 2012

I really wanted to believe that in some darkened room somewhere, an advertising thinktank dreamt up bronies as viral marketing for an upcoming Judd Apatow project. And any minute now they'd reveal the whole thing as a hoax. But it might actually be real; a strange otaku offshoot that's grown enough to be a demographic that buys stuff. And so it will continue and beget even stranger subcultures.

You're actually not that far from the mark. In a sense.

If the lore is true, the MLP/Brony thing started on 4chan as an ironic in-joke. They didn't actually like MLP, they were just trying to freak people out or soften the 4chan image or something equally stupid.

Then this trojan horse meme escaped from 4chan and pranced wild all over the internet, and now we have actual bronies ironically unironically getting into MLP.

This is just one of many memetic crimes that can now be blamed on 4chan. If history is any guide the next one should be out any day now. I'm hoping that self-electrocution becomes a thing.
posted by loquacious at 11:23 AM on January 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Metafilter Corrections 1/7/2012:

In a recent comment thread we erroneously identified Twlight Sparkle as the best pony. The true best pony is, of course, Pinkie Pie. We apologize for the error.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:08 PM on January 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

Also, our spell checker is broken.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 5:23 PM on January 7, 2012

I was tempted to post when Rainbow Dash made the front cover of the Wall Street Journal a couple months ago. Ah well, missed opportunities.
posted by JHarris at 6:19 PM on January 7, 2012

But it might actually be real; a strange otaku offshoot that's grown enough to be a demographic that buys stuff. And so it will continue and beget even stranger subcultures.

...

Then this trojan horse meme escaped from 4chan and pranced wild all over the internet, and now we have actual bronies ironically unironically getting into MLP.

This is just one of many memetic crimes that can now be blamed on 4chan.

Why not watch a few episodes before deciding how ironic people are being. It's a good show.
posted by DU at 6:38 PM on January 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why not watch a few episodes before deciding how ironic people are being. It's a good show.

Ayup.

No, but wait: adults watching andwaxing nostalgic about the Muppets is totally OK.
posted by rodgerd at 8:58 PM on January 7, 2012

And so it will continue and beget even stranger subcultures.

Yep.
posted by the_artificer at 8:23 PM on January 9, 2012

If the lore is true, the MLP/Brony thing started on 4chan as an ironic in-joke.

Close. They (4can's /co/) started watching b/c it was expected to be a respected pro (Lauren Faust) selling out and producing mindless crap. They were surprised to find that wasn't the case. The "Ironic" thing keeps coming up because people can't wrap their heads around the fact that a show can be enjoyable for young girls and adults at the same time.

Which, when you think about it, is an indictment against our society's expectations for young girls.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:02 PM on January 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

It was definitely not ironic by the time it hit Something Awful, which was pretty early. It was this.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 10:43 PM on January 9, 2012